Pros
The company is great in terms of being a starter retail job if you’re 16-21. They allow students that work with the company to go away to school, which is a benefit (not for me because I went to school locally), in terms of work life balance. Some of the benefits aren’t terrible, like I received a decent discount when I used to go to the gym. Customers aren’t always evil, just stupid and redundant at times. You get your bulk returns, people begging for discounts, your nasty customers, your racist customers...etc. it’s not a pro, but it depends on who you are and your other associates will back you up so teamwork is...I’ll give it a three out of five mPOS is honestly the best thing that has happened to the entire company. Cashiering is a lot quicker and the lines are shorter and it’s the only way to do orders...I just wished they worked most of the time.
Cons
I’ve been working at Old Navy for over three years and I’ve noticed a lot of changes within the company that I particularly don’t like, email capture being one of them. From the jump I didn’t really care for the discount because it doesn’t work online, and if you’re plus sized, noticeably short, or significantly tall, you’re outta luck because just recently did they put their plus line in only a few stores within the company while I have to hope and pray someone returned some merchandise that looked good enough for me to purchase it. The training is terrible. When I started I only received a handbook (back then we were “sellebrities” lol) and was essentially given a “buddy” for a day and the rest was just...learning on my own. I was self taught. That’s fine and I gave them the benefit of the doubt because the store manager had to quit for medical reasons, but I kinda wanted some help and not a lot of the associates were kind enough to help when needed so temporary managers would be the ones to help . My problem with training is, it’s holiday season and a lot of newbies don’t get the training they so desperately need and they end up half-assing their tasks, meaning other people have to finish their tasks. Scheduling is my biggest issue at the moment. The email capture is also very annoying to the point where I was about to get fired over it. if you don’t get enough emails for the week you’re essentially in the bottom five (my job does that) and then the manager comes up to you and asks you why haven’t you gotten emails, and then blames you for not getting enough emails and basically costing the store thousands of dollars (old navy is a subsidiary to a multi million company aka gap so I take that with a grain of salt). For one week I only had five customers in total during thanksgiving because I was covering for a fifteen minute break (one was an order) and my other shifts for the week I was on the salesfloor and I had received 20% for the week because 1/5 customers gave me their email (since it isn’t required and customers have a choice to disclose or withhold their email address for any reason) and I was essentially put on the spot when my manager wanted to touch base. I explained to her I only had five customers and only one customer gave it to me so I shouldn’t be looked upon as the bad guy but then she just told me to do better, which I have, and if I had more customers I would’ve showed her that. The reason why I brought up email capture though is because if you don’t get enough emails then you might not get hours for the week, which is basically what happened to me recently. After a full week of shifts where I barely even touched the register I have another week where I would be working once a week. Scheduling is so terrible that for two months I barely made forty hours in one month and could barely support myself, while everyone else worked at least twice or three times. It wasn’t cute when I was new and it’s not cute now. Be wary of management as well. Some of them think they’re invincible because they have seniority and some of them are just plain nasty. Or flop between being nasty and showing basic decency. If you’re a manager, you can’t just show us you’re having a bad day. Just like how we can’t do it. In terms of associate relations, it’s cliquey. I tend to stay out of things like that and don’t necessarily care about work cliques so I can’t say it’s a con but it kind of is if you’re not looking for that. Oh, and there were many instances where you don’t even get to take your mandated paid break. You have to ask for it, which is not supposed to happen but it does. It’s terrible how many times I’ve had to stop myself and hide somewhere in the stock room or bathroom for a minute or two because I know I wouldn’t be getting a break so I had to take initiative myself. I was also sent home for taking a break once. Go figure. If you hate register duty this isn’t the job for you. As soon as they see fit they will train you for register, whether you like it or not. There are a select few who have avoided it, and I surely tried, but it didn’t work for me. I would say it took almost two years of me working there for them to decide I should go on register. When I expressed my disdain before I was trained (due to my horrors on the register in a previous job), the managers explained I would receive more hours if I took initiative to become a cashier. They lied. I still work once a week, guys. And I hate the register. They focus so much on the register that the fitting room and salesfloor can be chaotic enough for customers to not even enter the store. You can have about five or six cashiers and probably two people on the salesfloor trying to maintain the event zone and some parts of women/men, disregarding other parts of the store...and then there are some leads who are either too busy with their task or too lazy to even bother. Then customers complain we don’t have enough people to help them on the salesfloor and that makes the company look bad. It’s just a mess. And don’t get me started on opening/closing. Just hope you don’t get stuck being the only opening cashier or the only closing associate.