Forever 21 reviews

3.2

47% would recommend to a friend

(8,778 total reviews)
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Winnie Park

47% approve of CEO

29% positive business outlook

Forever 21 has an employee rating of 3.2 out of 5 stars, based on 8,778 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Forever 21 employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Ventas al mayoreo y al menudeo industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

9K reviews
2.0
Jun 12, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You have the ability to truly learn what it's like to work extremely hard and take that same drive onto another organization and succeed. Most former employees that I know go out and grind so hard, because they never want to go back.

Cons

The organization is not a well oiled machine from any level. Due to its family-ran structure, Forever 21, often drops the ball on several standards, utilizes old technology and has no official communication structure. Imagine being in a mall full of 5000 people, all different stores and shops – customers and workers alike. Now imagine none of these people know each other, or know a way to successfully connect. That's Forever 21. But most importantly, the biggest con is the pay. There is no official compensation scale or metric. So if you Manager wants to pay you $20,000 annually and the next person $60,000 annually for the same job, they can and will and there's nothing anyone can say about it. As a matter of fact, there is no notification to alert anyone that they did.

1.0
Mar 31, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The casual dress code was nice. On-site cafeteria is decent and well-priced. Shuttle service to Union Station for commuters by train.

Cons

Environment is toxic and chaotic at F21, mostly thanks to executive management. Management has absolutely no strategy and is (frankly) clueless about how to deal with the changing retail landscape. As a result, they send haphazard requests with unrealistic deadlines to lower-level employees, which causes confusion and chaos (I’ve seen people running to meetings... literally running). Instead of providing direction to employees, management sets unrealistic targets that no one believes can be met, and then blames mid- to lower-level management when those targets aren’t achieved. As a result, employee morale is in the toilet, resulting in high turnover. Because of this high turnover, virtually no policies and procedures exist outside HR (no one ever thinks to write them down). This, in turn, leads to poor operations at F21: critical tasks routinely fall through the cracks and the company doesn’t learn from past mistakes. And because fact-based analyses are not encouraged, everyone routinely argues over what the root cause of operational problems are. Blame is easily thrown around, and yet there is no accountability because everyone can mention the excuse “well this is how we operate here”, or “our company is so disorganized”. And let’s not forget the waste at F21: not so much wasted $, but wasted time, wasted analyses, and wasted energy that comes with working for a sclerotic company. This is compounded by the fact that management has refused to invest in modern systems, which bogs down the most routine analyses. The job presented to me during my interview was totally misrepresented. My role ended up changing on Day 1 without notifying me beforehand. Needless to say, I would not have taken the job had they been truthful to me during my interview. BEWARE OF BAIT-AND-SWITCH!

1.0
Nov 7, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Cheap food at onsite cafeteria.

Cons

Unqualified managers, extreme red-tape, no one knows what they are doing and errors are slipped under the table, it is an extremely unethical company full of unqualified candidates due very low-pay. Racial discrimination,if your not Korean you are screwed. Horrible PTO only 10 days off, and 6 holidays. Needs to go through several levels of approval for minuscule things. Extremely unorganized company.

Viewing 43 - 45 of 8,778 Reviews

Glassdoor has 9,474 Forever 21 reviews submitted anonymously by Forever 21 employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Forever 21 is right for you.