Pros
Over my tenure I met many great people at various stages in their lives. For most of the time I had a flexible schedule with a lot of vacation time. It was fairly easy to rise the ranks from the very bottom.
Cons
The primary drawbacks to working at the Gap are: working in a confused retail environment, participating in the archaic practice of selling high interest credit cards and, working alongside immature and underdeveloped management. The Gap is closing because it can't figure out how to make margin on any of it's products. It is out of touch with it's image, it's legacy and customers. Everyday management is forced to tell associates that five to ten different promotions are occurring. On top of this, whenever the promotions fail, which is often, managers are forced to scrap all of their merchandising work and reset the new promotions with less than 24 hours notice. In turn, employees schedules change constantly. This is not a job for someone with any kind of commitments outside of work! The shuffle often makes it difficult to manage payroll and diminishes employee satisfaction. Confusing messages and changing promotions result in tons of product left over. Often product wastes away in the stock room until it reaches final markdowns months, seasons later. Then it sells with an additional percentage off, so the average retail price for any given thing is $10 or less. The payroll model for operating Gap stores is ridiculous. Often even large stores demand that one or two employees man the entire sales floor. The service expectation is extremely high, but customers rarely experience this because associates are torn between cashiering, running the fitting rooms, answering the phone etc. etc. A huge component of working for Gap is selling the brand credit card. Once a driving force for a company that reached it's peak in a different era, the credit card is now an awkward add on. Associates and management are forced to push the card down people's throats. The culture on the store level is "do whatever you need to do to get a card." Then at some point, someone gets in trouble for "discount abuse" because they offered too much in order to get someone to sign up for a card. The card itself is a fine card, and is a good option for people who shop there regularly, but the insanely high goals require associates to bully customers into either saying yes or never coming back. The card should have more diverse options, like debit, or be a less important metric. Newer generations are terrified of credit cards, and they feel more and more alienated by brands that rely on them to keep their customers coming back. By far the worst part of working at the Gap is the management. I have had outstanding managers who truly supported me and developed me, but those were the exception, not the rule. Most of the managers I have worked with started as associates, became supervisors, then managers, then general managers even. I noted this as a pro because for some people it was the leg up they needed to get supervisor experience. Overall though, what happened though was that associates with very little professional experience became managers. They carried with them the unprofessional behavior, stereotypes, and judgments that young teenagers have when they first start with the company. As a manager, you have the power to dramatically influence an associates life. Whether that is in their actual shift experience, or because you write their schedule, you control their primary time commitment, around which they coordinate the rest of their lives. Managers who don't have the sensitivity to this, who aren't exposed to social, psychological or HR training, end up solely driving business. This is 90% of managers I've encountered at the Gap. Furthermore, they are quick to judge employee motivation. For instance, I was once in a management meeting where they were discussing a particular employees performance. The employee was still showing up, and performing decently, but his enthusiasm had gone down in recent weeks. One manager suggested very seriously to the room that this was because said employee was a huge pothead and had suffered brain damage from chronic marijuana use. Not only is this scientifically inaccurate, but there was absolutely no evidence to suggest that this individual was under the influence. Yet there is was, a potentially reputation damaging blanket statement to the entire management team with no evidence. In addition, the real problem was the lack of compassion for a kid who was working three jobs and going to school while supporting his family. Managers are bad to each other too. The Gap is a constant blame pass off. New managers come in and instead of building on their predecessor, they find one mistake and trash their reputation. As such, individuals rarely take accountability for their own actions. Never have I been so underwhelmed with humanity as seeing my most recent boss suggest that her predecessor was a bad leader, but then use gossip about her personal life as proof that she couldn't do her job. Worst yet, is that higher management in corporate positions celebrate lip service. They truly fall for crap excuses as long as they are delivered in monologues.
