Numerous...
• Multinational billion dollar company cannot afford to give boutiques decent hours. I cringe to think some people try to make a living wage off this brand.
• Boutiques are isolated and run like franchises.
• Too much cliquey sorority girl behavior. Too much focus placed on how well a person ‘fits in’ with the team versus how well they contribute as an individual. It felt more like a club than a business. Zero standards for employee conduct meant having to deal with peers who had no personal integrity. Many managers displayed little sense of morals or compassion for employees and visibly discriminated against certain individuals because there are very few consequences for mental and emotional abuse.
• Shady business practices. Saw individuals giving away expensive product and discounts to friends and family because they had the power to do so. High conversions did not match total # of tickets so who knows what was going on with VIP. Customers were discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity and how much they spent. Samples would not be given to certain customers while others would get tons and tons of free product (which is why we never had samples).
• Unrealistic expectations of how much employees can give to the job. What I mean is, if you’re not devoted to the brand, you can’t expect to keep your job. A lot of people just seem to give up on their careers as they don’t want you to have a second job, a family, or pursue a degree. It’s shunned. They literally demand that this retail job be the centre focus of your life.
• Poor training and tons of micromanagement - get used to reading the manuals and figuring things out the hard way. When you need help no one is around to assist you but everyone will be breathing down your neck when everything is fine. Every little thing you do gets criticized even if it’s something insignificant like the way you handed a receipt back to a customer.
• Bullying. Upper management needs to train retail workers on how to deal effectively with conflict or differences in personality and culture. Isolating associates, ignoring those they don’t like, belittling and other childish and petty behaviors should NOT be tolerated whatsoever but it is clear that this sort of immaturity is encouraged. There is no need to hurt someone emotionally just because they don’t conform to some arbitrary ideal in the eyes of those in power.
• Conservatism bordering on discrimination. There were big red X’s in the dress code policy on wearing Afros, dreadlocks, headscarves, and other forms of cultural self expression.
• PROSPERITY motto was not followed. Apparently being a poorly trained sales associate aka Beauty Advisor is empowering women. The company has the audacity to portray its culture as liberal and feminist when most of the women are the lowest paid, expendable employees.
