Old Navy reviews

I worked at Old Navy for 15 years. Started as a seasonal associate and worked my way up to a General Manager. When I first started as a General Manager the job was exciting and fun. Over the years it has gotten worse and worse. Expectations are absolutely impossible given the payroll model and the sad thing is that the upper field knows it. You are chasing a million metrics which makes it impossible to ever feel successful in your role. Leadership structure inside of stores is not updated to fit the current needs of the business. If you happen to work in a market where upper field lives then don't ever expect to know what the current priority is because everyone has a different opinion on what's important. Leaders are not given time to do their actual roles and instead spend a majority of the day putting out fires (recovering, fitting room, registers, shipment, etc..) due to lack of payroll to schedule associates. Omni is a great tool to drive business but again it's another metric to chase. Your associates/leaders will spend all day chasing Omni with no time to provide real costumer service to people actually in the building. The company brags about being named a "great place to work" and I would say it is UNLESS you are a General Manager. Just filter the reviews on Glassdoor for General Manager and you will see the 2.5 stars that are given by this group. Career growth is available but frankly assistant managers don't want to become GMs because they see how terrible the job is. I would highly recommend that you do a lot of research on the company before accepting an offer. I spent 15 years with the company, had multiple promotions, increased sales in buildings by millions of dollars, and when it was all said and done barely got a goodbye from the company. At the end of the day they only want money and whatever it takes to get it. You will hear it on conference calls with the upper field, at leadership conferences, etc.. they will spend hours talking about how much money we are going to make and how we are going to crush the competition and how all these initiatives are going to make more money and we should feel so excited!! But the reality at the end of the day is that they forget about the leaders that are running these buildings. They are completely out of touch with the reality that GMs are living in.

*Location between SF Giants stadium and new SF Warriors stadium is the absolute worst. Traffic getting to and from work is a little piece of hell. One road in, one road out. Public transportation is lacking. *Your opinion is not wanted or valued by upper management. Zip the lip and follow the leader du jour in their latest pursuit. Upper management is completely driven by the almighty dollar. I guess that's no surprise, considering the size of the company. *So many layers of management. Be prepared to spend a majority of your time in meetings and very little time to actually get your work done. So much process. Your work will be judged and reviewed and re-worked by so many different layers of mgmt. Nothing ever makes it to the store as originally designed. Everything is designed by committee, often delivering less than favorable results. *Throw away fashion. Not environmentally friendly. Cheap fabrics. Gross over sampling that goes straight to landfill. They have recently taken small steps to improve, but it's not enough. Need to make sustainability a priority. * Definitely a youth culture. Older employees, as in many fashion companies, are not valued for their knowledge, skill and loyalty. They are sidelined and weeded out. They prefer young, single people without families, they can work to death. *Very little opportunity to work from home or tele-commute, which is archaic. They want you in the office (design department specific). Not sure about other departments. *Not flexible with work hours if you're a parent. Need to get with the times, especially given Bay Area traffic and most families having two working parents.