Do it for the discount if you must, but only until you can find somewhere else better.
Pros
Generous discount. 40% off full retail price, 1 electric per month. Relaxed dress code. Great clientele. Free coffee from the Jura and Nespresso machines. Now and then there are snacks to sample in the back if not on the floor.
Cons
• Benefits begin and end with the discount. • I have worked for Sur La Table since May 2011, as both a culinary assistant and a sales coworker, and have never received any kind of training, orientation, or even employee handbook. • When I transferred to the sales floor two months ago, the store manager informed me that pay starts at $10 hourly. I've been making $9.50 ever since. • Very little opportunity for advancement. • With a few exceptions, unhelpful if not combative management team. • Management largely incapable of thinking for themselves. Unless it's on a spreadsheet, it doesn't exist. • Require full-time availability, but most weeks only give 4-8 hours per coworker. I thought this was a store policy (a previous store manager was fired because the staff incurred too many meal break penalties) until reading the other reviews on this site. • Weekly schedules are made on Monday, based on sales and forecasts, and must be approved by district manager and not issued until Wednesday. Schedules are seemingly revised at will—last week I was told an hour before my shift that I had been called off because numbers had not been met. • Was told that I could not have my schedule e-mailed to me, as it constitutes working from home—even though other jobs in the past have done this. Have yet to find a state or federal law that supports this. • Most shifts last only 4 hours. My store is located in a premium shopping center in a busy part of town where street parking is difficult to find. Arriving to work requires on average an hour in drive and parking time, or spending $9 at the mall parking garage to work 4 hours at $9.50 per hour. • Never seen a major chain retailer so poorly organized. My store employs a full-time stockroom manager as well as a full-time merchandising manager, yet the stockroom always looks like a bomb went off. Inventory is stashed wherever there is room on the floor with no rhyme or reason. I can't begin to count the number of items that are not priced. As a result, countless man hours in productivity and sales are lost every day because we can't find the product within our four walls, or spend peak time horsing around between the company site and the archaic POS system looking for prices on items.
