Where do I begin? Lies, retaliation and false promises. Your experience will vary district to district, store to store, but as a company- the disconnect is REAL.
They do an annual culture survey because they've been sued so many times and don't want to make the same mistakes. The results of the survey vs what actually changes prove that nothing is taken in to account, except when it's to cover their own mistakes or give a better public image. Example: store management structure changed in 2017 to that Prestige Managers were given store keys and opening/closing capabilities. GM's were told of this at the annual conference in a "WOO! WE'RE DOING THIS FOR YOU GUYS TO RUN YOUR STORES BETTER!" mentality. Well, this was actually because of the multi-million dollar class-action lawsuit in CA the year prior for lack of overtime pay/running the stores with barely enough personnel to function...look it up!
The salon is a joke and I felt bad hiring designers promising them "commission" when they could barely get guests in the chair. Answering phones, getting asked questions by random people desperate for an employee on the floor, etc. GM's are responsible for hiring stylists without ever knowing about hair, what makes a good stylist etc. Don't count on your salon manager for doing so because they're expected to take on clients while short staffed and also magically supposed to pull recruits out of thin air.
General Managers have 0 work life balance: opening at 7AM when you closed til 11PM the night before. Hiring round after round of managers after they were either burnt out, underpaid or saw the light with the false promises of "growth"
Closing managers responsible for every inch of a 10,000+ sq. ft. location and expected to run a business with ONE cashier and a closing manager. Talk about SAFTEY ISSUE! I've encountered more employee's at a hot dog stand.
Truck process and operations are an absolute abomination. You get mixed product sent in the wrong week (example: a specific sample product for a promotion is shipped amongst your regular products, without labeling or a heads up as to what it is...countless times we'd have to tell guests we "didn't have" Gifts with purchase, samples or birthday gifts because of the lack of communication, organization etc.) Trucks show up late, inappropriate drivers (actually had a drunk one once and nothing happened), damaged product, etc. and its your problem to deal with and you get NO additional hours to support hiccups. Example: oh your delivery truck came 3 hours late? You had 6 employees clocked in? Send them home and tell them they HAVE to come back at night to process it. This happened on a WEEKLY basis and complaints were ignored.
Customer checkout is usually performed by managers because apparently corporate thinks just above 300 hours is enough to staff a store open-close AND accomplish operations tasks before store hours for entire store staff including managers. Most days as a GM I was a cashier.
Loss prevention is a blame game on store associates...I was on countless occurrences asked by my superiors to "really check through the damages" to ensure things were used and to "save what I could" aka put used product back if it didn't look bad. If you accepted too many returns, your performance reviews and bonuses suffered so of course you put back damaged product while questioning at your morals.
Oh, the bonuses...I embarrassingly had to hand out bonus checks for under $100 to managers who just made the company over $500k in a quarter. Nothing for any other store associates. Wow!!! What a winning culture!
I could keep going but the anxiety I feel when I talk about the absolute worst job I ever had makes me cringe to this day. If you fall for the lies, expect to be trapped in an endless cycle of "promotions" when you're really in a company with vicious turnover trying to cover up the holes.
