francesca's reviews

You are way underpaid for the work that you do and the hours you put in. Minimum 42 hour work week but you will be lucky to end a week under 50 hours or more. I know assistant managers they make about 20% more salary than I did and get to have a work life balance, so don’t expect to have spending money after your bills are hopefully paid. They will blame you for your lack of work life balance even though you are required to work unfilled shifts and work 6 days a week through holiday season, again, bringing home no incentive after doing so. Your DM has to interview EVERY person you want to hire even if it’s a stylist. It takes weeks to hire anyone and it seems to overload the DM having to do these interviews for X amount of boutiques. It’s a waste of time and with the amount of turnover we have, they should be only interviewing leadership roles. The health insurance is a complete joke and you could get way better coverage for the same price if you sign up for individual premium without an employer. Seriously. Almost everyone in the district is quietly miserable and waiting for an opportunity to quit. “The Promise” is good in theory, but 80% of guest realize you’re being generic and they feel it’s not genuine because you’re expected to do the same script every time. It does get robotic and when we try new tactics to make the guest feel genuine, your DM will coach you back to the uncomfortable script.

The pay is not at all competitive. I received little to no training and had to learn through trial and error. I was never even given a copy of the employee handbook! The dress code here is patronizing, to say the least (really? Women are REQUIRED to wear makeup to look "put together"?) and confusing...we are not allowed to have facial piercings, despite the fact that many of our customers have them and nose rings are currently trendy. Tattoos are okay, facial piercings are not. We definitely cater to and try to attract tiny women, our store will receive 4 small shirts, 2 mediums and only 1 large. I am a size 6 but cannot fit into any of our skirts or pants. I have found that the allocated hours and payroll leads to an extremely overwhelming amount of work placed on each manager, but I only make a dollar more per hour than a regular associate. There are no benefits to key holders when we make day/stretch/KPI goals so after awhile it's hard to care. Extremely high turnover rates, our DM, BM, ABM, 2 Key Holders (myself included) and 4 out of our 6 Associates have all been with Francesca's for less than 4 months so our store essentially experienced a complete turnover, our district as a whole is extremely short staffed and has insanely high turnover. I am frequently asked (or begged) to go help other stores in our district that are short staffed because of our insane turnover but was never thanked, paid extra, or even bought a coffee. Although it's illegal, I have worked 8 hour shifts without a break because I was alone and not allowed to leave the sales floor, which made me feel uneasy, what if I hurt myself on a ladder, a customer got violent, etc.? Francesca's only pays you the federal minimum for any trip expenses, and even then, only for the amount of miles you drove MINUS the amount of miles you normally drive to your home store. I watch upper management from this company abuse their power on a weekly basis. I have been with Francesca's for 6 months as a Key Holder and still do not know the company policies or visual standards. Every shift I walk in with a positive attitude, ready to work hard and every shift I walk out discouraged that I couldn't finish my task and dreading coming in next because I'll be reprimanded. I have never seen a company so bad at training and I have never felt so ill-prepared for a simple retail job. Extremely high expectations for extremely low pay, what I make as a manager is minimum wage in the nearest big city and even MORE offensive, our ABM (who does all the same work as our BM) only $1 more an hour than I do! The Francesca's Promise, though a step in the right direction, is overly pushy and customers don't like it. YOU CANNOT SCRIPT CUSTOMER SERVICE. All the best like Target, Nordstrom, Gap, etc. know this and will openly say in their EXTENSIVE training "be yourself, use these key ideas, don't act scripted because it feels insincere". Our store has a tiny amount of square footage yet receives an extremely high volume of shipment so our back room is terrifyingly crammed at all times and honestly a complete hazard, I often have to spend 5 minutes moving boxes of shipment and racks of clothes out of the way before I can reach the bathroom. I am counting down the days until I find a better job and resign from my position.