Pros
The customers are the best. The products are fun and you get new merchandise everyday. The in store music is a million times better than any other store I've worked at. I have enjoyed every one of my co workers in the store and each of the gals I have met from nearby locations. There is a lot of freedom when it comes to visual merchandising so work can be a great creative outlet at times. There are no personal goals so it is nice to not feel like you are competing for each sale. The company has so much potential to be exactly the kind of place that great retail professionals want to work.
Cons
The pay isn't great. For the amount of work that is expected it is much lower than comparable stores. It doesn't help that the discount is only ok... and it seems unfair that the boutique manager gets 50% when everyone else only gets 30%. The regional manager is totally out of touch. There have been numerous occasions where we have been told to do things one way by her only to find out that it really should be done completely different... all the while she never speaks up to say that she was the one who told us to do it the wrong way so the store takes the blame. Although each store is set up with a staff email and a manager email the regional manager will not respond to the staff email even if it was the staff that made an attempt to contact her not the manager. It can be frustrating to feel like the boutique manager is the only store employee she cares about. The regional manager also made the bonus program sound much better than it actually is during my interview. Not that it matters since the company tends to make the goals ridiculously unattainable most of the time. Upper management seems to only be interested in training boutique managers and will let major mistakes made by them totally slide while firing associates or cutting their hours so they quit for minor flubs. I would say that upper management doesn't listen but really they don't give employees any opportunity to give feedback at all.
