Really lengthy interview process with a lot of redundant questions asking the same thing and they make you do a background check which is not the industry standard for retail. The in person interview took an hour after a half hour long phone screening. Typical questions but I feel like they ask you about your previous job in a way to sniff out if you let upper management know when there are issues at the store, like asking about a time when you had difficulty with your manager/boss and what you did about it. It was a weird interview question.
The benefits package is one of the worst I’ve ever encountered. Low pay, no PTO (you need to accrue it which takes a very long time), no sick time (same thing it’s accrued and caps out at 5 days for the whole year), no taking time off between Thanksgiving and New Years, no 401K until you’ve worked there for a year, and no health insurance eligibility until 90 days of employment which is literally the maximum amount of time legally that an employer can make you wait under the Affordable Care Act. It was bare bones benefits not offset by competitive pay or anything that would be helpful with managing the lower pay, like tuition reimbursement or a higher employee discount - which is SHOCKINGLY low for retail. I think the average discount is at least 50% off these days, and they only offer 20% and then an extra 20 at the end of the month. It seemed to me like the company is cheap and doesn’t believe in offering a good benefits package or incentives or employees. The benefits package may have been fine for someone’s first full time job or a younger person still on their parent’s health insurance probably.
The dress code is also really out of touch. It’s basically a public school handbook dress code. You can only wear sneakers that they sell in the store (again you’re only getting those at 20% off which can be very expensive for some people.) It felt like the company only wanted a certain “look” for their employees which made me feel icky.
I was told the job is commissions based and there are personal reviews. I get that commissions can work sometimes, but it’s really hard to be part of a team and support each other when you’re competing for sales and customers to keep your job and get good performance reviews.
I didn’t have a good feeling about it. There was nothing about the position that seemed enticing except for the fact I was assured that it would be easy work. The people I interacted with were friendly and sweet but the company seems out of touch with the retail industry and is operating the way retail worked 30 years ago. Better pay, better benefits, and I would probably be okay with the strict dress code and commissions based environment. Take care of your employees and they take care of you!
I was also told their customer service policy is that the customer is always right and that seems like a recipe for creating entitled customers for the store to deal with. Retail employees want to go home with their dignity intact and asking them to basically let the customers do whatever they want in regards to returns and things of that nature is kind of crazy. Why even have a policy if customers don’t need to follow it?
Training is really important to me and when I asked about what training looked like it was basically “oh you just shadow someone for a while and learn it that way.”
My interview was pleasant and professional but the job itself was not my cup of tea. Turned the job down very politely and thanked the manager for their time and did not hear anything after that.
