J. Crew Visual Merchandiser interview questions

I had one video interview for the visual merchandiser position. They did all the scheduling over the phone and it was a bit disorganized; I called and set up an interview time but never received a Zoom link so I called them the day before to make sure everything was set. It turns out they hadn't scheduled me correctly so if I hadn't called I wouldn't have been able to interview. I still didn't receive a link until directly before the interview; it all worked out but a confirmation email for the interviewee's peace of mind would be nice. Anyway, the interview itself was very straightforward and normal for a retail position, and the manager who interviewed me was kind and easy to talk to. I did think that the visual merchandiser would get to use their creativity to create window displays and decide which product would go where, but the interview made it clear that it's mostly a manual job where corporate tells you what to put up and you just execute someone else's vision. They also said that this position was only part time and that to get closer to full time I would have to also be a regular sales associate, and even then I would only be able to get 30 hours/week at the most. The weirdest part was when we talked about pay. She asked how much I was hoping to make, and I said $18/hour. She responded, "I'm not saying you can't get to $18, because you definitely can eventually. But $18 is the highest we pay our sales associates, so if I start you at $18, you have nowhere to go from there, you know? Like everybody else will get periodic raises and you wouldn't be able to get one, which would feel bad. So we'd start you at $17 so you can get raises from there." It's totally understandable to me that you wouldn't start a new associate out at the highest pay rate, but to try and phrase it in such a way that it seems like you're doing me a huge favor by paying me less was so strange, and it made me feel like this was going to be a place where there was a lot of corporate double-speak and where I couldn't trust the managers to just tell me the truth. Ultimately it wasn't what I was looking for, it would probably be fine if you're just looking for any old retail job, but it definitely seems like it's just as bad as any other corporate retail environment.