At Home reviews

There are so many I don't even know where to start but I will try. They are an extremely reactive company instead of being proactive. One example was they once took in some counterfeit $100's. Probably because they wouldn't keep the counterfeit pens properly supplied. Their solution was to just make a new company policy to no longer accept $100 bills. You can only imagine how that went over. A retail company refusing USA legal tender, cash. Then the policy quickly changed to having to page a manager to come look at the $100 to approve the sale. Since they got rid of the front end manager position the response had to come from whoever was running the store at the time who was usually always on the other side of the 110,000 sp ft store. Imagine the wait. Since the store was always run understaffed customer service was non existant. I came from 15 years of the customer is number one culture so it was heartbreaking to me to have to short answer or even avoid customers because even as a manager you were doing the exact same work as everyone else and if it didn't get done it was your job. There were so many disenfranchised employees that their work was sloppy so you as the manager had to do yours and fix theirs or it was your job. There was never any time to actually be a true manager and mentor and motivate your crew because there was too much to do and never enough people to get it done. I know that sounds like just a normal retail complaint but when you only have 5 people including yourself to get the 110k sp ft store zoned that is a legitimate one. They have the return policy written in such a way that makes almost all sales final. It would actually be better and clearer if the customers understood that. Instead if the item had been used they won't take it back. Now take that to the extreme as in someone just took the protective brown paper off of a lawn chair and didn't even make a mark on it it was "obviously used". Usually when someone at any other retail store would talk to a manager to try to resolve this they got the same answer because if you made an exception it was your job. If they wanted to push the issue we gave them the corporate number but still refused the return. If they demanded anything else we would tell them they had to leave. If they refused we were to call the police. I personally called them several times to remove customers however most left once they realized we really called the police. Now that they left they would call the corporate number that didn't give you any options to speak to a human except to give you an email address. The emails were never read. It's designed to avoid having to answer the the "boss" the customer. Now here is the rub. If some how someone figured out by superior detective work or expert hacking and got a hold of Tina's (EVP) email address and sent a scathing complaint then you would be in trouble and could possible be fired for following the policy that she wrote. People didn't often figure that out but in a couple years it happened a few times. The tardiness / attendance policy was so strict that we lost really good people for the dumbest reasons. The time clock was never wrong. I am big about being on time but I do know that sometimes things happen even when you leave extra early to be on time. They removed the ability to "excuse" tardies from us and just went by the clock. Period. It was too inflexible to keep good people or just even people. Turn over was unbelievable. I liken it to Vietnam when you don't learn the replacements names because there were times when I didn't even get to know someone's name before they were fired. The way they merchandised mirrors they would get too top heavy and at least twice a week DOZENS of mirrors at a time would topple and fall to the floor with glass flying everywhere. It was a miracle there wasn't a serious injury or death of a child walking next mom and having all those fall on the cutting them to pieces. Not to mention the hundreds of dollars of damages that just went right in the dumpster with all the other "damages". I came up with a solution that would prevent the mirrors from falling but was told not to mess with it because it would impact how many mirrors could be put on the shelf so it would impact the buyers job. Don't worry about it. Don't implement my idea and just get back to working freight with everyone else. Now take those few examples and multiply it by all the hundreds of details that it takes to run a right store and keep putting up road blocks in front of them. It would be so easy for someone with the money to put the exact same business across the street from every Garden Ridge and ran it with people that really knew retail and truly believed in customer service they would go under so fast. I am truly amazed they are still open.