Pros
The managers at this store are amazing. It felt like I was going to work with my friends every day. The Sales Team Manager and Merchandise Manager were particularly supportive every day and take excellent care of everyone working for them. I like the cash incentive for getting store cards. It was often the only way I had gas in my car or food to eat.
Cons
2 weeks in I found out that the job I took because I wanted to work in cosmetics was only half cosmetics and really more of a glorified cashier. Even when working with my clients, I rarely had time to do product education or upsell because there was always a line forming behind them of people with piles of clothes and shoes. My co-worker who started at the same time was amazing but lost her job because of a situation she should never have been put in to begin with. We both got a few hours of training, trained on the register and within a week were on the floor together without supervision unless we called a manager for help. A simple mistake that would never have happened if someone with experience had been present turned into her getting fired under suspicion of stealing. They're so understaffed it's insane. I started having anxiety attacks a few months in because I was so stressed out trying to do the work of 3-5 people every day. We got an hour for lunch but no breaks. If you have to go to the bathroom, you have to call a manager to cover you and wait for them to get there. One of my co-workers regularly almost doesn't make it. It doesn't help that the restrooms are clear on the other side of the store so if you have an emergency, you better hope you can walk the 2 minutes over there once a manager finally arrives. On the rare occasion we scheduled makeovers or tutorials, we always had to warn the client that we would be interrupted and have to go check someone out... usually because that someone just didn't feel like waiting in line in the department where they were shopping. I called in often because the job made me sick but even just calling in was stressful because I knew they didn't have anyone to cover me. We had 4 full time and 2 part time beauty advisors but rarely scheduled at the same time and the part timers usually got sent to another department which meant they were only making their base pay as commissioned employees. We only made commission on Clinique and Estee Lauder. Nothing on fragrance or any of the other brands, nothing if someone ordered online. I averaged $3 per hour less if I was pulled out of my department and sent to run a register in the women's clothing department. The discounts. So many discounts. It was too much. Customers regularly got confused, Belk rarely sells anything at full price outside of beauty. If Belk would do half as many discounts, they might be able to afford to hire more people and pay us better. The pre-sale method makes sense to me, but we had customers regularly tell us how much they hated it. This is not exclusive to Belk, but even as one of the higher paid employees, it was still cheaper for me to live an hour away. I could not even begin to afford a cheap apartment in the city where I worked. They offered benefits, but I couldn't have a single penny taken out of my check so as desperately as I needed health insurance, I couldn't afford to not eat. The store is dirty because no one has time to clean. We're too busy frantically ringing people up.
