Pros
My first job and despite not having previous experience they still took me on. A good thing about them is they are understanding that not everyone has had work experience and everyone needs a starting point. I met some lovely people who I hope I'll remain close with. I got on very well with the store manager most of the time. Working for Build A Bear looks good on a CV.
Cons
Unfortunately, the job became far too demanding. I had to use what they call 5 key drivers, in other words bomb barding customers with questions which a lot of them didn't like. I had customers walk straight back out the store because I started talking to them. Apparently the reason for bringing in the key drivers was to help the company financially, well I can safely say it will be the downfall if anything. One thing that really annoyed me was when there was 2 supervisor's and me in the store only, I was expected to talk to all the customer's that came in the store and they wouldn't do it themselves most of the time even when they were a lot closer to the customer's than I was. Doing the key drivers should be a team effort not just making a colleague do it all just because they're below you. I would get asked to do something like fill up some stock for example and then I'd get in bother for not greeting a customer when I hadn't even noticed a customer had walked in because I was concentrating on what I'd been asked to do 30 seconds prior. We had a new supervisor start working at our store and he literally came in thinking he owned the place. And then a lot of the times I was left on the stuffing machine for 2 or 3 hours and it just gets too frustrating. A colleague who worked there since the store first opened thought she was a manager just because she had been there since it first opened when really she was just a manipulative cow. So yeah, I would not recommend working for Build A Bear. It has some positives but too many negatives. I can handle a demanding job but at Build A Bear it's beyond a joke. I was hoping to move up to Supervisor but unfortunately the sales and smiles made that impossible because if I missed one customer all because I was just pre occupied doing something that a member of management had asked me to do I'd fail a sales and smiles. It's like being back at school again.
