Build-A-Bear reviews

-No chance advancement with tons of favoritism coming from upper management and higher ups. I had 2 managers who ignored everyone else who wanted to move up who actually qualified but instead moved up their best friend who was a bear builder even though she was super quiet and showed no leadership whatsoever. DM also favored a girl who had no manager background and only focused on developing her. -if your trying to move up even though you have previous management background that doesn’t mean anything to the management. They’ll hire managers totally new to the company but will make you jump through hoops if your a bear builder with manager experience and claim they can’t promote you without a toolkit it’s ridiculous. - they focus too much on “numbers” they demand you make X much sales in X amount of time. Newsflash not everyone is willing to spend a ton of money on one beer and not everyone has the money to do so. Also they’re too obsessed with the “DPT”s and conversions -they demand that you push on other products if a customer is getting one bear. Like I said, not everyone is willing to spend a bunch of money or has the money to do so the company seems to think that every customer who walks in is made of money. -they also demand you finding out the reason for their visit and being all up in the customers business and getting “personal” with them. Not every customer appreciates having a stranger employee up in their business. -if your hands are full (ex: stocking bear skins and accessories) as SOON as a customer walks in management demands you to go greet them as if your capable of magically teleporting to them without giving you a chance to put down what your doing or get to a stopping point. Uh hello the customer isn’t going anywhere. -and the one con that gets to me the absolutely most is the stupid STUPID “station standards”. Ex: find out their visit for visiting, give a furry friend to hold, ask open ended questions, suggest extra items, offer to order something online when the customer didn’t even ask, push backpacks etc and the list goes on and there’s exactly 48 and most of them are ridiculous and ALL are required otherwise when you get evaluated if you so much as miss 2 of them you “fail short” this became too much for me to handle. Idk why this company can’t just do without all that. -it is a nightmare during Pay your age and holidays -after pay your age the company started doing “pay your age birthday treat bears” you get tons of these a day and your required to grab them a birthday hat and make them a custom sticker each time AND sing the birthday song and it gets very old after a while. -it’s crazy on the weekends and during summer and basically anytime when all kids aren’t in school. -when your a bear builder and you get assigned to first stuffer your stuck on there for hours sometimes even your entire shift and it’s miserable.

Feels like no one listens to new ideas, and corporate is more about how to make the biggest sale vs what the customer wants and their experience there. Even though a sales lead is part of the leadership/management team, benefits were taken away and so where paid days off.