Pros
The only pros I can think of after spending years and years bending over backwards for this company is management experience, the amazing team I had, and the amazing guests I had. The 50% discount was nice too.
Cons
There are so many cons I can list about this company that I could write a full novel. But I'll list a few. Unethical, uninspiring, zero growth, negativity I worked for the company on and off from 2009-2012. And again from 2013 to 2/21/2017. I was an assistant manager and in 2015 we didn't have a manager from September until December. During those months without a manager, I ran the store by myself without much training as I had just got promoted to ASM. I had promises to be trained by my DM to no avail. And then I would get in trouble for anything that went wrong even though I didn't know exactly what I was doing. There was never any positive feedback ever. I would get behind on shipment after shipment because I was told that only managers can count the shipment in. And during the busy season, our shipments were huge and I couldn't tackle them on my own. The DM barely came to help and I fell far behind. We finally got a manager in the middle of the busiest month of the year. And things went well after that, though, I still never got properly trained on my management position because the DM kept telling the manager to wait to train me. I learned mostly by watching or having to just figure it out on my own or learn by taking steps over the phone. Eventually, in September of 2016, the new manager quit.... leaving me on my own again to run the store. The "highest volume" store in the district I might add. Being an assistant manager I was in the store full time. And school full time. I was also the only person there full time as everyone else on the team had little availability. I ran the store as a store manager and as an assistant but i didn't get paid the store manager salary. I got paid an extra $50 for doing EVERYTHING by myself. I bent over backwards trying to meet the expectations that was expected of me. I pushed the sales as hard as I could because the company only cares about sales and nothing else. ....I still never got properly trained as an Assistant Manager taking on the role of a store manager while the company slowly looked for an actual store manager. The DM made many promises to come train me on everything and to help me. But instead when the DM came she only created tension among the team and scared guests away and made big messes like trying to "flip" the entire store. Literally moving everything that was on one side of the store and moving it to the other... creating a chaotic mess that she just left for the staff to clean up which took over a week and confused guests. And I'm not talking about a visual update. Literally flipped the entire store. The purpose was that it would make us more sales. It actually just made the store a complete wreck and guests couldn't find anything and it made it impossible to do certain visual updates because the walls were wrong for the specific product. Panels would break because of the items that had to be placed on them. If the store would have never got switched around like that... panels would not have broken. The DM was completely uninspiring and made everyone uncomfortable including guests. I've had many complaints by guests saying she made them uncomfortable by her eager behavior to sell any item to them even if they were clearly uninterested in the item. The DM actually interrupted an in depth conversation I was having with a guest about one of our products to try to sell them a tote bag. An item that the guest wasn't even interested in at that moment. The guest was uncomfortable and left quickly after and made a remark about how rude it was for her to have interrupted us like that. Countless times I would try to talk to my DM about anything store related and she'd just ignore me while looking at her phone and then respond with something irrelevant. And she argued with me about anything. I could have suggested that the sky was blue and she'd argue with me about that! I learned nothing from her! She still never trained me on the manager handbook after I asked multiple times so that I could know for certain that I was running the store properly... since we DIDN'T HAVE A MANAGER. She would drain the team and make everybody hate their lives while she was there. So, yesterday she fired me! Because I had too many write ups. In four years I had 3 write ups! But no one could ever tell me good job for running that big store literally by yourself because you are one person running the store. One person. NO manager. No assistant. Thats because I was both the manager and the assistant. And I was the ONLY full time person running an entire store. ...I asked her if I could see my file so that I could review all of my write ups and she said that she didn't have my file. That it was in her office in another state! My file was not locked away in the filing cabinet in the office of the store that I worked at. It was in her office in another state! So, she drove all the way up here to terminate me and failed to bring my file to show me all of my write ups? That seems a little messed up to me. ...Also, she told me my last write up was due to a bad attitude. Well, that particular day was when we had a manager and I was literally having a panic/anxiety attack and I seriously needed to go home but they wouldn't let me take sick time or just let me go, so I had a full blown panic attack in the backroom which resulted in my "final" write up and that if I got written up anytime after that it could lead to termination. I really feel like I shouldn't have got written up for having a panic attack when I calmly requested that I be allowed to go home due to the severity of what was happening to me. After working there for four years and running the store twice for MONTHS AND MONTHS and leaving school for the company, putting the company before family, purposely scheduling myself VERY early morning classes twice a week just so that I could be at the store as much as humanly possible, sacrificing so much of myself and working very hard to run the store by myself and create the perfect team of happy positive fun loving and guest loving people... I just get terminated... because of too many write ups. But the DM failed to bring my file? I feel that I was treated unfairly multiple times and I was taken advantage of for months without the adequate help and training. I guess maybe I wasn't properly trained and helped by the DM because the DM herself didn't even know how to ring up gift cards without asking the help of a sales associate. Countless times we would have to teach the DM how to do such small things like print tags or even ring up an employee. So, it's no wonder I never received help from my DM while I was running the store. I also tried getting promoted multiple times so that we could have a full team. I knew the store like the back of my hand and I had a name to name basis with many of our guests that we turned into great friends. So, getting promoted in this company is a major challenge. If you can force guests to spend their money even if they have no money then maybe you'll get promoted. I requested my files and an exit interview with HR. As of yesterday, the store still does not have a manager. I ran the store without adequate pay for a total of 9 months all together. And without an assistant.
