NEVER HAVE SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT! Would make a great Lifetime Movie! - Assistant Buyer Bed Bath & Beyond Employee Review

CONS: Please note….yes this stuff does happen at other companies, but this has been the worst I have ever seen. • Work Life Balance: IT IS FROWNED UPON. There is no work life balance at this company. It is known around the building that you get promoted when you show face and stay late. An executive of the company actually told me this. You are not given a laptop and cannot work from home. • Holiday Season: The holiday party is laughable. At 2pm, the holiday music is pumped throughout the office, the pre-packaged room temperature food comes out, and employees walk around the office and eat in conference rooms. Executives walk around the building to make sure people are mingling with others outside of their own departments. You are REQUIRED to work at least 2 days in a store during the holiday season which is torture. A plethora of customers come towards you asking where items are, and the items are difficult to locate. The store employees of the store clearly see the corporate office employees a disturbance and a nuisance, and it’s very stressful and discouraging. You do get a comp day if you work on a Saturday in the store. • Executives: I think there is only one or 2 executives in this building who are friendly. There are a couple of executives who walk around flirting with the young pretty girls which is gross and obvious. For the most part, you are consistently watched and evaluated. Another executive sits in his office watching employees come into work. If you’re 15 minutes late to work when there is 8 inches of snow on the ground, you better have a good reason for it. If you are 5 minutes late returning back from lunch, you will be called into his office and expected to come up with a reason for your lateness. One top executive walks around with a miserable look on his/her face and is very unfriendly. You find yourself contemplating whether it’s worth it say hello. AWKWAARRD! In some departments, you are required to report to your supervisor when you are leaving your desk; even if it’s to use the bathroom. Another executive walks around the office on holiday eves to see who is still working, and who is not. In addition, executives DO NOT bother to hold their direct reports accountable for lack of managerial skills and employee coaching. You better try to figure out how to advance on your own. I recently heard one assistant practically had a nervous breakdown and had to quit because her boss was HORRIBLE to her……and now that same boss is doing it to another girl. The company just doesn’t care about their corporate office employees at all. There is another executive who CLEARLY yells and insults employees from the cubicle, and everyone knows about it. WHY DOESN’T ANYONE DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT? BECAUSE THEY……DON’T……..CARE!!!!! Everyone is too busy worrying about the FIELD! • The Field: The field executives and store employees are like GOLD! Do something wrong in their eyes and everyone will know it. The field team sends emails daily to the corporate office informing them of corporate office employee mistakes and other issues. THE ENTIRE EXECUTIVE TEAM IS CC’d on these emails, and it’s VERY easy to make mistakes and happens quite often. Every single mistake feels like a fatal mistake. You are expected to author a picture perfect email to explain the error or issue and you better hope the field team doesn’t challenge it. This is demoralizing and very embarrassing. There is one particular field person that makes it his daily goal to call out mistakes and email everyone as much as possible to throw them under the bus and cause trouble. This guy is rude to top executives, and they just TAKE it from him. Like I said…WHATEVER THE FIELD WANTS……THE FIELD GETS! During advertising campaigns, the field comes into the corporate office to meet about what is going to be advertised. Before the meeting, the corporate team is collected like they are going to war! It’s ridiculous! The buyers and planners have to put together a spreadsheet on projected sales for the item and it must be presented to the field team. The buyer and planner stands up in front of these glaring rabid dogs and presents the item and sales information. Often the numbers and items are challenged and changed based ON THE FIELD input. The field team scrutinizes a lot of things causing uneasiness and embarrassment on the buyer and planner part. • PTO: New hires get 2 weeks off, but others have negotiated for 3. You do not get an additional week until you have been with the company for 5 years. There is no consistency with managers and PTO. Some managers report that you’re on vacation or sick, some don’t, most managers charge you a vacation day if you have to stay home sick with your child, some don’t. The company does not let employees out early on holiday eves. They just started last year to let employees out of the office on Xmas eve at 1pm. WELL IT’s ABOUT TIME! If it snows significantly, and the office is open, and you can’t make it to work; you will be charged a vacation day. The office has been open during state of emergencies. • Maternity Leave –The Maternity Leave policy is cruel (yes I know they’re probably not the only company). You are required to use all of your PTO during maternity leave. For example, if you have a baby in November, and return in February, you are not permitted a PTO day until the following January. Cruel. If it snows significantly, and the office is open, and you can’t make it to work; you will be charged a vacation day. • Parking: The parking is awful as there aren’t enough spots. If you do not get to the office by 8:30, pack your breakfast because you’re walking a long way to the entrance. At 5:30, there is a mass exodus to get out of the building; expect to wait at least 15 minutes to get out. They have a traffic cop, but that has only helped a little bit. • Styleout: Every department’s styleout is different. There is tons of tedious and unnecessary number crunching; most of which is never even referenced. It can be sloppy and unorganized. The buyers and planners present their information to the top merchant. Some assistants are permitted to talk, some aren’t. Some managers give their assistants a speaking part, and some managers don’t as they expect you to speak on your own and FIGHT for a chance to speak. Everyone fights each other to say something and to look good in front of the executives. You are supposed to “FEEL WHEN IT’S NECESSARY TO INTERJECT” your information to everyone. There is no coaching (depending on the supervisor you get). • Promotions: Promotions are very rare here. There is no career growth path or schedule. If you CONSTANTLY beg to be promoted, if you are buddies with your boss and talk sports and BS in his or her office, or you’re somewhat attractive and flirt and kiss butt, you have a much better chance at getting promoted. • Systems: Where do I even start? There are systems that feed from one another, and they are very complex. Assortment Planning is very tedious to manage, and it feeds what the field sees in JDA. You have to manage codes for every single item your department is responsible for. If you put the wrong code in, which is very easy to do, over 1,000 stores will see your error. The next day, floods of field emails, ccing your entire department including executives and phone calls will come in calling out the error. The Order Planning systems is VERY slow and tedious as well as it crashes and freezes daily. The IT team that addresses these issues ignores phone calls or they do not get back to you for at least 2 days because they know the systems just suck. I have to hunt the systems guy down at his desk to get answers. VERY frustrating. When there is an advertised item, it has to be punched in by the buying team so it appears in planning systems for the planning team to input their planning information. Sometimes the buying team forgets to do it, and you won’t know it until you work on it and the deadline is fast approaching. If the deadline is missed, you will get an email from the communications department calling you out and CCing your entire team. Hence, there is a lot of “throwing under the bus.” I’ve never seen it so bad at a company. There is mostly manual manipulation with excel spreadsheets. The planners have to write orders for over 1,000 stores and most of the time, the orders systems do not calculate properly, so you are forced to review 1,000 stores with your own eyes to make sure it looks accurate. The company has hired consultants to research why turnover has been so high. I guess HR isn’t really listening to their exit interviews. There is an indication of the consistent turnover because there are always job postings on their website.