Home office/ Upper management out of touch - Store Manager DSW Employee Review

2.0
Jan 10, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Pay - Work/life balance - No crazy holiday hours - SHOES!

Cons

Sadly, I have more cons than pros now. It could be a VERY good place to work if the company would listen to their store teams. They are asking for feedback now and the managers were VERY excited about this....until we started receiving dismissive emails in response and even talks from our DM about not supporting company initiatives. They do NOT care what is working and what isn't, they care that you say everything is wonderful. They talk BIG about customer service and cut payroll to where everyone is at the registers and no one to actually help the customer on the sales floor. They talk BIG about valuing their people, but what they really mean is the SM's need to find a way to show they value their people because it is NOT coming from upper management. Another review said that the DM's are puppets to the RM's and they are correct. I don't bother asking questions anymore because I get "just do it" or "you better get on board whether it works or not", because this is the message they is getting. Upper management is so out of touch that it makes it hard to so what we get paid for - selling shoes and making the customer happy.

Explore other reviews about DSW

5.0
Jun 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The job it self is easy and not very fast pass.

Cons

Not always easy to get time off.

2.0
Jul 4, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

30% Employee Discount, sometimes around the holidays they'll have an additional for employees. Sometimes you'll get along with other associates.

Cons

- Poor hours, which goes both ways, you could either get not enough or too many hours. I was pulling around 30hrs a week for the first few months when I first got hired. - No appreciation or acknowledgment if you're actually doing the work and not just focusing on looking good for the customers. - Poor management. No communication in between the superiors, none of the updates they get (as far as procedures and what not) get passed down to the employees that actually need to use that information. - You won't be able to do anything about thieves, other than make them known to managers, and attempt to watch them while juggling a thousand other things. - No room for growth unless you've gotten hired through nepotism or you're willing to lose your soul for that job. - No adequate raises. I started at 15.50$ and ended at 17.70$ and I worked there for nearly 4 years (2 months shy) putting in a ton of effort.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All