Love the culture/brand/product, but horrific upper management all the way to the top! - Store Manager Five Below Employee Review

2.0
Jul 11, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fun environment, great store teams, cool product and very trendy place to work. Job doesn’t get boring, lots of new stuff coming and many changes visually going on. Music is a plus for the work day!

Cons

Upper Management (District Managers, Regional Directors, and Senior Leadership team) are unsupportive and uninvolved. DM’s basically work-from-home since Covid, RD’s get paid to travel to stores all over to take a few photos with teams and leave, and the Senior Leadership continues to “create” new high paying positions for themselves, but can’t give employees in the store level raises. Too much work, not enough payroll to complete. No investment on training. You get 1 week or 2 weeks depending on position then you’re thrown to the wolves. Horrible work-life balance even though that’s one of their “values”. The company is growing so fast, they’re always upgrading certain programs and technology before nailing down the basics- makes the job harder. They love to hire externally for upper management positions, only concerned with how good you look on resume paper, not worried about if you actually fit the culture/brand. No opportunities to move up/around unless you know the right person. WowTown home office has sleep pods, a roof top bar, and fun events year round for their people- stores get nothing in comparison but $50 a year for a “pizza party”, required to pay a lot out of pocket for your team and then “expense it” later. Company doesn’t care about stores best interests, only cares about making $ and driving sales by any means necessary. They sell you the “feels like family” spiel, more like a cult if you sit in on one of their Town Hall calls.

Explore other reviews about Five Below

5.0
Jun 24, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great people, staff, and people to work with

Cons

None I loved it all

3.0
Jun 16, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-20% discount -med, dental, vision benefits -20-ish minimum hours per week -genuinely can be a fun store to work in when run well

Cons

-store managers have little to no oversight and cross professional boundaries often - hr is ineffective, document everything yourself, report to the EEOC -growth opportunities in the store are very limited and they will lowball you no matter what you do or sacrifice -crazy turnover because the expectations are unrealistic store managers lie about pay budget to everyone -more likely to hire teens and students because they are easier to take advantage of for little pay, only needs adult for when teens and students cannot work (night shifts, school days) - nearby stores, especially if in a strip mall or shopping center, like tj maxx have higher base pay, better benefits, better security, and more hour availability

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