Area Manager had me running for the door! - Assistant Manager Fossil Group Employee Review

3.0
May 4, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fossil overall is a great company to work for. They have a great product, great employee discount, great benefits and the majority of the time the people you work with are awesome individuals.

Cons

District manager was a nightmare to work for, management team under staffed and district manager to MONTHS to fill position leaving us managers that were there working 50+ hours a week or sometimes weeks at a time with no days off. I honestly would have stayed at Fossil if it was not for my Area Manager. She started with the company shortly before I did and had no clue on how to do her job. My store went 2 months with me as the only manager in the store and 5 months with no Store Manager (during the holiday season!!!) I basically lived at Fossil because I was the only manager there and my Area Manager never offered to help out. My area manager was to incompetent to teach me anything so I learned by myself or would call other stores for assistance. I spoke to my Area Manager about taking the store manager position and she laughed in my face. I was basically doing all the store manager functions but her excuse was I was not with the company long enough and I did not have store manager experience just assistant manager experience. We eventually did get a store manager and she was great but the Area Manager still tried to "control" everything. She would call numerous times a day and ask for the sales figures, traffic, how many watches/handbags we had sold etc. and if we were behind for the day she would chew us out and make us tell her how we were going to make sales. I really wanted to say "maybe if I get off the phone with you I could assist some of the customers I currently have in the store" Needless to say I could only take being micro-managed so much and after I had booked my honeymoon she denied my vaca time so I was out. I think my experience would have been much better if I was taken seriously as an Assistant Manager and if HR would have listened to me. The particular store I was at lost a lot of great people due to the area manager. I heard she is now gone but from my understanding it was her own choice because she was with the company for a couple of years and was still an "Area Manager" not a "district manager"

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5.0
Jun 18, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Was a good work environment. Wasn't too stressful.

Cons

Horrible repetitive music. Working during holidays was a mad house.

2.0
Jul 17, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Company events are always fun. (Halloween is insane in the best way.) On-site gym, Starbucks, cafeteria with pretty good food. The employee sales and deep-discounts are really nice. Central Station is a really nice, pretty building with a parking garage.

Cons

Lots of micromanagement and unnecessary approval steps before anything can move forward; resulting in any changes moving at a glacial pace and often stalling for months and even years. Fossil manages and designs by committee and the HiPPO in the room always wins with little regard to facts and data. There's little communication at all levels of the company. Teams are extremely siloed and there's a complete lack of direction. It's also not unusual for leadership or stakeholders to flip-flop on their decisions. One meeting, they'll approve something; then turn around and claim they never saw or approved it. Then suddenly they liked the way it was, which they had been claiming never to have seen before. It's frustrating and defeating. Advancement and growth opportunities are very limited and often based on favoritism. There's almost zero recognition or metrics to demonstrate your worth. "Restructuring" and staff reductions happen regularly throughout the year and always in small batches to fly under the WARN act. They usually don't even acknowledge or comment on the layoffs internally either. It's as if they hope they did it quietly enough that no one will notice. Meanwhile, morale is practically nonexistent as everyone is always waiting for the next layoff and spends most of their time with their heads down. If they acknowledge the layoffs at all, they'll assure the company that they're "right-sized now" or that they're "done with layoffs" and then do it again.

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