Pros
When I started at Leroux over a year ago, the work culture was very team oriented. I found that communication was valued and our Regional Manager was a pleasure to work with. I started as an associate and was promoted within. It seemed like most people at the time were promoted from within aswell.
Cons
Recently the culture has shifted. Understandably there is a bigger focus on customer interactions and the customer experience. However some of these changes seemed uneducated and did more to hinder our efforts. As a supervisor, I found that new management/ a new manager, wanted to spend more time doing unimportant work instead of helping with the overall needs of the store. He had a big focus on merchandising which is good big picture but left the day to day work behind. The manager had no interest in learning POS, how to open and close, or even how to turn the lights of at the end of the day. He had a strong passion towards jazz, we used to play work appropriate music and would switch it up every few days from example disco to classic rock, etc. We wanted to keep things lively and also so we wouldn’t get sick of the same thing everyday. It became apparent that I was in charge of almost every aspect of the store except for stuff out of my reach. For example he was solely in charge of schedules and would not send them out until the day before they’d go into affect. I found that multiple of my associates would come to me for help because they felt uncomfortable around him because he’d gain a temper and even tell them they could leave if they didn’t like working there. Towards the end of my time at leroux, he became so hostile about the music, he put a little lock and chain around the music player. It was absurd as apart of management to see him get away with such behaviors. He would get the deposit wrong every night, would disappear for hours on end, and was unavailable to message at one point when I tried to call out. He never put in the effort to learn the store layout or about the products, he is a manager only in title, not in behavior. He had an incredible background in retail but it shows that he simply didn’t do any of the work himself. Leroux no longer promotes from within, doesn’t communicate with its employees, cuts hours, and shows no respect towards the people that worked hard to create no only a good environment for the customer but for the people working there.