Work here if you want it to suck up every minute of your life. - Store Manager Victoria's Secret Employee Review

-it’s retail: most of the people we hire, based on the candidate pool and who will actually want to work retail, are inexperienced people who’ve either never worked a job before or never applied themselves in education. -the workload is incredibly intense and the pressure to perform (literally EVERY SINGLE HOUR) is exhausting. They expect all these big things from you (complete schedule, hire/train/develop your team, document business insights onto 13 different tools, recover 60,000 pieces of clothing (panties, bras, beauty items), and ‘CSL’ or be the ‘manager on duty’ for 90% of your time...watching LITERALLY every hour of your stores performance. I’ve worked in many different districts and for many different leaders - it’s like this everywhere. Micromanaging at its finest! -the company isn’t doing well. They choose a new metric every year to focus on so that you *think* the company is doing well - all the while, sales are down 50% year over year. The few Stores that are making sales typically just reopened from covid or remodel...don’t let them fool you that there are these amazing teams that are making it happen. “What one can do, all can do!!!” Yeah, no. Maybe being transparent about WHY that team saw a random increase in traffic last month would put us on a level playing field instead of just requiring astronomical results based solely on our “selling behaviors.” -have I mentioned the pressure to perform? It’s no secret that this is a dying business, they will tell you how “well” the company is doing but then require you be a pushier sales person than Joe at the local used car lot. It felt so uncomfortable and unnatural. Literally stopping customers at the door inside or outside of the store to sell bras to them. It’s ok that people just want to look!!!! (We weren’t allowed to accept that answer...you were required to sell, every time.) You’re expected to stand over the shoulders of everyone on your team to make sure they’re saying this or saying that...document it and coach them if they asked “are you finding everything ok” instead of pushing a product. I lost so many talented people because of these ridiculous expectations. -Work/life balance is a joke. You get one weekend off a month (if you’re fully staffed, that is) and must close 2x/week. November and December are hell months. You’re lucky to get 1 weekend off in that timeframe let alone 2 days in a row. They’re always doing surprise visits so you must be “on” at all times. Your store must be 100% at all times. 20-30,000 panties folded, sized, colorized, organized by style every single day...on top of the other stuff you sell. You’re not an “above and beyond” store manager if you can manage this - That’s just the expectation and it is HARD. Typically, maintaining a store the way they expect you to, means you’re working until 11pm or midnight every night to clean up and follow the closing checklist that has a million other tasks on top of folding/organizing all these panties. And you can’t fold during the day - you need to be 100% focused on selling to the customer. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. Then, if you share this concern or need more payroll to maintain your store to such a high standard, they will share how 1 store in the district may be achieving this already - but what they don’t know is that store manager is most often working off the clock every day to ensure their store is perfect. (This exact example is pretty common and happened in multiple districts I worked in, not just a one time thing.) I decided I will not work like that...after I made the decision to just work 45-50 hours instead of 60, I was no longer considered a top performer. “Work through your team” was often shared with me when I expressed my concerns. I DID. That’s why they were the most-talented in the district and asked to support multiple stores and train every other leader in the district. It was infuriating.