The cons seem endless. Five Below threatens disciplinary action for discussing wages with your co-workers; this is illegal. The company health insurance, Cigna, will leave you broke and underinsured. The company doesn’t understand that you need more than two people to run the entire store for eight+ hours; if your manager or associate calls out, you’re left scrambling to find someone to cover, usually while the store phone is ringing, a BOPIS order is overdue and you have several angry customers that need their hand held for checkout, or they want to do a return for a cheap and defective product. You will be expected to do the work of five people: recover the entire store, re-shop/go-backs, fold clothes, price the store, order candy, push candy freight, assist customers, train associates, clean the disgusting public bathrooms, prevent theft, sweep the floors, keep up with emails and corporate-assigned tasks, and do refreshes/resets. You’re stretched thin and the margin for career growth is maybe $2. Five Below chews you up and spits you out so they can replace you with someone cheaper. The customer rating system is also obnoxious; you either have to answer a survey before paying, or answer it in order to print a receipt. Customers often give bad reviews out of frustration and I don’t blame them. Corporate cares more about these reviews and watching their employees on camera to make sure they’re doing their jobs, than making sure they have the resources they need to get said jobs done and prevent the rampant theft plaguing the company. News flash: people steal from Five Below because they know they can get away with it! Corporate will just blame the employees for not doing enough and then raise the prices on their products, when really, corporate is at fault for not giving their stores enough bodies on the floor to monitor and recover. Corporate refuses to understand this and invest in their current stores; they want to expand, but at the cost of the ones that are already well established. They would make up in sales what they would “lose” in hiring more employees to make the store more shop-able and deter theft. Customers will often complain that the store is messy; again, not enough people to recover, and Five Below is THE store to go to if you want to trash a place and make a mess with no consequences. You also cannot cash out your PTO— if you quit, you lose it, because their only goal once you serve your 2 weeks notice is to work you to the bone with no vacation. I rarely ever came home feeling like I had a good day at work, and the work-life balance was nonexistent due to inconsistent schedules, hours, and paychecks.
