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"
