JCPenney reviews

3.3

52% would recommend to a friend

(13,518 total reviews)
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Marc Rosen

62% approve of CEO

35% positive business outlook

JCPenney has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 13,518 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The JCPenney employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

14K reviews
3.0
Feb 16, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

One of the best reason to work with the company is the employee discounts. The various shifts are also nice (if you can get them). The company always has several part-time opportunities for those who have full-time jobs. Training is decent. You are paid on time. There are some benefits offered to employees. Cash registers are modern and user-friendly. There are some nice little employee incentives occasionally.

Cons

The worst reason believe it or not were the customers first and management's lack of keeping to their word. When I was hired, it was agreed that I would split shifts with another seasonal part-time employee. In the end, I always ended up on the shift that closed. I asked several times to change this because this was not agreed upon my hiring but each time the schedule came out, I was doing the majority of closing. It was understood that this was only a secondary seasonal job and that I had a full-time job that I had to get to early mornings so I did not want to close every time I was scheduled to work. I ended up quitting. Between the extremely rude customers who kept the store in a disarray and the lack of management to honor the agreed upon times, I could not take anymore. Staff members are not friendly to one another nor the customer. VERY DRY staff. If you are looking for a friendly place to work, this particular location is not one of them.

4.0
Feb 15, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Because the stores are open almost 24 hours per day there is a lot of flexibility in the scheduling. JC Penney also has an excellent training program. I have worked a quite a few retailers and JC Penney has one of the best training programs in the retail industry. The staffing structure and the number of managers assures that anyone who works hard can be recognized for their hard work and has a chance to be promoted. The nationwide planograms mean that you can get your work done with a lot of autonomy without having someone look over your shoulder. I can't stress enough how much the training has paid off for me.

Cons

When it comes to being promoted into upper management, JC Penney almost never promotes from within. I worked as a department supervisor and had an excellent relationship with the assistant store manager. She asked me to apply to the MIT program. Other employees at the store said that they had never seen anyone go from department supervisor to the MIT training program--it just doesn't happen. I do think that, like all major corporations that they don't always take advantage of the wisdom of their workforce and the employees get a little stale. That being said, many people stay there for 20 or 30 years.

2.0
Feb 10, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people who work at penneys are very nice, and are usually willing to help out a new employee. The 20% off employee discount was always nice to have, especially during their 60 and 70% off clearance sales. The senior management sometimes were helpful, but usually had needless tasks to complete and were usually never around, which made it necessary for sales associates to make executive decisions. Because of these decisions, it appeared that the management did trust us, but unless you had the appearance of a yes-man, your privileges were very small. Employee moral was once deemed too low at the store because of this reason.

Cons

From what I can see, this small text box will not be able to fit all the downsides about penneys. Their (then) new "going back to basics" seemed to insult the intelligence of the worker rather than make it easier. Explaining the pricing of the clearance and sales seemed to never end. The fine print on those signs were a little too fine. This particular store went through a store manager transition when I started, and it just settled down about 3 months ago (two months after I had quit). It took almost a year for anything to get accomplished other than ridiculous policies and never-ending meetings about new training. The manager who approved time-off never seemed to get the memo about the TO until it had been pushed out of the system. The new manager re-organized the whole managerial system and did a poor job doing so. Their lack of understanding of how that particular store worked went against them in a serious way. Sometimes, it seemed like the store actually ran better without a store manager during that month period.

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