JoS. A. Bank reviews

1) Open contempt for a work life balance for employees. Often times, you will find out that you are required to work a double shift for a sale, or open/stay late, two hours before or after normal store hours with only a day two notice. Additionally, you may be asked to be on a conference call on your day off that you will not be paid for. Oftentimes, you may be asked to stay hours after your shift has ended because the Regional has called an emergency conference call that extends past the end of your scheduled shift so you have to stay and cover for the store manager while he or she is trapped on a call in the back room. Sometimes the regional will show up and take the manager out of the store or in the backroom and demand that you stay past your shift. 2) Manufacturing employee "failure". A new policy stating that any employee that does not make 90% of the sales average for the store must be terminated for being dead weight has recently been implemented. If you are a key holder or assistant, you over the metaphorical barrel in terms of job security. You are required to maintain your sales while completely satisfying rental customers and not allowing the rental problems (oh, I'll get to those problems later) to result in customer complaints. Therefore, you might spend an hour registering a wedding party, another hour dealing with enraged rental customers and then another hour with IT support trying to fix registry problems with rentals. All the while, you are working against your draw while junior associates are actually selling merchandise. So in the simplest terms, if you do not satisfy the customer service aspect of the job no matter how long it takes, you can be fired. At the same time, if you don't meet your selling requirements, you can be fired. The term Kobayashi Maru mean anything to you? 3) Disastrous rental program. The new software simply does not work and IT support cannot fix it. It was lauded as a brilliant time saving new innovation by upper management when it rolled out in October of 2012... The system is so unbelievably messed up and the problems so inconceivably inconsistent from store to store it's a wonder word hasn't gotten out we are the absolute worst place to register your wedding party. Employees are routinely verbally battered and sometimes written up for complaints that are not even their fault. Complaints that stem from the inability to complete registries do to software problem to the overcharging of customers because the separate program used to take payments is set to a "point-of.no-return" protocol that makes it impossible to correct prices when they are incorrectly parsed from the program that does the registries. Complaints, suggestions and observations to regional and upper management at best are ignored and at worst result in backlash for questioning the overall efficiency of the rental business. Every couple months our regional declares that there is a fix coming out for the problems. Every time, it makes the existing problem worse or generates a whole new wave of problems we have no control over, but are held accountable for complaints resulting from those problems.

I will start off with the customer service department. Neal Black needs to have this whole department re-organized and much more efficient to both employee and customer. Only a few customer service agents run the entire 550+ store company help/complaint line. It's a pain. Secondly, the catalog department needs to re-construct their online shopping experience ie: (update their merchandise, upload accurate photos, and stop charging customers for shipping to store locations). Also, stop stealing money from the people who pay for 2nd day air and don't get their items until the next week. While I'm on the subject of stealing money...Neal Black needs to stop under paying employees, especially Assistant Managers. Depending on the store's volume and traffic, some assistant managers get paid considerably more than others like myself. Only 50 cents more than a sales associate who conducts far less work and hold much less responsibility?! Thirdly, the cold calls. Stop it already. Almost every Friday they send us a new phone list of 600 to 1300 customers that must be called in 10 days, sometimes less than 7 days. I have kept track of who actually responds to the call and maybe 1 or 2 come in the store in the next few days. I can't even remember how many times a customer has told me to stop calling and after I have sent in the "do not call" form to corporate office I still see that customer on the next phone list. This is ridiculous! And they will threaten to check the phone records to make sure they numbers add up. Lastly, the non-existent return policy must come to an end. When a customer brings several dress shirts wadded up in a nordstroms bag and says "I only wore them a few times" as I glance down at the soiled collars and unknown stains all over the cuffs and sleeves, I think a line should be drawn. I conclude by saying all these minor cons can really add up over time and drive away a good hard-working employee. Mr. Black should spend more time trying to help solve these issues instead of having his VPs and RSD's on down to store managers continue to enforce the law of performance.