Pros
Among the sales and spa team I made friends for life, and we could really share our issues and difficulties without judgement. Amazing benefits, receiving 50% of products and lots of freebies. Some amazing and understanding supervisors who were there in a pastoral sense as well as professional. You received really good, thorough training and were paid for this training. The knowledge I gained from it is still really useful. Lush Birmingham had a chill out/prayer/private room for staff (usually reserved for crying) but was a thoughtful addition to the new store. It felt great to sell products I genuinely loved and customers, for the most part, were lovely. The company is very ethical and it felt good to know I was contributing to a good cause. I also got to host some parties which hinted that I could move up in the company a bit and develop more responsibilities, but this turned out to not be the case. I also got a free spa treatment on more than one occasion to help with therapist training, which was amazing and a really great way to treat and show appreciation to staff. The spa staff particularly were amazing, thoughtful and considerate people. They're very chilled on what you can wear and have- pink hair, tattoos, anything, as long as you wore just black and white and your apron, you were fine. Any shoes were okay too, which was handy.
Cons
Management had favourites. There was a HUGE amount of favouritism going on, and these employees would get most opportunities- for example managing social media and running events, even when I had a degree in this area it was really hard for me to get into, no matter how many times I asked, because favourites got to do it first and were given priority. I was welcomed onto the social media team but never got to carry out any real jobs on it. This makes it near impossible to progress within the company because even if you are a loyal and effective worker, you'll be put behind the management's favourites just because they share interests/are friendly outside of work. We even had issues with a male member of staff really harrassing a female member of staff until she felt extremely uncomfortable working with him. This sentiment was matched by many other members of staff who found him creepy and unbearable. Management did not immediately fire him and just made it so the male and female in question were working on different floors, which I felt was a HUGE insult to the girl who had bravely stood up to management and a poor move for a company meant to be so ethical and against sexism or sexual harassment in ANY sense. Eventually he was fired anyway. Management could be pretty harsh, and really scrutinise you. My sales technique worked well but it wasn't enough for them- they wanted you to really bother customers until they bought something, and insist on them buying more than they wanted. We'd be told to do demos on customers, then be told off for doing too many. Management and supervisors also gave conflicting information on products. I was trained to believe one best-selling product was for sensitive skin but was later told by a supervisor that this was completely wrong. This could probably fixed with more training.
