Teavana reviews

Working at Teavana was an extremely disheartening experience. I started out optimistic because I like tea and was interested in learning about it and getting to impart knowledge on customers. It very quickly became clear that customers are not what is important at Teavana. Neither are the employees or the product. It is seriously all about money. There is an extremely aggressive sales model that feels absurd and unnatural and leads to pressuring customers to spend far more than they want to spend. I was constantly treated like an idiot by upper management. My GM was nice enough, but she had so much pressure from the regional manager that she became difficult as well. Senior management and people from corporate were constantly "dropping in" on us to make sure we were carrying out the full sales model. The other thing that was horrible about Teavana was the sampling process. We would stand outside sampling tea to customers, even when it was absolutely freezing outside. Our store doors also had to remain open at all times. I worked there during the fall/winter and so I was freezing and had to work wearing my coat, gloves, and hat.

The cons of working at Teavana is that the environment is incredibly sales-oriented. It's not a bad thing to have some friendly competition within the store, but when sales associates are going as far as to claiming and lying to customers about the "health benefits" of the teas, that really shows something wrong with the management. Also, we are always pressured to up-sell all the time, which is really hard if the customer really does not want to buy. Our sales goals are completely ridiculous, and if you don't reach them, you can get your hours cut. We are all encouraged to be very pushy salespeople. What's more is that if you're not working the tea counter, it's pretty hard to get sales. Most of the people that walk into Teavana are attracted by the sample teas that they are tasting, and will always most likely end up getting something at the tea counter. If management doesn't allow you to work the counter, you end up sampling all the time and on the floor, and it is mentally exhausting to explain tea makers and teapots over and over again to your customers. Everything is scripted at Teavana--from selling the teapots to the presentations of the tea itself. Literally every day you feel like a drone, from repeating the same phrases for the same products. God forbid that you don't follow the script word for word. There is always drama between management in the store--there is always conflict going on between the team leaders and management. Communication is absolutely terrible. Everyone always has something bad to say about each other. The management here is horrible--they use scare tactics on their employees to make sure that we work hard, through threats of termination or cutting our hours.