First off, the amount of work you put in is not acknowledged and is not reflected in the pay. A typical 8hr shift day for an associate includes the following:
- Cleaning the entire store, running go backs nonstop, stand in front of the store and greet for hours, layout changes, deal with difficult customers at cash wrap and fitting room, and finally cleaning up the store when closed.
That doesn’t sound so bad until you realize management is constantly on you to complete each task under an impossible time frame. You will be asked to be a robot that works without rest.
The $1.00 raise has now been reduced to $0.50. That extra 50 cents isn’t worth it. You will be asked to do so much more than other retail stores, especially for supervisor positions.
Upper management changes their goals on a daily basis. For example, one day they’ll want the store layout to look a certain way and the next day they’ll want it completely different. In addition, they do not understand how the store operates and mainly judge everything by sales numbers. Somehow they find that cleaning more correlates to improving sales when they don’t see that the store is dead due to being a weekday/school day.
One thing you will need to get used to is that you will be seen as a pawn. Japanese managers/expats and upper management will see you as disposable robots. They don’t care if you are tired from vacuuming the entire store for 2 hrs and then having to put on a smile after while carrying hundreds of boxes.
Lastly, you will be asked to change everything about you that includes the way you speak, stand, hand things to customers, and act. There is a very strict Japanese system which fails to work in the U.S. market. Be ready to conform to Japanese culture.
