Pros
Discount is pretty sweet. Best friends you’ll make, the people are the only reason you're staying.
Cons
Unrealistic time constraints for closing tasks. Never leave on the listed time when its time to close, I rather they just extend the hour then leave it ambiguous for when to leave. Constant microing as well as lack of microing, and lack of communication between leadership, having to ask several people for your task, or get removed for a task to another and get yelled at for moving by different managers. Repeated scripted followups “how’s it going?”, “give me a time limit”, “this should have been done already” How am I supposed to respond to that question without sounding stupid? Impersonal, robotic phrasebooks we must use to feign eliteness in order to give off the aura of professionalism. I literally see customers scoff at the fake scripted speeches. I speak to them as I would colloquially and see a better response and gain their respect through it. Point systems for raises are just another stressful item to combat. We have to hand out at least 5 customer review cards to customers throughout our shift for general feedback. I feel like we are imposing on the customers shopping experience by shoving cards in their face to fill out. The customer connection cards goes against Japanese philosophy of comradeship, they expect Japanese work expectations but keep an American consumer individualistic approach. Take one or the other. They want everyone in a “manager mindset”, making us write down our selling numbers and get excited about reaching our sales target. In reality, it doesn’t even matter on a managerial level whether or not we exceed our target. We never see the money, that all goes to corporate. It’s sort of a propaganda approach to get the associates pumped to sell. We even had a mandatory meeting to discuss how to sell better, a sort of pep rally. I’ve never seen a retail job that cared so much about something that doesn’t affect any employees in the slightest.
