Pros
- Good introduction to luxury clothing / fabrics
- Brand feels good to work for; clothing quality is great and ethically easy to sell
- Good incentives and benefits; high discount rate and employee allowance
Kontras
- Outlet locations are understaffed, underpaid, and under-appreciated.
- Outlet locations are expected to drive similar outreach and sales goals to full price locations with less resources.
- Management turnover is intense and the desperation to hire new managers quickly is evident.
- The store manager I worked for was severely micro-managerial—to the extent it felt hostile.
- As a former employee at the chronically understaffed location I worked for, the store manager would quickly hire new candidates, and then try to oust them when they weren’t meeting immediate expectations or weren’t a great fit in general
- Client engagement, considerable product knowledge, and overall good performance gets overlooked in the face of sales goals that are impossible to meet.
- During my experience as a full-time employee, I spent weekday shifts extensively cleaning the store for up to 3 hours at a time, because management let go of the past cleaning company due to them “not being good enough.”
- Along with my job description being a full-time sales associate, I held that role, as well as the role of a stylist (which I signed up for), janitor, back-stock associate, key-holder in the events my manager(s) weren’t present, etc. And I was not offered any promotional incentives.
- Managers would be forced to schedule last-minute weeks of PTO, as they couldn’t schedule it normally due to severe understaffing, so they would leave employees with out-of-state managers and a long list of requirements for when they return.
- As a full-time employee, resources like Tulip were never properly taught to me, and instead it felt like I should just “know” how to navigate them.
- It was common to work 8-10 hour shifts as the sole sales associate where I would only have my default 30 minute break—15 minute rest periods were not offered.
- Wage falls short for the duties you will have to carry out.