Fashion Retail Archives - I Hate Working In Retail

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The Harsh Truths People Who Work Retail Wish Everyone Else Would Keep In Mind

Working retail is neither the hardest job nor the easiest one, but it does tend to be wildly misunderstood by the customers. I worked retail for years, and even now I find myself compelled to rip t-shirts out of piles like an animal, but almost every single time I am stopped by visions of hours spent folding, fluffing, and rearranging walls of denim. Here are a few things most retail workers, past and present, wish everyone would keep in mind when pawing away at those piles of overpriced clothes.
Mallrats
Mallrats

1. Employees are being instructed to do everything they are doing. You are the customer and the store wants your money, but whatever the employees are doing? Not about you.

No one wants to know how your day is. I repeat: no one cares about your day. Nor does anyone care “how it’s going” or “what’s up?” They are asking because a corporate person somewhere decided on the appropriate greeting for the salespeople to use, had that greeting printed up and three-hole punched, and instructed other workers to place that instructional hand-out into the retail Bible binder that would go out to every single store in the chain. Everyone working retail at a major store is operating under the auspice of an out-of-touch corporate person who thinks “Hi, how are you?” is the best way to lead into selling denim. We’re all struggling in this awkward interaction together, so get over yourself and say “good, thanks!” or just shop online.

2. They have probably been in that godforsaken mall for an excessively long time

Whether it’s working every day after school until past 9PM as the part-time associate or working 10 hours without seeing the outside world as the sales manager, trust me on one thing: the employee hates the mall more than you hate the mall. I loved working in the mall as a teenager — Auntie Anne’s, my friends visiting, making money for standing around most times — but I’d inevitably become cagey and wish that I could leave the mall and be literally anywhere else. It is as soul-sucking as an office, and often more so, like when you discover gross things in the fitting rooms or have to watch a middle-aged father model a bathing suit to you because he’s making a strange attempt at flirting. The mall is a tomb of weirdness and you don’t get to see sunlight a lot — the employees are working at the disadvantage, not you. No one is sorry that you hate watching your girlfriend try on pants. Get over it.

3. Yes, they chose to work this job, but no, they did not choose to work on this day of gross human behavior

Black friday. Post-Christmas giftcard redemption madness. Post-any holiday gift return hysteria. Summer-time swimwear and skimpy fashions being rolled out in January before the gravel-filled snow grossness is even gone from the icy east coast ground. All of these times make for hostile environments in which the customers see the retail employees as an obstacle, and the employees see the customers as a horde of consumer zombies with a few humans sprinkled in. What if we were all just more decent? Would be cool.

4. Picking up your trash probably isn’t in their job description.

Keeping the store clean is definitely in their job description, but peeling your used maxi pad, condom, or cheap-cheese-encrusted paper plate from the mall pizza place off the ground of the fitting room? Nope! Wasn’t mentioned on the first day, babe! Please be less disgusting in public spaces, especially the ones that are meant to make you feel good/em> about appearances.

5. They clean every. Single. Hour. Of. The. Day. And. Night.

They fold. They dust. They hang. They sweep, swiffer, and mop. They space the hangers one finger apart from the other hangers. They fan the sleeves. They windex mirrors, countertops, and windows. You unfold. You pull. You break hangers. You smudge fingerprints. You drop crumbs. They are cleaning up after you, don’t be an animal. Life the shirts. Take the shirt you want. Put the rest back. If it were up to them, everything would be hanging and nothing would hurt, but that’s not the world we live in.

6. Your children are not their responsibility.

If you are not watching your child and your child knocks over a tower of shoe boxes, please do not look at the employee with a your eyebrows angry-birded together in a “how did this happen?!” fashion — it happened because you brought your kids to the mall and they behaved like kids. Watch your kids, because no one at the mall will and most people working at the mall were kids like, five years ago anyway.

7. The entire mall does not know what the rest of the mall is doing, unless it is gossip that doesn’t concern you.

Honey, why are you asking the Lady Foot Locker employee about the shoes you saw on sale at Kohl’s? Why are you asking the Pac Sun employee why the jeans are not the same fit as the Hollister jeans? And why on earth are you asking the food court stand kids about the Panera Bread located across the highway? Everyone is kept in their own little retail cave and only knows about the sales they are told to know about, which take place in their own damn store. They aren’t here to find you the best deal, or to explain why the corporate overlords are charging you out the ass for that camisole that costs $2 to make. They don’t know! They only know which managers from one store are feuding or fucking the managers of some other store, and you don’t want to know about all that — some dark shit goes down at Dairy Queen and Piercing Pagoda and Tilly’s, take my word for it.

8. Not everyone makes commission — in fact, your purchase is pretty meaningless to most of the employees present.

This is an unfortunate truth, but it’s real: the pay of the people who help you the most is almost never directly affected by the dollars you’re spending. I worked retail for over five years without ever seeing a dime of commission, and raises are few and far between. So, no, you are not “doing them a favor” with your $350 spree during back to school. You are doing that asshole who owns Abercrombie a favor, or the evil masterminds scheming to make bad dresses that last one wash over at Forever 21. Don’t kid yourself.

9. Just because labor laws make call something illegal does not mean that corporations respect those laws.

See: breaks, injury, shipment intake processes. Fun story: I once injured my lil pinky finger while censoring polos at a store that shall not be named and didn’t notice the wound until I’d already bled on the undersides of several collars. Those shirts got spot-cleaned and put right back out on the racks. Gross, right? And that decision was not my call, or my manager’s call, or the regional manager’s call, even. Corporate demanded that we bypass all of our legal practices — that would entail damaging those shirts out, because they had human blood on them — in order to have the shirts cleaned and put back out. And sold at full price. This was just one experience, but talk to anyone who works for less than $10 an hour and they’ll tell you about all the other fun ways in which standards and laws are consistently, almost comically disregarded.

10. Half of the people working in retail are teenagers.

Do you really think this teenager should have an encyclopedic knowledge of whatever random thing you want? I never understood the outraged grown men who would complain to high school kids’ managers after the kids couldn’t identify the obscure item that the grown man was struggling to describe: “I saw it online, it’s red. Like a button down. You guys don’t have that? You don’t know?” Yeah, of course these adolescents should be good employees and work hard to ensure your satisfaction, but are you going to make a kid sit on the phone for 30 minutes when they have a line of ten other angry people behind you, all so that you can sign up for a credit card and get 10% off? Chill out and grab some patience, you’re grown and they are not, and they’re really trying to help you the best ways they can. And if they’re not, then help yourself. You can Google the shirt, you can sign up for the card online.

11. They might never get a break — not one break to actually sit down, for eight hours or more.

Once again, this is not retail-specific. To be sure, people are underpaid and overworked in every industry. But retail break time, at least, is interesting in the way that it’s all smoke and mirrors: it seems so chill when you’re a customer, like no manager is ever working hard and every employee is just waiting for their break. The reality is that the employees who work the most hours tend to get the least breaks, if any breaks at all. Oftentimes, it is the manager or senior sales rep who is working just under the overtime threshold, day in and day out, without ever receiving the benefits of over time. In order to compensate for the junior employees who (are likely very young and therefore) do need to receive their breaks, the senior managers will work throughout the entire day, nonstop. All of this to say that when it looks like they’re “being lazy” or “doing nothing” on the sales floor, they are likely just taking a moment during a slow hour to chill and discreetly devour a granola bar. Because they spend the rest of their day busting ass and forgetting to eat. Have mercy.

Sourced from thoughtcatalog.com

 

 

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28 Things I Learned While Working For Lululemon Athletica

Lululemon Athletica
Lululemon Athletica

I worked at the infamous Lululemon Athletica for a year and a half. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about human nature and of course, sheer stretchy pants. Not all of this happened to me, but I have seen this first hand.

1. Every company has bad apples. The trouble with Lululemon is that they’re easily disguised in smiles, pretty faces and small talk. You don’t find out about the general two- faced problem with managers until it’s too late.

2. When dealing with a bad apple, agree with everything they say or else they will make your life a living hell. To the point where you leave a company that you once loved. My store manager regularly accused me of doing and saying things that I never said and it got too exhausting to handle. She even smiled when I started crying.

3. Lululemon has it’s own language and if you don’t speak it fluently, good luck being accepted by the people who hired you. People who can speak it really well and actually believe in it are termed “Lululicous”.

4. If you’re male, childhood friends with your boss and/or a suck up, you’ll climb that ladder no matter what. Internal promotions are usually based solely on likeability with your boss, and in a company that is 95% women, it’s all about whether you can tow the line safely.

5. Virtually every internal promotion occurs because someone is friends with the regional manager, store manager, or assistant store manager.

6. You won’t get promoted if you’re friends with the sales associates. I have been encouraged many a time to cut social ties with the people I work with in order to have a shot at growing in the company.

7. A store manager actually got away with paying their sister in law 25% more than the rest of us. They can alter your pay based on how much they like you. Usually they tweak pay according to likeability during score card season, but it also happens when they first hire you.

8. A different store manager didn’t like one of the floor managers under them and changed meetings to mornings because she couldn’t go at that time for medical reasons. She then was told that she didn’t fit her role as a floor manager and should step down.

9. Store Managers change every 6 months. It’s a stressful job but usually they just get promoted or fired. A customer service associate (or “educator”) who had been at the store for 5 years told me that she didn’t care who came or went- she always outlives management and just needs to be under their radar.

10. They can accuse you of giving a bad customer service experience even when there are no customers in the store. It doesn’t even matter if the logic is flawed- they’ll find a way to make you leave if they don’t want you there. It’s called being “coached out” in Lululemon terms.

11. Sexual harassment isn’t their concern if you’ve left the company because of it. In fact, if you’re male and saying gross things to other employees its more likely to BENEFIT you than anything else- you’ll likely get transferred to a different store where you’re promoted a month later (this indeed happened much to the dismay of the good apples in the company). They value straight males above any other type of employee- having a penis is like a constant “get out of jail” free card.  Oh and if you’re the accuser- you’ll be labeled as a trouble maker and someone who engages in “background conversation”.

12. Background conversation (i.e. gossiping) will get you fired. Despite the fact that manager meetings consist mostly of background conversations about their employees. It’s rephrased as “discussing their development”.  They’ll discuss your personal life, who you’re friends with in the store- even how many dogs your mother has. All on company time.

13. We don’t sell clothes, we “educate.” It’s background conversation to openly say that you don’t like a product. It’s also background conversation to mention that you need more hours to another coworker.

14. During a morning meeting, the manager will mention what clothes fit who well, and what won’t work not so well. I once was told that I shouldn’t buy something because I am not a size 6 — in front of 5 other co-workers.

15. If you are a size 6, then you’ll be given free clothes to wear, termed “promotions”.

16. The company attracts amazing people. After a year though, you either leave or try to become a manager. There aren’t many people who stay without wanting to get promoted.

17. Head office cares. Free treats, great health benefits, free fitness classes- you name it, they’ll do it for you. The trouble is that head office doesn’t get to see the horrible things that managers get away with.

18. If you miss talking to a guest, you’ll get called out on it by a manager. But only if they don’t like you.

19. I was once told that I am allowed to question store processes but not challenge them. Still not clear on what the difference is.

20. It is completely up to one managers sole discretion on whether they hire you back, transfer you or how they discuss you to another store. And they’ll smile at you regardless of whether they give you a bad reference or not. Although, usually they don’t get back to you at all if they don’t like you.

21. Lululemon will do almost anything for their customers. You are also more likely to get what you want if you’re rude as opposed to nice because we have to say yes whenever the customer gets openly upset. It costs the company more to say no initially in the store and deal with a store complaint at the head office than to just say yes. Nevermind the fact that this customer just screamed at you for 15 minutes for no reason other than the fact that they missed their Starbucks- they get what they want.

22. The clothes are actually really cool. They’re overpriced yes, but most of the time, they’re worth your money. I still love how innovative Lululemon is, despite all the scandal.

23. They will pullback product based on quality issues. But then they’ll send the same item to stores 3 months later on a different name. It could be an innocent mistake but I am not so sure.

24. Employees workout at store meetings — it’s really amazing.  Lululemon is ahead of the curve when it comes recognizing how important and related health is to the workplace.

25. Funnily enough, looks aren’t a huge deal once you get hired. I was never asked to put on makeup or do my hair once I worked at Lululemon. They’ll hire less attractive people if they have amazing personalites. It’s not as superficial as everyone thinks. Most of the time, if you feel great and act happy, they don’t hold it against you if you gain weight.

26. While I worked at Lululemon, the majority of my store was unhappy. They complained constantly and then put smiles on as soon as a manager walked up to them. If you’re sensitive and feel empathy, it’s a really hard place to work.

27. No matter how many free workouts you get, if your boss is a bitch, you’ll come home crying everyday anyways.

28. For a lot of people, it is what you make of it. The people who had been working with the company for years never ceased to amaze me in their positivity and nonchalance. It was beaten out of me 6 months in — however, we can all learn something from that attitude.

Sourced from thoughtcatalog.com

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PISSED OFF WET SEAL EMPLOYEES HANG SIGN IN STORE WINDOW EXPOSING THEIR TERRIBLE COMPANY

wet seal protest

If you have ever been an overworked, underappreciated retail employee, this story will make you happy.

Some pissed off workers at the Wet Seal store at the Northgate Mall in Seattle posted this sign yesterday in their storefront. The huge yellow banner outlines all of the mistreatment the store’s employees have endured since they started working there.

Among the highlights: refusal to pay for unused vacation days that were nearly impossible to take due to blackout dates; the one-day notice firings of long-time employees; the lack of transfer opportunities with other Wet Seal locations; 16 cent raises for five-year employees; $95,000 raises for the CFO; and much more.

Read the whole thing for yourself. Hopefully this helps the less fortunate employees who are suffering from these horrible policies. The hashtag has already started popping up on Twitter and, depending on the swell of support online, it’s only a matter of time before the company responds.

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