Stay away from this soul-crushing companyThe good thingsI had to rack my brain to come up with these:
• Decent discount on products if purchased to wear to work
• Some good customer interaction opportunities if you know your stuff
• The majority of the couriers who delivered to the store were very friendly
The challengesThis is just a taste of how bad this place actually is:
• Awful management: There is practically no organisation beyond making sure someone is on the registers, and they are largely unhelpful and uninterested in any problems you have.
• Terrible supply chain: Even compared to other companies I've worked for, the types and quanties of products you receive are often completely nonsensical. You'll get 5 pallets of summer stock at the end of February despite the impending season changeover.
• Little to no training: You will be fine if you have a retail background, but they love hiring 15 year olds with no work experience, which is a big issue as they put no time into training them. Few people know how to work stock efficiently, or properly merchandise stock, or stack a pallet with any sort of structural integrity, and the ones that do figured it out themselves.
• Lack of safety standards: Blocked fire exits, hazardous stacking of boxes and stock on the shop floor and in the dock, some extremely heavy stock that you are expected to lift on your own, lack of mechanical aid for lifting/transporting heavy goods. The blatant disregard for any sort of workplace health and safety is honestly comical.
• No loyalty to hardworking, long-term staff: This didn't apply to me as I wasn't there for all that long, but I saw a few people who had been there for years and were actually really good workers lose a bunch of hours because they didn't want to be contracted. Management values saving money far, far more than they value good workers.
• Understaffed: This goes for pretty much every retail environment, but is especially true here. Lack of staff paired with all of the other things wrong with this workplace means that you are pretty much set up for failure every single day.
I would rather be homeless and jobless than work for this nightmare of a company again.