Oh, where to begin?
Bath and Body Works looks and feels like a fun enough place to work... At first. The managers are excited to tell you about the hours you'll work and the great gratis (free samples) you'll get by working in the store. Think of this time as the honeymoon, because it all goes downhill from here.
You will not get to go on breaks. According to our manual, we as employees were entitled to a 15 minute break for every 4+ hours worked, and a 30 minute meal break for 6+ hours worked. You'll likely get your break if you work 6+ hours, but you'll only get your meal break. If you work anything less than six hours, forget about it! It was nothing for me to spend an entire five hour shift at the cash wrap without a chance to sit down or even a change from cash wrap to sales floor. Dull, dull, dull.
The training you get is pretty much trial by fire. You get sat down for a training video, and then get thrown onto the floor to make some sales. The sales strategy places a heavy focus on demoing lotion and sprays on the customers. Our daily motto was always something along the lines of "Every customer gets a demo!", which is a ridiculous expectation. Not only did there tend to be only one person working front of the store during the off season to begin with, but not every person wants to have lotion squirted on their hands! Myself included!
Holiday shifts were terrible. You WILL be expected to work a 12 hour shift on Thanksgiving/Black Friday. Burnout for employees was terrible around Christmas. It was super frustrating to watch the employees who worked the hardest get pushed to their limits while the holiday help were given jobs that amounted to making sure people waited quietly in line and knew where the end of the line was.
Meals aren't provided by the company, either: Food during peak sale days (such as Black Friday or the dreaded $8 candle event) were always potlucks, where the company would send fliers telling us about all the exciting food we, the employees, could bring for ourselves. Awesome. Hope you like a Thanksgiving meal of chips and dip, brownies, and cold little smokies.
More on holiday work: If you work a closing shift, don't expect to leave the store before around 2 am. Which is absolutely awesome when you're already worked an eight hour shift that day, before the additional four hours of closing duties. Hope you don't work an opening shift the next day! And if so, well, "It's retail; Get used to it!" As one of my managers kindly snapped at me.
Stores have recently moved to what we've been assured isn't a commission model, but reads exactly like commission model on paper.
Lastly: Call-in shifts. An awesome system where the store MIGHT need you so you need to be available to call them an hour before your shift starts to see if they need you or not. And if they don't know then, they might tell you to call again in ANOTHER hour. Just in case the store gets busy. Want to plan your weekends? Better ask off in advance. Call-in shifts don't allow you to plan for anything but work.
Bottom line? After working here for three years, and only making barely above $8 an hour, I don't get paid enough for this.
