Pros and cons - Deputy Manager Shoe Embassy Employee Review

I find it hard to think of any whatsoever... Apparently I have to write at least 20 words here. Rubbish!

Get ready, this will be a long one. First off I would like to point out that I can almost guarantee that the positive reviews on here are written by head office staff pretending to be sales assistance. I heard them openly discussing this on multiple occasions. - They do not care one single bit for their employees. - People's jobs were constantly threatened. Staff were always told they were expendable. - Shifts were changed last minute. You'd be doing an 11 hour day and finishing at 9pm only to be called at 8:30pm and told there is a stock transfer you must complete which means you would be stuck in store until gone 11pm (this happened every week and sometimes more than once a week). - Head office refuse to invest money on the things that matter such as advertisement and the like, but they are happy to spend over £500 on a sound system (which isn't set up to legal requirements). - They WILL try to underpay you. No matter who you are or how long you have been with the company, I will guarantee they will try to stiff you somewhere. And we aren't talking a couple of pounds here, I mean hundreds! I saw it happen to 6 employees including myself. - The only reason sales assistants are put on such a lengthy probation period is because they plan on sacking most people before his time is up. And when they do, they make you pay for your shoes and uniform meaning they are not out of pocket. - They never address serious problems in stores, this way they have no accountability. They can blame anything that goes wrong on the store Managment team (even though this team is sometimes only a supervisor who has been given no training). - Constantly complaining about a lack of sales and a low footfall but when these problems are addressed by the in store Managment, ideas are dismissed and mocked. And when head office do come into store they don't understand why there are no customers. This is obviously quickly forgotten when it's time to shout at Managment at the next weekly meeting. - Refunds are a no go. If a customer comes in with a faulty pair of shoes, they are told it's wear and tear (even when a customer has only had them for a week). No one is issued a refund in store. This goes against customer statutory rights. People should be issued refunds on the spot for faulty items! - You are expected to approach a customer 3 times within the first 2 minutes of them being their. You recite this obvious script to them which is horrid and uses phrases no one in the right mind would think of. And more often than not, the customer will leave. You give them absolutely no time to even look at the product before you are hounding them to try a shoe on! It's not how you conduct a good business. - If you leave on your on terms they will say they fired you. - A lot of the time they will only have one person on shop floor. They expect this person to serve customers, maintain standards, check stock, and make sure nothing is stolen. If you are serving a customer at till or checking for shoes out the back and someone comes along and steals something, you will be disciplined and have the cost of the stolen item docked from your pay. Here's an idea, if you care about stock loss that much either invest in proper storage so your shoes aren't kept on shop floor 24/7 or employ more staff and take the stress from someone's shoulders. I could go on for days but I think this is enough... Oh yeah, the pay is awful!

Made very good friends. Workers are the best of this company. I learned a lot, but only about how to defend myself against people that want to take advantage of me. And I learned how to persuade people into buying stuff they don’t really want. Needless to say I was good at it and Shoe Embassy loved that as they love to lie and persuade to theirs customers.

First of all, all the good reviews are fake and done by Shoe Embassy themselves. Second of all, I have read all the bad reviews and I can not agree more. I felt bullied, not trusted, pressured, stressed and watched. Since the beginning I was told I could not have break in a 9h/10h shifts because I was alone in the shop and I was NOT ALLOWED TO EAT during it either!!! Constant promises of supervisor and manager positions that they use to keep you going and burn you out. Constant watch from cctv cameras in the shops and then calls from management to correct and call you out on things they thought you were doing wrong. Unstable rotas, I was never sure if I was going to have to work on my days off. Anyway, they are taking advantage of inexperienced girls and use them until they can handle it anymore. Finally, they LIE to customers. The product is not what they say it is!