Zero work-life balance with a hypocritical company - Recensione dipendente - Anonymous presso L'Occitane

Managers are just glorified sales associates, with absolutely zero authority. Can't interview/hire/promote or give raises without DM/corporate approval. DMs insist on interviewing all part time associates, and even some seasonals. Micro-managing from DMs are corporate is unreal. Required to sell two $100 face creams a day, regardless of store traffic/sales volume. Yes, lower volume stores ($300k) are held to the same goal as million dollar stores. Required to show the $106 Divine cream to every customer who sets foot in the store, regardless of their actual interests which just leads to awkward interactions with customers who then perceive that you work on commission. Company preaches prosperity and simplicity, but has dozens of metrics to meet on a daily basis: 2 Divines, 30% skincare, fragrance, conversion, increased ATV and tickets. All associates are held accountable to meeting these metrics and often have to explain slow days to nasty emails from corporate demanding an explanation. Store goals are completely inconsistent, some are goaled up 5% to last year while others are goaled up 20%. When you hit your monthly goals and earn bonus they just increase your store's goals to make it more difficult to bonus (even if you're out performing all other stores). When some stores are performing at higher volume sales trends they increase the goals, but then don't increase your bonus or available labor hours accordingly. Business decisions that make zero sense: spend hundreds of thousands of dollars renovating low volume stores that haven't shown sales increase in years, but eliminate the Learning and Development team. Imagine the jobs that could have been created/retained if that money had been invested in associate education instead of giving under-performing stores an unnecessary facelift. Absolutely no work-life balance despite company claims. Most stores operate with only 3 or four associates and stretch them to five days a week at just 4-5 hour shifts, which makes switching a shift or taking a legit sick day nearly impossible due to lack of employees available to cover extra shifts. Horrible training. No management on boarding training, instead you get a few days working in another store and are expected to learn as you go. Training on products is non-existent. Part time associates are expected to be able to open and close by themselves after just 4 days of training. Annual "bonuses" aka merit increases are insulting, and generally just a 2% increase. And they find numerous ways to score you down so that you don't qualify for an increase. Proof? The manager with the highest review score in the whole U.S. scored just a 3.5 out of 5. That's how little they think of their whole management team??