Avantages
- Good discount on some cool products - Pay higher than average for retail, even in hourly positions When I interviewed at The Container Store, I was excited to work for a company that put its employees first, was the best in the industry, and had a sharp and effective business model. I had worked at a variety of other retailers, but they were the Toyota and this was going to be the Ferrari. I was inspired to apply after having an amazing time as a customer, designing an Elfa shelving solution with a long-time employee. His job looked fun, challenging, creative, and rewarding. I was hooked. I went through several interviews and got the job.
Inconvénients
Here is what I experienced in my 1.5 years with TCS: This company prides itself on having an awesome culture, but don't count on it. TCS no longer has any room for growth, so PT employees wait for years without promotion (or a raise, more on that later.) If you are hired FT from outside the company, you are blacklisted by most for taking "their job." Training is a joke. You sit in the break room while the GM and other "leaders" drown you in a Kool-Aid flavored word salad, telling you about their "stakeholders," and "employee centered culture." After several hours, they tell you to go and find certain departments in the store and learn about them. Except that they have over 12,000 products, so retention is nearly impossible. If you are not in with these people(largely middle-aged moms), good luck. It is worse than the PTA. There is massive favoritism, and coworkers/friends gossip about other staff members in hushed tones in all corners of the store. And if things don't go their way, or you say something not associated with the TCS group-think, they get very unpleasant. A fellow manager referred to our store as a barn full of clucking hens. The sales floor on a weekday has an average of 3-4 people on it: 1-2 Register Sales Persons (because cashier is degrading?), 1 Elfa designer, usually a FT Salesperson, and if you are lucky, an MOD. This is not nearly enough to match the needs of a very needy customer base. Because of financial blunders, most locations are cutting back on payroll. But instead of supplementing the hours by being on the floor to help, Managers spend 4-6 hours a day in their offices. When they do emerge, they do their best to make it look like they are busy working, while "touching base" with staff members, micromanaging every part of their workday. The lack of accountability is striking, and the sales floor suffers. When the floor does not look pristine, managers don't ask how they can help recover from a busy time. Instead, they ride Visual about why they haven't done __________. meanwhile, everyone in the building has been on register for most of their shift helping slow, slow RSP's. They tell you to put the customer above all else, but if you don't get everything done, you just aren't being productive enough. Their philosophy is 1=3, in other words 1 Great employee (you) should be worth 3 just okay employees. But when they say 1=3, they mean you have to do the work of 3 full TCS Staff because of budget cuts. You cannot get a raise here unless you work in corporate. The last few years, they have enacted "salary freezes" that put the stop of their usually reasonable salary increases. In addition, they have begun to lay off long-time employees, something they've never done since their founding.