The leadership style at Lush is micromanagement. I was often forced to upsell and promote more expensive products to people who were quite clearly working class, with children, which felt unethical and dirty to me. I was once pulled aside three separate times by management because I was told I should be on customer support (e.g. hovering around the shop trying to talk to people), but decided I would go on the till because there was a long line of people staring at me angrily (because it looked like I wasn’t doing anything). I was told that I had to ask permission to go on the tills. Not only do managers give themselves more work this way by trying to micromanage everyone else, they stretch themselves so thin, that you would be waiting 5-10 mins to ask if you could go on the till, which is just insane. When I started working they really enforced the idea that my education was the most important thing, and that the job comes second. So I was surprised when I was scheduled onto an evening shift for a stock take on the one day that I said I had a 24h online exam. I was told that it was non optional and all staff had to be there so they wouldn‘t let me take it off. I was pretty enraged when I learned that the stock take involved counting bath bombs, which from a sales perspective I understand is completely necessary. However, I don’t think anyone would have even noticed if I wasn’t there, which should give you an idea about the team culture. The toxic positivity meant that you were being told left right and centre how lucky you were to have the job, so leaving was really difficult for me. I didn’t think I had a bad experience working at Lush until after I quit and I felt the purest of relief knowing I didn’t have to go back to work there.
