• The environment in which individual sales are pushed for is unfair, owing to the fact that colleagues at the cash desk and fitting room often do not respond to sales assistants.
• Customers often walk away, and despite giving them your individual selling code, they do not relay this information back to a cashier when making a payment.
• There is a very cliquey atmosphere amongst colleagues, particularly of a certain background who often converse in Spanish with each other on the shop floor.
• The walkie-talkie system is biased and inefficient. In addition to this, people do not respect a queuing system and jump ahead in an unnecessary competitive hurry.
• Training provided for new-comers was minimal and not particularly extensive. I was told that I would be trained for two days and then left to learn on my own. This was not the case however, as on the second day I was left to cover an entire department on my own, as staff were short and was left there for the entire day.
• Senior members of staff seem not to give any constructive feedback – neither good nor bad, which is unhelpful in terms of bettering oneself.
• Many staff members showed a lack of respect, in referring to me for over four days as “new girl”. I was utterly shocked by this being done by several members of staff as it seems to be inherent in the company culture. It was particularly upsetting hearing a member of staff (whose name I had actually bothered to learn) conversing with a senior member of staff about me, refer to me as “new girl” on my fourth day, when I was standing less than ten paces away from her.
• Sales assistants have to travel to and from the stockroom all day long to get sizes for customers, which is an inefficient and time-consuming system.
• The discounts and benefits on clothing were of no use to me because the company does not accommodate for anybody above a UK size 14/16.
• After only a few days of working within the store, an atmosphere of favouritism became extremely apparent.
