Pros
Was hired on before the store at Stonebriar in Texas was opened, so I went through almost a week long of extensive training. I got along with pretty much everyone in management and all the bartenders, and was able to quickly adapt to the environment. Enjoyed the fast pace environment even though there were a lot of internal problems with upper management/corporate. For about the first 4 months, I reallly enjoyed working here
Cons
None of the Alex & Ani stores in Texas are actually owned by Alex and Ani corporate, they are a franchise purchased by SBMW, so pretty much all the values of individualism, positivity, etc that Alex and Ani is rooted with were not reflected when I worked here. Corporate is horrible, and although they seem really nice on the outside, they were crazy and mean to a lot of management and employees. They cared more about numbers then making a connection with customers and basically made you follow around every single one of your customers around the store until they bought something. They played tricks on their employees to see if they would crack under pressure. They even have some management spy on their employees and report back to them, which is pretty creepy if you ask me. They were really vile people, and didn't care if you had to take off work because of a personal issue. There was a revolving door of managers and employees all of the original employees that were hired when the store opened have all quit - keep in mind this store has only been around since OCTOBER. After the first few months, they stopped training new employees and basically left it up to the newbies to figure out how everything works. All in all, the people I worked with were great, but I would never step foot back into that store simply because of corporate. They don't pay you nearly as much and I guarantee they'll be having some lawsuits coming their way soon for the amount of employee contracts they have broken by not abiding to basic labor laws. Really sad because the actual brand is amazing, but unfortunately the people who run this store are horrible people. If Alex and Ani corporate knew about these people they would probably have shut down the store a long time ago. I say avoid this place as much as you can. I can't speak for all the other stores, this is just my experience at this one. It's also really hard to work up to a higher position here too. They aren't willing to invest in any of their employees, even those who are their top sellers. I was there for about 6 months before I couldn't take it anymore and just left.