Pros
Everyone alumni of TRR I speak to always has the same thing to say, from the East Coast to the West Coast, "I had high hopes…" This is the kind of company that you can only dream to work for. It's owned by a person who has failed and got back up again and who seems to be really excited about her company. It's a tech start up, so you think you're going to love the free lunches and the opportunity to see all kinds of luxury designer pieces. It is a great place to start your career!....but that's it. Just start. No doubt, The Real Real is making a lot of money and causing a lot of disruption within the retail community so that's exciting. You will also work among some of the most intelligent, hard-working and undervalued people and they really will be your only means of survival. Try to learn from them and keep each other as contacts for when you're done being abused by TRR.
Cons
For somebody who went to school for Fashion or anything in the Arts it really can feel fun and exciting. Unfortunately for a lot of us it turns into a nightmare. The perks get cut, the raises are small or nonexistent, the transportation is unreliable and at times (during snowstorms) nearly deadly. The worst part was witnessing the downright disrespect that managers had towards their employees (in ALL departments). TRR is really is going to be it's own downfall. I watched way too many people go in the parking lot/bathroom to cry/yell on the phone with a friend, walk out and others really lose their drive and motivation after the first 6 to 9 months. Anybody who is at a senior level or higher is only trying to save their own skin and keep their job. I have personally witnessed management misquoting numbers on reports, take vacations during the busiest months of the year, driving nice cars and even wearing some serious designer threads. Their employees on the other hand get accused of lying, stealing, falsifying information, are scared to take time off for sick children/families, each lunch for longer than 30 minutes and even share lunch with each other at times because they cannot afford to live off their measly earnings. And don't bother going to HR, because they keep NOTHING confidential. Most of the HR team used to work together in another company so its really hard to feel like HR is not in bed with management/each other. Anything you say to HR will be brought up in meetings with management and you will slowly realize its a losing battle to defend yourself or at least command basic human decency. Which is why I won't even go down the long windy road that is a hot warehouse with pregnant/older people in it during the summer months (good luck with that TRR!!) Some corruption at the top was noted in the past and a few bad seeds were weeded out, but not everybody is so blatant in how they steal from the company. When you can't/won't do your job correctly, mainly because you didn't know what you're doing, you might as well be stealing. Managers claiming items are "lost" when they simply did not want to search, hiding items from colleagues by removing information from packaging and blaming others for their shortcomings is costing the CEO so much more money than she will ever realize.