The owners have no idea how to run the store. It's part of the MVC chain, and I don't know how well the other stores are run, but this one is terrible. There are three floors, and a sales associate for each one. You are expected to stay on your floor for your entire shift (between 12.5 hours and 14.5 hours), and you get no breaks. Not even a lunch break, you're just kind of supposed to figure out when you can eat and not let the customers see it?
You're expected to reach a sales quota every day, which becomes difficult when your customers take merchandise from your floor and pay for it at someone else's register. If you don't reach your sales quota, you get written up for poor sales. There is no rhyme or reason behind the quotas, and it's not actually clear where they come from. You'll hear a couple different things, like "they're based on how much that register made the year before on this exact date."
Because of the poor environment, a lot of eager, energetic, and good employees quickly turn sour. When I started at Le Tache, there was a good team there. I was only there for seven months, but everyone who was there when I started, including the manager, was gone by the time I left and I was the senior employee.
By sour, I mean, competitive in the most negative of ways. When I left, employees were at each other's throats over the littlest of things, and calling corporate every day with complaints. Corporate didn't handle the situation very well, and only aggravated it by creating stricter rules that the employees would, in turn, continue to fight about. Le Tache started out as a fun place to be, but ended up playing out like a huge conspiracy theory movie.
You can't trust anyone. That's the only way to really get by in the job. Everyone talks about everyone behind their back, and you'll find that your business is even shared around the company at other stores. There were around 50-60 employees in the entire company when I left, including sales associates and senior management, so keep in mind, it's really small.
You may find yourself being evaluated by the owner's kids, who will often end up working shifts with you. And you honestly never know who's on your side, and who's pretending to be to get information out of you. If you're a fan of the cold war, you might enjoy working here.
There are several obvious things that can be done to maximize the store's sales potential, but if you speak up, you put your position at risk. You have no job security here, because if they don't like you, they can fire you for "poor sales" (which everyone will have, no matter how good you are).
