Pros
-Hybrid model, although they don't advertise this because it depends on the team if you are hybrid or full time in the office -Some people are nice - Zero experience required to be able to perform in this role "successfully" (according to management standards)
Cons
- The job posting is a straight up lie for the merchandise planner. I called this out in my exit interview and they did not change it. The job listing is NOT the job you will be doing - They mainly hire people that are related to them/ married into the family - They will require you to work on national holidays/ weekends - The CEO owns/ has investments in vendors we use, so we were forced to buy from them when they did not perform - A&F, the in-house design company owned by the CEO, is somehow even more of a disaster than SSA (due to the sexist, aggressive man that "runs" the company) - Leadership Team is a boys club and often laugh at employees under them - I asked for career development and was never responded to - The salary, for Denver, Colorado, is laughably low - To say there is a lack of communication is the worlds most insulting understatement- there is NO communication. So little communication that you have to ask to set up meetings, you have to ask to understand what’s going on at a higher level, you have to ask to have a TB with your manager... truly atrocious - I was told I would have an exit interview and had to BEG to get one after sending 4 emails to HR. Only then was I given one, and they did not listen to any of my responses. Specifically, I told them the job listing listed things that don't even exist within the company and when they posted the same position a few months later, it was the same description. - There systems are so outdated that you have to pull sales reports in real time aka, if you have to pull reports for monthly sales, you have to pull it after the zoo closes or before they open (aka, late at night or very early in the morning) - Not only were the systems outdated, but we were also repeatedly lied to that they were getting new systems until they admitted that there was no plan to do so. - They don't allow PTO in January because you are required to manually tag thousands of units for the stock show in Denver - During COVID, they required you to come into the office and wear a mask 24/7, even when we had an outbreak in the office. - They made us go to Vegas for a trade show and they had us walk around and get cards/ contact information from vendor booths. That's it. We finished in an hour and were there for 3 days. - Within the past year, 3 planners have left, and 4 buyers have left- they have extremely high turnover - They praise mental health but they require employees to come in/ work when they are going through extreme family emergencies (to the point of employees cracking and yelling at their team in front of the entire office) - Leadership has VERY LITTLE experience in retail, so none of their reporting is accurate, nor do the reports they have set up make sense/ are beneficial to the business - All we did as "planners" was take our best guess at what we needed to buy (because we had no accurate reporting) and place orders even though everything was on back order. We repeatedly brought this to the attention of the leadership team and they did not care. Told us to keep buying. - There is zero training. The only training you receive is from other new employees because of the high turn over, so training is non-existent and requires you to figure it out yourself.
