Pros
So its an option for students or anyone who wants a flexible timetable jobs like parents or older people. You do get a 50% discount as well as 5 free products when you start and other free stuff later on so if you enjoy the products that is definitely a plus. The shifts are on the shorter side (4-6/7hrs) so its not too tiring and the job itself is not very difficult. Most customers are lovely and just want help finding a few things they want to buy, usually with gifts or skincare stuff. The product knowledge isn’t extensive, it can be learned in like the first 1-2 weeks you work there and the formulas usually have 2-3 key ingredients which are good to know and then also what sort of skin or hair type its suited for. There are some fun parts like getting to make displays and being creative with signs which is pretty amusing. Also there is no dress code so you can pretty much do anything in terms of individuality which is nice.
Cons
It can be an incredibly frustrating job because the management treat the consultants as if they were idiots and are condescending. I had multiple times during my first month where I didn’t know how to do something yet (like apply a discount or something) and I got such rude replies and they quickly did it on the screen without me even seeing it. How am I meant to learn from that? The training was also disorganised, I was only shown the skincare products and had to figure everything else out myself and was never shown how to do half the stuff on the tills so I had to just try and figure that out while I was serving customers. This wasn’t my first retail job but I can imagine that if someone was working in retail here for the first time they would be really lost because of the lack of training. The management definitely have favorites and they openly admit it!? I had one member of management refer to another consultant as her baby and her favorite. Also while the company is definitely pro-planet and encourage recycling and environmental awareness the management don’t. There is a huge amount of waste made everyday and the recycling is a joke. Management mock environmental activists which is ironic seeing as how we supposedly work for an environmental friendly company. The actual company seems to be trying to do good and I can appreciate the effort but due to the management at the actual stores these practices aren’t really doing much. We got “training” on how to deal with customers making unwanted advances at the staff and were told that it was our fault because we were being nice to them. Really confusing seeing as how we are told to be nice to customers. We also have sales goals like all stores which is fine although they are almost always unachievable and completely unrealistic for our store. There is also goals for how many products and how much value of products customers buy and we are chewed out if we are not super pushy with customers to buy 3+ products and £20+ value. I can see customers getting frustrated on the daily with these pushy tactics when they just want to buy one item. We also have to sign people up for these memberships cards which barely anybody wants to sign up for but we are told to keep pushing them. I had a customer say no to signing up for the card 3 times so I just dropped it and then later got chewed out for not selling it enough. Most of the time people just want to browse alone and pick up 1-2 items and leave and I just feel like we are bothering them and pushing so much onto them that they are understandably frustrated. Even if the tactic works and we get them to buy all this extra stuff I feel like they only say yes because they just feel uncomfortable and will probably not return to our store.