Abercrombie & Fitch reviews

The team assignment you receive will make or break your experience. If your team doesn't like you socially, they will find a way to Move or Remove you quickly. It's very cliquey. Participation in social activities with your team outside of work hours is a must if you want to keep your job. Fights within those friend groups outside the office often make their way into your work life, there is no separation between home and work. Teams within the brands look down on other departments based on perceived status, routinely not inviting "lesser" people into discussions even when applicable. The failure to cooperate with "lesser" departments upkeeps a cycle of false self-importance, further perpetuated by middle management. Middle management has not changed since the era of Mike Jeffries. Department heads, Category Leaders, and most Team Leads have been with the company for 10+ years, and it shows. Despite the old CEO being gone, the same people who endorsed bullying behaviors are still at large, maintaining the same structure there has always been. Make no mistake, they speak highly on their personal rebrand, but the only major change was a change in CEO. Minority employees are often asked to participate in promotional materials, only to be let go months later. (Check out how many people from February's Black History Month advertisements are still employed at the company . . . it speaks for itself) TLDR: - cliquey, dramatic behavior - no separation from home and work life - normalized workplace bullying - lean management structure, little room for upward mobility

-It is really challenging to grow within the company. When you start, they tell you that you have 1-1.5 years until a promotion. This is not true. It can take 2+ years to get promoted, and favoritism is definitely at play. Promotions are strategic and you are often competing against other associates for promotion/title change -No choice over what category you're placed on - this can make or break your experience -Management in design specifically is spread very thin and don't get a lot of daily interaction with them - which can hurt you during performance review process. How can your manager give you a fair performance review if they hardly interact with you? -Pay is great at a glance but hours are long, so is the pay even worth it? Lunch breaks are supposed to be an hour and we were lucky to get 15 minutes for lunch at our desk. It was almost frowned upon to take a full hour for lunch, even though it is required by law. Sometimes I worked from 8:30am-10pm. Design team is way understaffed and I would get texts past working hours from team members about work. Not ideal. It is really hard to set boundaries on the design team when it comes to workload -Extremely fast paced environment. Deadlines are very tight and workload is intense. -On the design team, it was really hard to get off for PTO. My manager would often give me the "let's wait and see" response when requesting off, despite requesting off weeks and even months in advance. They give employees mental health 1/2 days (6-7 a year) but when I tried to actually take them, I was often told no. -I was told at one point that appointments (Dr's) needed to be scheduled (ideally) only on Mondays and Fridays during WFH time, either in the morning or end of day. To me, that is ridiculous. It should be acceptable to take an appointment when you need to. They preach flexibility but it isn't often granted.