Altar'd State reviews

Turn over with staff and leadership

Former Employee, Management Pros: Strong coworkers at the store level who genuinely cared about supporting one another and creating a positive customer experience. The brand aesthetic and creative aspects of the role can also be appealing initially. Cons: The company culture heavily promotes “people first” values publicly, but in practice there was a severe lack of work-life balance and realistic operational expectations. Leadership teams were frequently understaffed and overextended, with managers regularly expected to work excessive hours to compensate for ongoing staffing and operational issues. At one point, I personally worked numerous 13 or 14 (outside of holiday season) hour shifts and stretches of 10 consecutive days without meaningful recovery time. There was constant pressure to meet unrealistic deadlines and expectations, often with insufficient payroll, support, or direction from upper leadership. Even after sacrificing personal time and energy to “fix” ongoing problems, many of the same operational issues persisted for months, creating a feeling that the extra labor was never actually leading to sustainable improvement. The management culture also felt highly performative and emotionally draining. Feedback was often delivered in a way that felt undermining rather than constructive, including instances of frustration being taken out on leaders in front of employees. This made it difficult to effectively lead teams while also maintaining morale and professionalism. The environment ultimately became detrimental to my mental health. Burnout was normalized, boundaries were not respected, and employees were made to feel guilty for needing balance outside of work. The company speaks heavily about culture and wellbeing, but my experience did not reflect those values in practice.