Upper management and the company in general do not care about their employees. They say you are "like family" solely so it's harder for you to speak up when they treat you poorly. The clothes are outrageously overpriced, and I've seen the exact same pieces (since we buy from suppliers) at Target, Francesca's, Kohls, and even Nordstrom for half the price we are selling them. Lots of companies have philanthropy arms, but Altar'd State brags about theirs (which is only 1% most of the week and 10% on Mondays) to justify ripping people off with their prices. Company hides behind their faith-based image while implementing COVID-19 policies that put customers' and employees' safety in jeopardy, solely so they can profit. Store management is treated pretty badly by district/corporate management, and during the time I worked there, store management was like a revolving door. They set sales goals that are completely unrealistic, and we were constantly told it was our fault if every customer wasn't spending $100 in a transaction (even though our store was in a fairly low-traffic mall and most of our customers were teenagers). The customer service style they brag about is basically being overly pushy and fake with everyone who walks in, and we were at one point encouraged to "get the customer's life story," which I think is 100% inappropriate and a violation of boundaries. They now have a test that people must pass before they can be interviewed, and it's ridiculously hard. Very few pass, and we don't have many applicants to begin with, so as a result, our store was constantly severely understaffed. Additionally, several new hires we had who had passed the test ended up being very bad fits for the company. It was extremely disappointing to see so many applicants, some of whom I knew, who were enthusiastic and sweet, be told that they couldn't even be interviewed because they didn't pass the test the way the company wanted them to. What happened to having faith in someone and believing in a growth mindset? What at all is Christ-like about evaluating someone based solely off of a confusing online poll??
