Columbia Sportswear reviews

-Extreme lack of communication. News and updates or anything important seems easily lost in the shuffle between Corporate to Management down to associates. This tends to result in confusion among associates and management about even the most basic policies, products. and procedures. Ultimately, the customer is the one who suffers when they hear 2 or 3 conflicting facts about a product or a policy. This also becomes a problem with the day to day duties of work. When management is not all on the same page, things can (and sometimes do) quickly become chaotic. -No Leadership. The store manager is far too self-involved to worry about the associates or even the morale of the team as a whole. Instead of listening to a legitimate concern of an employee, the door is swiftly shut on the subject entirely and the issue is never resolved. This is also a common practice when an associate expresses their work availability before schedules are made. Frequent scheduling mistakes are made, even after a form, specifically designed for availability changes, has been established. An important aspect of leadership is to lead by example. It is very difficult to follow the example of a store manager that is constantly late, takes unacceptably long lunch breaks, spends much of the office time on Facebook, ignores employee concerns and blatantly lies to associates. -Unprofessional management techniques. Management doesn't seem to have any clue how to handle certain situations. Lies have become a more prominent method used by management to keep the employees "in line". Corporate has established a secret shop once a month in its stores to examine and evaluate the performance of the associates. Which is fine, however, management has now decided to hide any news of a secret shop from the employees for fear that the employees will "slack off" once the secret shop has taken place for that month. This is not only insulting to the associates, but shows a serious amount of distrust, and makes the employees feel highly unappreciated. Instead of handling a minor problem on the sales floor professionally and efficiently, the store manager would instead rather scream at the employee in front of the customer. This again is where the customer is the one who ultimately suffers. -No advancements. In the little over 2 years that I have worked for the company, there has only been one promotion within the store. There are no full-time employees (other than management) and it has become abundantly clear that any form of raise or advancement within the company, is simply not an option. The employees are constantly hearing complaints from management about payroll and how there isn't enough and how difficult it is to manage. Then, instead of promoting one of their own well deserving employees, they turn around and spend the extra money for an outside hire. -Questionable Corporate directives are carried out...without question. Corporate will sometimes send down an order that bares no logical reasoning. Unfortunately, the management within the store doesn't seem to make an effort to find out the reasoning or at least gather more information. This results in, for example, the associates mindlessly counting the number of men and woman that walk into the store. This doesn't seem too bad unless you understand that the store is already equipped with automatic counters to keep track of customer conversion.

-The store is currently sorely lacking in leadership and morale, which starts at the top. The store manager is consistently several hours late to work, leaves several hours early, spends uncountable hours in the office on Facebook, reading Chicago Breaking News, making personal phone calls, or talking to policemen and firefighters who visit the store on their breaks. All employees are constantly made aware of how difficult life is, how horrible it is to run a Columbia store, and how awful corporate is, making it extremely difficult for us to enjoy our jobs. If concerns are expressed, sales associates and lower level managers are shouted at and labeled as "complainers" and "gossipers" who "should be thankful to have any job at all". All blame is directed towards corporate management, sometimes dishonestly. Outright lies are not uncommon in attempted saves of face. Calls and emails to corporate HR concerning all of the above concerns have either been completely ignored or ineffectively followed up on, as the behavior continues to this day. -There is absolutely zero oversight of the stock team, who as a result spend most of their time listening to music and playing on their phones, leaving sales associates and floor supervisors to do their jobs for them. When a member of our visual team asked for a raise for doing the stock team's job, they were told "that's just called helping out." -Regardless of your sales numbers, work ethic, or loyalty, don't expect a promotion. During interviews, management will promise the possibility of upward mobility. However, since opening in February 2010, precisely one employee has gotten a promotion. All other management opportunities have gone to outside hires, even when multiple internal candidates were qualified. -The same goes for raises. Upon hiring, associates are told they will be up for raises yearly. However, this only means a 10 to 20 cent/per hour increase (cent, as in pennies, not percent). And this has only happened once in the 2.5 years since opening (raises were all postponed indefinitely in January of 2012). -There are no full-time jobs available except for management. -New hires are mostly trained by other sales associates. No selling techniques or insightful product knowledge come from management. -Corporate management visits can be troublesome. Aggressive sales tactics are encouraged and modeled, which often result in annoyed customers. I have apologized to many customers who were badgered by a corporate manager trying to display an overaggressive style of "customer service". -Corporate directives are sometimes questionable. When informed that a particular shoe model had a tendency to quickly grow mold, stores were told by corporate to simply wipe the mold out of the shoes and then place them back on the sales floor.