Pros
Discount I guess. Lax dress codes.
Cons
I worked for the company for 3 years from 2014 to 2017 and when I worked there my biggest concerns were the way they gaslight management, underpay associates, and do nothing to allow a healthy work like balance. When my first son was born I was told the day of his birth that I needed to drive an hour away to my store to open it so my co-manager (asm) could have a day off. That’s fine, she should have a day off, what wasn’t cool was making me choose between being with my wife and newborn on his first day in the world or keeping the job I relied on, when there were 6 other stores all within the same radius that I traveled daily that could have loaned managers. This also after I worked for 3.5 months open to close with 3 days off total in the entire 3.5 months when my co-manager had her baby. Cut to 3 years after my departure and my wife began working for the company, pulled in with promises of how the culture had changed and how a new focus on compensation and work-life balance had taken central focus. Despite my concerns about the culture and nature of the job, I gave her all of my support and told her to see what the job offered and the first year it went relatively well. She received awards for her work and she saw some decent pay because she was improving a store that needed a focused manager and that allowed her to bonus. After the first year as the economy began to change and the world adapted to post covid settings malls saw less and less foot traffic and so the sales numbers started to decline. I watched her start to experience the same things I did. The DM would gaslight her and openly talk badly about other managers and give details of terminations (a huge HR no no) as a tool of intimidation to basically tell her that she was just as disposable as the others despite breaking several records for her store. The DM was constantly applying pressure to hire new people to ‘build a bench’ which is where they expect to have a line up of staff ready to take management jobs, but when potential candidates would interview they would turn down the offer because of pay. No candidate for management was going to come in on the promise of better pay at some point. When my wife presented this to the DM she was told ‘we offer a dollar more than minimum wage’ (8.25/hr) meanwhile the average hourly rate in the area is 14.75 for entry level positions. My wife worked through the duration of her second pregnancy and was told that she would not receive even minor accommodations and was expected to move shipment and climb ladders excessive of 10 ft y’all at 8 months pregnant. When her doctor finally put their foot down and told her she shouldn’t return to work her DM complained about it to other management and her staff and spoke about replacing her. At the end of her time with the company after losing staff and not having anyone to replace them because even high schoolers (which is who they tell them to target for hiring) were coming in and laughing at the pay rate, she was working 50 hour weeks and her DM told them in an incredibly abusive email that they’d be expected to work 6 days a week. When my wife mentioned that her work life balance was already strained and she couldn’t do that, her loyalty was questioned. I now make much more than Journeys pays and I finally convinced her to leave the job and just days after she left her team, that was very loyal to her because of how well she treated them, told her the DM was discussing her departure and dogging her. Nothing had actually changed at all.
