Pros
The discount is cool and the atmosphere is pretty relaxed. Other than that, Journeys is a terrible place to work.
Cons
Where do I even begin.. 1. Journeys sets 2 goals for you to hit. First is your daily sales goal, which is usually pretty easy to hit if you know how to sell shoes. The second is your SOPs (Standards of performance) where a certain percentage of your total sales have to be from socks, accessories like t-shirts and wallets, and multis (selling more than 1 pair of shoes in a single transaction). If you don't hit your SOPs your hours will be cut or you will be fired and they make this point brutally clear. For example, I sold almost $7k last month alone but didn't hit any of my SOPs because it's based on percentage. It's much harder to make 10% of your sales come from socks when you're selling thousands rather than hundreds of dollars each month. Because of this, I've had my hours drastically cut. Another issue with SOPs is with management. Managers will work until they hit all of their SOPs and sometimes their sales goal, and then stop so they don't mess up their percentages. Once they hit their goals, they defer a lot of their small, single shoe sales to the sales associates, messing up their percentages instead of their own. And you're punished for it. Essentially, you're punished if you don't sell enough and you're punished if you sell too much of the wrong thing. 2. There is absolutely no such thing as a pay raise when working at journeys. Management told me if I wanted a pay raise to get promoted. Which is fine, if they'd actually promote from within. In the last 2 months, we've had 1 new manager and 2 new co-managers brought in as new hires instead of promoting sales associates. 3. They make it very clear that you are expendable. Threats of being fired are tossed around for any and every mistake you make. A co-woker I befriended had his hours cut to where he wasn't even scheduled for a month because he was $42 off of his monthly sales goal until he was finally "let go". 4. Management finds any possible way to defer responsibility to their sales associates. For example, they recently started a policy where sales associates are "in charge" of certain sections of the sales floor. They expect these sections to be perfectly displayed and have the correct price and stock number on every pair of shoes. However, the shoes on the sales floor also get sold, leaving holes in the display that need to be filled. If you're not working that day, some one else has to fill that hole and if they mess it up, you will be the one responsible. Managers are not assigned a section so even if they're the one who filled the hole incorrectly, you will be the one who get's written up, not them. 5. Sales associates essentially never see a commission. At journeys, you make either your hourly wage or your 4% commission. I make minimum wage ($7.25) which means I have to sell $181 per hour every hour to even see commission. Managers, however, are paid a base wage and their commission so they steal sales from associates all the time, especially socks and accessories sales.
