The pay is pretty low compared to other retailers out there. Pay varies by store but don't expect more then around $10/hr. Shifts are long too and managers will try to hold you over if the store is busy when you are supposed to leave (if you challenge them though they usually back off), meal/breaks are skipped unless you advocate for yourself or just walk off the sales floor to take one, and you will sometimes get called in the night before expected to report with as little as 12 hours notice. Also, at least in my experience, I was told the temp experience would be from early November through till mid January. So I was anticipating, for budgeting reasons to have a job for about 8-9 weeks. The actual term of employment ended up being from late November to a few days after the New Year. A 8-9 week term is a lot different then a 5-6 week term when you are counting on make money during the few weeks that you are not being put on the schedule.
Also don't expect to call out and keep your job even if you are sick with a doctors note. One call out was enough to get terminated (which was usually done by just removing your shifts and letting you figure it out). This didn't happen to me but happened to one co-worker who had to go to the ER on Christmas Eve and missed her shift. She brought in a return to work note and other paperwork but was told by HR to go home for the day. Never saw her again and heard they just cancelled all of her remaining temp shifts.
Being "let go" was also annoying. Again, was told most temps would be employed through till mid January with the possibility of continuing on after that. I showed up to work on January 3rd, put in 2 hours (after commuting for 30 minutes), and was brought into a conference room with about 10 other temps after that. HR told us we were done with our "assignments" but would get paid for our full shift (which was a lie...complained to corporate later and ended up getting paid for the additional 6 hours..a victory that after taxes amounted to about $40), then got sent home. To top it off two loss prevention guys walked us out like we were going to steal the entire store. Seemed overly cruel especially when the next day (or even next hour) I could have just returned as a normal customer.
Training was also a fiasco. You spend about 4 hours watching videos then are told you will get one-on-one training on the floor. That never happened. I was just placed a a register and told to "figure it out". Customers would get annoyed when I couldn't complete complicated transactions and the registers are essentially 6-8 year old computers that fail occasionally.
If you need a few hundred bucks a week during the holiday season and/or shop at Macys, can tolerate a lot of you know what, not a bad temp job. Just keep your head down and don't pretend to care because no one in management does either.
