Oh boy, where to begin? Unpaid, mandatory training. $30 uniforms, even the first one is not supplied to you. Sales, sales, sales. If you became a therapist to help people, this is not the job for you. I overheard our owner speaking with two of our therapists about an elderly couple that came in for a couples massage-they were from out of town so they couldn't sign up.
Owner "Did they upgrade at all?"
Therapists "No, they just wanted to relax."
Owner "Are they signing up?"
Therapists "No, they are from out of town."
Owner "Then WHY are they HERE?"
She acted as if the client wasn't going to get anything extra, they were wasting her time. And she did this often.
They wanted us to get a product and place it in the clients hands when they came out from their massage so that they'd buy it. If I were a client, this would really get on my nerves. Especially being sold to EVERY TIME they go in for a service.
Also, if your client doesn't show up, they do charge them, but it all goes to the retreat. Not to the therapist, which at least Massage Envy does.
You are either hourly or commission, but will most likely never get hourly. At the same time, they make you give FREE chair massages, to which you are not compensated and expect you to hand out business cards, grassroots sales, on your own time.
And lets say you have 5 massages and a 2 hour break in between, one of those hours will be blocked off for you to clean, i.e. scrubbing the baseboards of the retreat, every once in a while because the owner doesn't want people sitting around (even though they aren't getting paid!). I was forced to do it a handful of times in my 2 month employment there.
I was out of there as soon as I could be. And recommend the same to anyone else. Not to say that management will be the same at every location, but it won't be far from my experience.
