To sum it up, Nordstrom uses a lot of borderline illegal and unprofessional tactics. They know they can continue doing shady things precisely because none of us are paid enough by them to afford suing them. They do things arbitrarily and if you're not watching your back 24/7 and harassing HR every 5 minutes- you will be played out of money, benefits, hours, etc. So I'll bullet point:
* Bait and switch hiring tactics in regards to your compensation. Will hire you based on one set of promises, then change your pay structure with vague reasoning such as "it will help us service the customer" and never admit that they're giving you a pay cut. Misrepresent how much you make in commission given that the return policy eats a good portion of your paycheck.
* Will agree with you on a wage upon hiring, then you discover in your paycheck that you've been placed at a lower wage than agreed upon. And that's good if you catch it, but if you don't- that's going to be your pay. And they don't care. My coworker was placed at a wage not only that wasn't agreed upon, but wasn't even at the LEGAL minimum wage of our city! It was below.
* Working for free- the time in our shifts we spend doing non selling activities is simply inappropriate given that sales employees are paid on commission. Nordstrom has been SUED for this and the employees won, for opening and closing non-selling times that affected their paycheck.
* Benefits are questionable, you can't even get health coverage despite working full time until you've worked a bogus X amount of hours. If your hours dip below 40 hrs (and managers sure love to schedule you RIGHT under that), you lose your health benefits- convenient right? OBVIOUS benefits-giving avoiding tactic for full time employees.
* Allowing fraud to eat up employee's work time (by being forced to attend to a line of people who are all committing fraud) and money (no dummy number to ring these fraudulent purchases under so employees absorb returns).
* Overworking their employees coupled with aggression towards time off or sick time. Ignoring availability.
* HR is there to protect Nordstrom, not you. Remember this.
* Management is primarily incompetent and borderline hostile/petty. Promotions appear to not be based on competency, but on who is friends. Micromanagement (you are lucky if you get a manager who doesn't do this) is offensive for us who are grown adults who don't need to be pestered. Conflict resolution is terrible. Training is poor or non existent, my coworkers trained me. CONSISTENT inconsistency.
* Take no responsibility about the misinformation they spread about their policies which affect our paychecks. Example: for 3 years I had multiple managers tell me what we pay for gratis is the sales tax (8.25%) on the item's retail price. After hundreds of dollars taken out of my paychecks over time, I found that I was being charged INCOME tax which was 30% of the item. They were not concerned at all that they had been LYING to me about how much they've been taking out of my paycheck.
* Lied to my coworker about removing her entire position from the company (FALSE, some stores still had this position) short notice with a tiny 2 week severance pay even though she had been with Nordstrom for a while.
* Will manipulate you into "promotions" which don't benefit you but benefit someone else higher up. Then get pissy when you don't fall for their traps. Sorry, I don't want your dead end promotion.
The main issue is they bank on you not having any real power and treat you as disposable.