It all depends on whether your manager likes you. Not your potential, your strengths or weaknesses or career goals
Pros
You truly are in control of your paycheck. If you are a personable person who has excellent customer service skills and a lot of patience, it is a great and rewarding career. There is a lot of personal satisfaction in making a great sale. It's a career/job that does look god on a resume and a lot of transferable skills into another career or job. You meet a lot of nice co-workers and overall it is a fun environment.
Cons
First of all, while to an extent you do have control over your paycheck and commission-based pay has many advantages, when the place is a ghost-town during weekdays it's a big bummer. There are times that not a soul walks through certain departments for hours at a time. And if you got a lot of returns that day--good luck making your sales goals. You can apply for a certain department but HR will place you in a different one, which I think isn't always the best for everyone. I think a lot of your experience depends upon who you have as a department manager and if they personally like you. In my experiences and from what I have observed, them personally liking you or not is based on a bunch of immature high-school-esque drama. Rarely do they prefer or like someone or treat someone with respect because of their selling skills, potential, desire to succeed, or willingness to learn. They like or don't like you based on how you dress and whether you are someone they would hang out with outside of work. It's very childish and they make this very clear. There are some managers at this location who are very nice and seem to treat their department with respect but some don't even treat their employees like human beings--even if they are hard workers, make sales goals, and have desire/potential/willingness to learn and succeed with the company. Some managers will steal sales from associates--its like they don't even want you to succeed! While others will coach you and give you all the training you need. Another thing is that there isn't a lot of formal training when it comes to selling and if your manager doesn't like you, they aren't exactly jumping out of their chair to help you succeed or answer your questions or concerns. If Nordstrom wants career work, then managment should grow up and act more professional and give the training associates need and want. Some managers are bad at perceiving their employees. If you don't make your sales goals they assume/tell you it's because you don't care, don't try, and shouldn't be working in that environment. In some cases, this may be true for some associates. But many do try, do care, and want to be better. Managers should try harder to help these people. They wanted the position as managers and coaching their associates is in the job description. They shouldn't just help the associates they want to help and say go screw to the rest. Very unprofessional. One last thing--at the Farmington, CT location there are a lot of creepy men that shop there or creep outside the building. If you are a female you deal with a lot of just pathetic creeps saying stuff or looking at you. Lots of stalkers. Loss Prevention and your department manger dont care. You can tell them what happens and as long as it's a paying customer--they don't care.