Nordstrom reviews

The returns, they affect your pay enormously. They can be out of your control 90% of the time and devesating to your income. It is their reputation of accepting returns and they can affect your pay up until 1 year of the purchase. This for me was difficult.

The customer abuse was horrible. People know Nordstrom is known for the good service, but they don't want you talking to them at the same time. They make it hard to do your job. On several occasions I was witness to screaming from customers to employees and management usually did nothing about it. Promotions are based on popularity. If you weren't good enough friends with the person above you, the store manager, or the regional, then you could forget about a promotion. The ones who were hired were the ones hired in who looked cute and had nice clothes that made fast drinking buddies with the managers. The pay is horrible. You work on commission and when you work in a recession and everyone hates to buy anything, you get no money that moth. When you have a slow period, you get written up and then fired. You are constantly stressed to keep your sales numbers up, but when it's clear you won't do well, you want to work less hours because the fewer hours with low numbers, the better...but then you risk losing all of your benefits. Returns effect your sales numbers. Nordstrom takes everything back. Everything. So when someone buys an expensive outfit for a night on the town and then returns it a week later worn out and smelling, you take it back. Only your sales go down and then you have to have the uncomfortable talk with the manager about it. The speech, "It only takes one customer for a good day" is said too often. As is, "Everything evens out eventually." I don't want to wait for it to even out to a bad pay when I was promised high volume and high traffic. People are open to have you talk to them at any time, but even the store manager and h.r. department is in their own cliques and 'private' knowledge never stays that way for very long. You are required to work so many days...Required so many weekends, including Sundays. Required for so many closing shifts. Required to work all through Anniversary. It's almost impossible to have any form of work/life balance. You can't refuse a promotion offer if it's not the direction you want go in because you will be black-listed from consideration for anything else. Ever. Management is wishy-washy. You should always do *this* and then you do it and it doesn't work so you hear, "never do *that* always do *this* instead." High stress. Low pay. Not worth it.