The idea of my job was awesome. However, outside of the job itself was not so awesome.
I’ve witnessed a pretty big turnover in my 11 months of employment. The company went from having about 20 stylists to roughly 10 and by the end of my employment there was pretty much a brand new team of stylists. If we weren’t disesteemed by being expected to work almost a 7 day work week or putting in extra over time resulting into 10 hour work days. Which did not lead to a healthy work/life balance for me. We were stricken with being “under worked”. There would be periods of a few weeks where we’d be sent home early because there was not enough work to go around. I’d be sent home about 3 hours early twice a week during these periods. I was losing a good 12 hours off my pay checks not to mention the pay was already low for the amount of work that was demanded.
Co-workers were decent and I did not have any serious issues with them. Although, I often felt as if I were in middle school when having to deal with them. We would every now and then have meetings about “how to improve our company culture” all of which improvements seemed to be inviting everyone out to drinks or giving away free products instead of actually solving the issues at hand. I do not care about being invited to activities outside of work or if I’m sitting by myself at lunch or not. I am there to work, expand my skills, and support myself financially. What I cared about were if the concerns about the actually job itself were being effectively solved. There seemed to be a very frustrating blur between what’s actually work related and what’s not.
I often felt like I was being purposely excluded and secluded from opportunities, such opportunities were given to new employees whom have only been there barely 2 weeks when I’ve been there for 6 months at that time. I’ve had a manager slam a door directly in my face. I had a meeting where the person who was supposed to be conducting the meeting did not show up at all, instead I found her laughing and eating pizza with other employees during my valuable time she has wasted without explanation or a simple apology to show that she had at least an ounce of decency. Being the only person of color it definitely felt like I was being targeted.
Again, reiterating the fact I never felt like I was in a professional work environment dealing with ethical people. For lack of better example, I felt like I was in middle school dealing with bratty children. I have too much integrity, skills, and education to have continued working in such an absurd environment.
But just because my experience was unpleasant doesn’t mean anyone else’s will be. I think this job is a decent start for someone who wants to get their foot in the door of the fashion industry.
