Claire's Stores Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Claire's Stores

Pros – *A good job to have for a younger person
*Energetic, trendy and upbeat (if one enjoys kids, it's a plus)

Cons – *Usually understaffed, not good for loss prevention
*Holidays are crazy

Advice to Senior Management – I realize now that at sixteen, I should not have been piercing ears nor should of the Claire's employees be doing so (with that 'plastic gun'). It is unsafe, dirty and should really be done by a professional...which we were not.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Claire's Stores

Pros – Nice discount of 50% off most items, you get to pierce ears, some of the stuff is actually neat, health benefits package in management is pretty decent. Opportunity for hosting parties

Cons – corporate does not give enough hours to keep the store fully operational. expects the SM to work WELL over 40 hours and not kvetch about it and does not provide well-lit comprehensive photos of the floor sets ( pictures dark and hard to see, items in plan-o are sometimes from 3 markdown cycles ago) all the while, the want it 'set to plan-o EXACTLY in about 4 days...during store hours.... often with 1 person on... and you do not have most of the items yet OR you have items they didn't account for.
The policy and procedure manual is huge and vague, training new hires is a joke... "Here. read this HUGE book for 2 hours and do these tests and watch some lame corny dvd's. " And that is not MGR/ASST MGR problem. this is what corporate wants. EP training is not thorough enough, and they have such a rush on key holders to hurry up and get key turned most are still not comfortable piercing kids ears or closing. Company wastes a lot. we have to print up 20 copies or more of end of night paperwork that could be streamlined into 5 pages or less. memo pack is a waste of paper as is signage sent and never used.
Customers get angry when you are piercing ears and left in the store closing by yourself and there is a line at the register, oh, and you still have to do markdowns or whatever else your deadline is for that week. Managers hours count against store operational hours, so yo cannot have a full, trained staff with full hours. Key holders usually have to get a second job, which is unfortunate, the company could just work the hours to have 2 people on, POG set, signage, MD and other compliance (extra training too) could be taken care of. DM's are limited. They (sometimes) are great but have to balance a RM up their butt, or they are horrible and pick on stores that don't suck up.
Dress code is okay, but the seasonal code doesn't allow my girls to wear things that we sell, like chuck taylor lookin sneaks, or fashion denim (in promo posters), save on special holidays. nice orthopaedic trainers are not allowed, even if you are working 12 hours...and those fashion shoes wear out their welcome after 2 hours.
and lastly, greeting and add-on selling ::sigh:: when a customer comes in we are expected to go through this ridiculous script and give EVERYONE a basket. if you are secret shopped without this ridiculous greeting melee (that most customers find annoying and intrusive) you could get fired. I do like the shopping baskets, and greeting customers (you feel like you helped them out by locating and suggesting items) BUT forcing baskets and out-of-touch trend greetings on them gets customers leaving not buying. Cashwrap items we are expected to sell are overpriced and not an add-on as some are 3-6 dollars and usually things people don't need. We are expected to say 3 add ons and hear NO before we give up. phone greeting? lame. i run out of breath and get hung up on countless times before i get through the script. a simple thank you for calling claires where the customer comes first or akin is sufficient.

Advice to Senior Management – listen to your employees instead of talking at them. managers can read a memo pack, don't read it to them. field their questions and listen. managers like to be heard. ask the key holders too! stop wasting items then say we are on a raise freeze. give more hours for stores to be fully operational during POG sets etc. survey your employees on what THEY think of the store. It is hard to work in a store you aren't proud of or frustrated with.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Claire's Stores

Pros – Some of the upper management (District Managers and up) are kind, respectful, helpful.

Theres a lot of locations so usually transferring isn't too bad if you need to

One of the best employee discounts Ive ever heard of.

Generally you stay only half hour after the store closes and you start half hour before the store opens for the opening shifts.

Cheap price points usually means a lot of customers if you like that.

Weekly memopackets are seen by everyone in the store and not just kept for management eyes only. Itsoften very useful.

Paid vacation! This starts six months after you get hired, not a year after.

If you're management there are bonus oppurtunities at least once or twice a quarter.

Every once in a great while there are contests where you can win gift cardsor cash

You get hour long breaks for most shifts that are long enough.

registers are nice and simple to use. Plus theyre touch screen

Cons – Pay sucks Big time. But its not the worst. Starting for associates is still min wage for most places. Considering the crap load of work you do you are seriously underpaid. Everyone is underpaid. You do almost everything in the store, no matter what position, and they still dont give u wat u deserve. And bonuses usually arent that great when you earn them. Sometimes they can be pretty good.

Depending, theres a lot of working off the clock depending on your manager and how much you wanna get things done on time cuz often there is just not enough pay roll hours. If you stay 10 minutes late cuz it gets busy your manager will have to take it out of another shift, meaning you might have to come 10 min later on your next shift or something depending on how your manager does it cuz managers cannot go over the payroll hours theyre given each week. they will get written up for it. Some managers will be sneaky and have u work those extra hours but put it in the cimputer next week cuz u cant switch hours with other weeks. You dont use your payroll hours, the company will give you less.

The weekly memopacks are constantly wrong and have a lot of corrections about the last memopack which is irritating

The company is never satisfied and for some reason constantly changes how the store looks and stuff while hardly giving you any extra hours, if they even give you extra hours at all, to get it done. They unrealistically expect you to make such short deadlines for big projects while still hounding you about making your goals and doing customer service. Ontop of that because they dont give you extra hours and when they do its maybe five or six, you cant really do any of these projects when the store is closed so you have to struggle customers, ear piercings, prevent theft AND do your projects at the same itl It is absolutely ridiculous. The company wont give your store much hours in general so its hard to run your store sometimes when its busy and only one person is working a couple hours straight. Your hours are supposed to be based on how well your store makes its goals but even then they dont offer a whole lot of hours if they do decide to give you a few more hours to reward that. And when they do its not much more. For a lot of claires stores theres often only one person on the sales floor and it sucks when its you. Piercings can take a while, especially when parents are stupid and have their babies or young kids get their ears pierced. When a worker starts the piercing process, they cannot leave and sometimes lines at the register can build up or groups of ppl will come in and try steal and you can lose out on money that way. It can be hard to make store goal sometimes because of this. And again that means less hours which means stuff like that will happen more often.

Ear piercings. Dont get me started on this. Sometimes it can be fun. Sometimes not. Sometimes (rarely though) it can take you an hour or more to do pierce one person cuz theyre too young and scared and all you can do is stand there with your gun in your gloved hands waiting and waiting and waiting.

Shipment can be crazy. You get shipment almost every weekday and depending on the volume of your store you can get a ton everyday without it being christmas season. The company ridiculously double wraps almost all the jewelry which creates a lot of unneccessary trash and in the end wastes a lot of time. The register area is generally not too big so sometimes you have to block merchandise while you put out shipment. The company rule is to have all shipment out by the end of the night. Again, with all the projects you'll be doing and customer servicing and little coverage it can turn out impossible sometimes and then at the end of the night you have to shove everything into the backroom (there usually isnt a seperate stockroom. Hardly any stores get stock associates so everyone has to maintain stock themselves which can be hard cuzy theyre so much jewelry usually and not much coverage so you need everyone on the sales floor and not in the backroom.

I will say though that before the economy hit Claires was actually a pretty good place to work. And it seemed that they were slowly getting better. Its gotten only slightly better since then in some respects, like some stores are getting a little bit more hours but still not like before despite the increases in sales.

Advice to Senior Management – Just dont bother workinghere. Youll most likely get paid better and have better support and resources somewhere else.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Claire's Stores

Pros – Great disocunt, fun environment. Corporate definitely keeps field executives informed of changes and communicates frequently. Currently developing new tools to help Store Managers be better business people and ease the burden on District Managers.

Cons – While you are informed sometimes the information can be overwhleming and misinterpreted. There is very little work/life balance. Upper management is not very understanding or appreciative of the amount of work that is done. Training is minimal at best.

Advice to Senior Management – Treat store level associates with more respect and give them the necessary time to be trained to do the job correctly.

Current Employee – been working at Claire's Stores

Pros – Claires was a girl's store. I have a daughter so I had a blast buyiner her stuff there! You must love kids to work at Claires. The bonuses were AWESOME and even though floor sets were challenging...I loved doing them. I enjoyed the visuals and operations were very easy.

Cons – The Regionals and coporate always changed the store around from the way the planogram was set to maximize business. They emphasized location too much and wasted a lot of hours changing their mind. They made you feel bad if you could not read their mind as to how it should be set. Particularly if you had an odd shaped store and could not follow the plano exactly. Freight was constant and overwhelming and was hard to do while working with very limited payroll. They want you to stop what you're doing when customers enter your store but they also want you to keep working on freight. Emails would say focus on sales only.....and get all that freight out....and do all the plano changes by the deadlines. Often they moved the deadlines up and rushed you. Very stressful but it could be rewarding to see your beautiful store when you completed the plano and all the freight. Even if you had to work days straight and pull several over night shifts just to finish!!

Advice to Senior Management – I have heard they have changed upper management and geared the business to be all about sales. I am so glad to hear that and my advice would be to keep up the good work. Dont bombard stores with freight markdowns and plano all at the same time. I know the freight will always be constant but the markdowns added to freight were a challenge especially if done during business hours.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend