Victoria's Secret Stores Reviews

I worked at Victoria's Secret Stores part-time

Pros – The employee discount. Nothing else was worth it. Maybe the testers that we would get for free, but they SUCK

Cons – THE PANTY BAR! having to constantly fix after messy customers
Can't use your discount on sale items.
Managers don't even know how the run the store! They are clueless of what the Brands expectations are.
Overworked by Managers, even if it's your time to leave they will keep you as long as possible.

Advice to Senior Management – Get new managers that know what they are doing. Stop over working your employees! They have a life as well. AND maybe if you treat them right your internal shrink percentage will go down!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Victoria's Secret Stores part-time for more than a year

Pros – Gratis, Flexible Hours,Fun other associates to work with

Cons – Working with women can get extremely catty. Was promised a position by DM and the store manager gave it to someone else. I have been at the store the longest

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to your employees and give more opportunities for promotion within the company

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Victoria's Secret Stores part-time for less than a year

Pros – Liked being with all the great clothes!

Cons – Employees and Brand Managers were not professional and considered their job leisure "girl talk" time.

Advice to Senior Management – Hire some more professional, dedicated managers!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Victoria's Secret Stores full-time for less than a year

Pros – The discount, even though it was only 30%. And that one rare manager tat was great, and that I'm friends with now that I don't work there.

Cons – The entire management team was terrible, the overnights were terrible, and the way they treat the staff was terrible. I was part of the processing team. Which meant I had to be at the store at 6AM, I had two other jobs and was a full time student at the time so it was the only time I could work. This job is constant work, you are never just standing around. The store does not have air conditioning on at this point so it is hot as hell in there and you have to wear all black. I felt like I was going to pass out multiple times.

Working more than the people who stand around during their whole shift and answer questions, I still got paid less then them. The overnights were worse because you would be scheduled from 8PM until 4AM (8 hours typically, it did vary), and end up staying until 6AM with no option to leave and again NO AIR CONDITIONING. It was literally slave labor. I got out as fast as I could. Also, it is drama infested. The people that work there (minus a few) are snippy and gossip way too much.

Advice to Senior Management – Change EVERYTHING about your work ethic, because it sucks. Or hire descent managers and maybe you'll keep an effective staff. I'm a hard worker and their were terrible employees being promoted to pointless, made up positions over me. They probably knew I would say no. Get some morals and treat your staff accordingly.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Victoria's Secret Stores part-time for less than a year

Pros – There was a 30% discount
free items to try
good training
Your working for a well known brand

Cons – Managers who don't care about their employees only sales
late or early floor sets
girls that work their are too focused on gossip than work

Advice to Senior Management – Associates gossip so bad I heard of one bragging about getting a SM fired because a group of them didn't like her. I thought that was red flag enough to leave.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Victoria's Secret Stores

Pros – decent employee discount and quality product. Sweet promotional discounts as well.

Cons – Folding underwear is a nightmare. Making everything perfectly organized when closing takes forever because of it. Also if you don't make quotas for the day as a store, they cut your hours, which makes you into a shark and or poor. Also the pay is lousy to begin with.

Advice to Senior Management – lead by example, not by threats

I worked at Victoria's Secret Stores part-time for more than a year

Pros – -Become great friends with other associates
-Good retail experience, learn how to correctly interact with customers and deal with sensitive topics and interactions with customers.
-30% discount of all items (except sale) $15 bundles and buy in's

Cons – -One week you would be working all 7 days, another week you would be working one day.
-Constantly hiring new people while the senior associates are getting their shifts cut
- Managers getting away with almost everything. They would show up late to their shifts and not even get reprimanded for it. They would call out for their shifts an hour before it starts and it would be "no big deal" Managers not wanting to take responsibility for their own mistakes.
- Not getting breaks when it was time to get them. Waiting until the very end of your shift to give you a break.
- Waiting until the very last minute to approve your availability change. Sorry guys, but we have REAL lives. It isn't based around VS. School and our personal lives sometimes are MORE important than being available to VS's every beck and call.
- Scheduling associates outside of their availability and then making the associates "figure it out" or they would get in trouble.
- Managers being mean to associates on the floor. No constructive criticism here, just plain ugly mean.
- High level of stress. Pressure to sell the angel card. No really "good job" if you do sell them, more just "well you need to get more" comments.
- Managers are more concerned with the customer than the associates.
- Rude customers who want you to wait hand and foot on them, and then don't even say thank you.
-Rough closings. Managers would not have associates recover anything throughout the day, so the closers would have to close the WHOLE store in the scheduled hour and a half. Associates would be there till 11 or even midnight closing the store because there would be so much to do.
-Call in shifts and shift extensions were annoying, and frustrating when your managers say no to keeping your extension earlier, and then change their mind after you're already supposed to be off.
- Wanting you to be available to close every night and then getting angry at you when you cannot.

Advice to Senior Management – Seriously, if your managers aren't showing up and doing their job, and are clearly slacking, FIRE THEM. Stop playing favorites! Treat your associates like they are real people! Be sensitive to the fact that they have lives and families and probably go to school. Your associates are the ones who are going to be selling the items and making your goals, if you don't treat them nicely or fairly or even give them a "are you okay? do you need a break?" like you actually care, you aren't going to do very well with selling. The associates are the face of your company and store, if they dread going to their job every day because of poor management, obviously the store isn't going to do well.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Victoria's Secret Stores full-time for more than a year

Pros – Perks like free items when launching

Cons – No technology to help with processes, some stores dont even have computers in the offices
Company is not focused on team retention or development

Advice to Senior Management – Update your technology and have HR work inside your stores to ensure the team is being treated right. A lot of old managers get away with being disrespectful and unprofessional all the time

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Victoria's Secret Stores part-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Employee discount (30% off regular priced items. Nothing on sale or promotion)
Lively atmosphere, smells good.
Good if you want to work for something to do, not just make money.

Cons – The pay is a big one. You make minimum wage or slightly above, and while you can get a raise yearly (during your review) I never knew anyone who got more than 26 cents. Often you'll get less. That isn't terrible if it happen more often, but since you start at such a low rate, a twenty cent raise once a year isn't much to live on.

The hours. Shifts are super inconsistent. During holidays they will overwork you, and the second season is over they start cutting shifts like crazy. I would go weeks with getting no more than call-in shifts.

Call-in shifts! You have to call-in two hours before you are scheduled to see if they need you. They also have on-calls, an example shift would look like this: 2:00-6:00 on-call till 8. So you could be off at 6, or they could keep you until 8. Even without the oncalls, I was never going home on time. I was often there at least half an hour past my off time, because there would be go backs that you weren't allowed to do until you were off.

The managers were catty. Every year employees take an anonymous survey about what they think about the workplace. When my store had the results come in, the managers were not happy to see that we employees had not scored our store very well. They spent most of a meeting trying to get people to admit to who said what. They were even writing down what people said! The survey is anonymous for a reason. Our managers said that we didn't understand the questions, and that is why they got a negative score. Instead of using the survey how it was intended, they acting like we were dumb.

Very, very little training. Especially cashiers. We were thrown at the front to fend for ourselves. Often they would hire new cashiers during holiday, but they would not train them. When the new cashiers were slow, they were yelled at and belittled over the headsets for every employee to hear. We had cashwrap leads, but they never did anything. They rarely even rang.

Inconsistent managers. One wants you to do something this way, another yells at you for doing it that way. They aren't clear about what they want. When the GM closed she would make sure the people she liked closed with her and they would just hang out. Opening the next morning was more like closing, because the store would be an absolute mess. If another manager were to do that though, they would get shouted at.

No opportunity to move up. In the three years I worked there, the only change to happen in management was a GM left. This allowed two managers to move slightly, but that was it. Those in upper management rarely ever move up, which means YOU do not move up. There just aren't any positions. During holiday there are some opportunities to become an elevated employee, but those positions are temporary. You will not get to keep it.

Lastly, the turn around! I constantly had no idea who I was working with, because people came and went like crazy. In one day we had six people just stop showing up. The next day we had three. A lot of new hires are 18.

Advice to Senior Management – Talk to each other about how you want things handled.

Train! I can't tell you how much easier and smoother our holidays would have gone had everyone been trained better.

Give people recognition! A girl I worked with got 17 angel credit cards, and didn't even get a "great job" or "thank you!" Credit cards benefit the managers, not the employees. She met the credit card goal for the entire week in one shift and the managers couldn't be bothered to at least tell her "good job."

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Victoria's Secret Stores

Pros – sometimes you get free items and good discount

Cons – they pay too little and expect too much work

Advice to Senior Management – give incentives to trying to sell the vs credit card