Crate & Barrel Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Crate & Barrel part-time for less than a year

Pros – great people, great product, closes earlier than most retailers

Cons – MANAGEMENT IS TERRIBLE! Too much pressure to be perfect without enough training. I have been here for nine months and I have not been trained in furniture, but I am pressured to sell it everyday. Horrible leadership skills.

Advice to Senior Management – Make sure that the managers at the store take necessary precautions to learn how to be better managers!! SERIOUSLY!

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

Current Employee – been working at Crate & Barrel part-time for less than a year

Pros – Great place to work, nice co-workers, wonderful products and a great atmosphere to work in.

Cons – Management is disorganized quite a bit and the ladies seem a bit underprepared for things. They also play a wonderful game of FAVORITES! Kiss some ass and you'll get far here.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to your employees, we have a lot of great ideas and are probably more qualified that you are to do your job.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Crate & Barrel full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – The people at C&B are fun and they make working at the stores quite enjoyable. The store that I worked at had a lot of people who had been there for many years, and that says a lot about a retail store to have so many people who've worked there for so long.

Cons – Job responsibilities and titles have changed over the past year or two and many people have not responded well to the differences in how things are now done and some of the employees have left due to these changes.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Crate & Barrel full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – People, product, presentation, discount, benefits

Cons – New owners are changing the structure of how the business is run; it's become a sales organization with emphasis on email- and phone-capture, as well as, hawking their high interest rate in-house credit card. Long-term employees are no longer valued for their experience and wealth of knowledge. New ownership wants to eliminate the full-time workers, who earn a higher hourly rate and replace them with part-time workers at minimum wage with no benefits. They don't value loyalty like the previous owner did.

Advice to Senior Management – Get out of the office and meet your employees personally; don't send a video message to each location and think that this gives you a connection to those on the front line who work hard every day to support the business.

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

Former Employee – worked at Crate & Barrel full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Good friends to work with, great discounts, flexible hours. Used to be a wonderful, employee friendly place to work. Everyone worked together as a team from the top management down to the seasonal employees. After Gordon gave up control and Sascha took over it seemed that the positive aspects of Crate would continue.

Cons – The management structure has changed greatly over the last few years--since Gordon left!!!
Not employee friendly and NO security! The restructure was probably necessary, but not very
well thought out and not implemented in a way that showed the employees that they mattered.
It seems that the only thing of interest to Crate is the bottom line numbers, not keeping valuable employees.

Advice to Senior Management – Please go back to the employee friendly store that you used to have! Restructure is fine, but don't forget the people that worked hard to make the store great!

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

Former Employee – worked at Crate & Barrel part-time for less than a year

Pros – great discount and great co-workers; cool stuff to sell

Cons – Not enough hours;low pay;management had favorites

Advice to Senior Management – try to focus a little an your sales force or else you wil end up with a revolving door of employees

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Crate & Barrel part-time for more than 7 years

Pros – The store I work at for most part management is wonderful. The discount is good.

Cons – The store has reduce all sales associates to part time and no benefits. There is no room for growth in the company.

Advice to Senior Management – Re think how you treat your employees.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Crate & Barrel full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – It's been said before by many of the reviews here. The people you work side-by-side with are great. The benefits are standard for the retail sector. While many may complain about the previous pay scale, a jobs a job; if you don't like the pay, don't work there. That philosophy applies to any company you choose to work for. Aside from the that, the current pay scale IS competitive with other retail jobs.

Cons – As has been said before by several reviews, there is a clique at the store and area(district) level. While this exists to some degree at all companies, the cliques are Crate & Barrel are the most extreme I've ever seen at any company I have worked for. There is a clique policy that they can do no wrong; this means standing around discussing non-work related matters for lengthy amounts of time, complaining to management in their clique when something doesn't go their way, and covering for each other when they need to run personal errands while on the clock.

The company has a detriment of official policies regarding many practices. While there have been recent attempts to create company guidelines pertaining to work practices, there are literally no policies regarding personal workplace behavior.

1. Every company I have worked for with the exception of Crate & Barrel prohibits fraternization between salaried management and hourly-employees outside of the workplace. There is a salient reason for this policy, to limit favoritism as much as possible. I would encourage the Crate & Barrel Board of Directors or the Board of Directors at the Otto Group to sincerely consider implementing this policy.

2. Discussions in the workplace, whether on- or off-the-clock, should always be professional. There is no need to discuss anything of a sexual nature while on company premises, at the very least keep the discussion tasteful. Believe it or not, this is a problem that occurs more often with the salaried management than it does with the hourly employees.

3. There is no training concerning what to do in case of an emergency or "event". Every company I had previously worked for specified what to do in case of an emergency or "event".

- What do you do when a member of law enforcement asks to speak with someone?
- What do you do if there is a media event?
- What do you do in the event a child is lost?

There are many more what-ifs for which there are no company guidelines. Most large-scale companies have guidelines in place for the sole purpose of limiting liability.

Regarding the management at the store level as it pertains to their ability to make management-level decisions, that ability appeared to be almost non-existent. To this effect I sympathize with them. A store-level salaried manager should be able to make decisions at the store-level regarding how their store is operated, in particular, merchandising and customer-relations.

Merchandising - One of the many benefits of allowing merchandising autonomy at the store-level is the ability to allow for regional variations in customer preferences. A one-size-fits-all approach to merchandising promotes successes in one region and failures in others. Overall, you wind up with a negating effect that limits growth potential on a company-wide level.

Customer-relations - You need to allow your salaried-managers to tell a customer "no" without having to worry about repercussions as long as a manager can provide a good reason for making the decision they made. A 100% satisfaction guarantee is quite different from a customer is always right.

I could seriously go on and on but I'm going to stop after saying one last thing. The company is trying to go in the right direction by implementing practices in-line with other large companies but the policies are being poorly implemented and fail to address many of the real issues within the company. While some may say it's a work-in-progress and we'll fix the problem as necessary, that shouldn't even be an issue. Many of the changes the company are enacting have been dealt with by other companies. Implementing the changes should be trivial but due to lack of experience in management, these changes are more difficult and taking longer than they should.

Advice to Senior Management – To the management at the corporate level, you need to discuss with your store-level managers the actual meaning of earning a profit. It's more than just making a sales goal, it's also about limiting expenses, limiting write-offs, limiting tort, and selling products at a profit.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Crate & Barrel full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Good Company and great discount

Cons – Bad furniture buyers, hard to sell furniture

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Crate & Barrel full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Excellent company with a 'people first' attitude. Given a lot of support, training and authority to solve problems individually.

Cons – The pay isn't as competitive as with other retailers but the benefits are positive and generous.

Advice to Senior Management – Need to update the hierarchy within direct marketing. The management and procedures need to mirror the stores to reflect a one store concept. Furniture does not need to be a separate department and only serves to confuse the customer and creates an unnecessary work load. It should be as simple as a separate queue with an extra level of training.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company