Circle Furniture Employee Review

Former Employee – worked at Circle Furniture

Pros – Nice furniture, lots of customization so potential to be pretty creative. Other design consultants helpful and nice. The training was excellent!

Cons – It's an hourly wage job with commission, yet full-time employees are expected to work every week at least 42 hours and are never paid for more than 40. But we got commission on top of hourly pay.
  They promote those people who go on social outings with the people in charge. I did extra work on my days off without pay for the betterment of the company (things that had no bearing on my commission and i was not paid hourly for doing, ) received great performance reviews yet was overlooked for promotion again and again in favor of people who went out to dinner with people in charge and hung out with the person/people socially. Also, higher ups would come in and tell us for example, not to give out the special sale price unless the customer already knows about it and saw the ad. I did that and then got in trouble for it with my manager and with the customer when they found out. In this situation, the amount of discount for the customer only amounted to less than 25 dollars added to my commission, but amounted to a great deal of money saved for the company. So basically i made myself look bad, got in trouble and lost a customer in order to follow a request of an important higher up. It was hard to know who to listen to when directives conflicted. A female higher up said something one time insulting about my busoms and I was completely humiliated. It was in front of coworkers, too. Improper words were spoken to my coworkers by this higher up, too. It was accepted behavior.
. Also, the wage was lower than other design consultant jobs I've had before and the one I currently have. If Bosses like you and you go to dinners with them,your experience may be different than mine. Also, talking to your manager about higher ups directives when they sound wrong for your position would, in retrospect, help employees to figure out who to listen to.
In conclusion, my manager was nice and tried to be helpful as best she could considerating conflicting instructions coming from the office. My coworkers were helpful and friendly but advancement isn't purely performance based, I did not feel appreciated and felt that a higher ups crossed proper "boss" relationships by saying insulting things that were not work related.. I'm certainly not saying all higher ups caused me problems, really just one female.

Advice to Senior Management – Maybe keep office staff doing office work, not in the showroom telling designers what to do, please raise the wage, pay for all hours worked, I believe that's the law. Higher ups please watch your mouth with employees. If you think a woman's bosom looks weird, keepit to yourself. No employee needs to be humiliated by a female boss, amd i was. All I have stated is true. Obviously other employees experience has been far more positive than mine. Some people work at circle for 10 or 20 years and love it.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend