Williams-Sonoma Employee Review

Former Employee – worked at Williams-Sonoma part-time for less than a year

Pros – 40% Discount and working with mostly a decent grade of quality products.

Cons – Told one thing, trained another, and the actuality was yet another! Was hired and told that I would help plan events for the store and led to believe that it would be an open opportunity to promote the Gift/Bridal Events as well as canvas specific clients to build specific marketed business. Was told one thing and then never given any opportunity or schedule to do anything. It was very odd. I felt like I was on the trading floor at Wall Street. We were endlessly being directed by corporate on what seemed like an hour to hour status. I was never told about the "on-call" scheduling and it was briefly touched on in training after being hired. One call from corporate one day created a "gotta-cut-payroll-storm" and seasoned employees and staff were quickly cut and told to go home at certain times. So my 5 hour on-call status, though called in - was cut to 3 hours. And this was the constant norm. Most weekly schedules had 3 or 4 days of on-call shifts which required you to call almost 2 hours in advance because it took so much time to get there and parking was difficult at the Mall of America. I never got to work on the projects that were "sold" to me. Then you were told on your shift that you would cover a certain area but in reality on the floor, you had to do the "right" thing and help customers in all different areas and ways that seemed disconnected by management. It was very odd and it seemed always "frantic" and disconnected from the genuine opportunity to step up and offer what Williams-Sonoma is supposed to be about -customer service, a great experience for the customer, and relationship building with the customer. The computer systems were beyond archaic. It was not an environment that set you up to succeed. Lots of finger pointing by management for what seemed like their lack of TIME because they were always being run by CORPORATE. Too much disconnect. Not a good experience and felt the whole process was odd. Very outdated discourse - dictatorial and not necessary. The frantic headset in your ear is ridiculous and a big disconnect from the products/customer opportunity. I think Williams-Sonoma is scared of Amazon! Associates might as well be robots.

Advice to Senior Management – Trust your hired people and stop the border collie on the your heals style of management.

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