Pier 1 Imports Reviews

Pros

Fun environment to work in. Fun merchandise and customers. Good benefits and discount on items. Friendly co workers and supervisors.

Cons

Not a whole lot of options for promotion. Store Manager positions don't become available too often and company seems to like to hire from outside the company

Pros

Management knowledgable and supportive, team environment

Cons

Low wages, heavy lifting and employees do all cleaning

Pros

Nice discount, fun working with the customers, great product! Manager is respectful to personal obligations and needs. Overall, great temporary job or job for some extra money. If you have an interest in sales, there is opportunity to get coaching and gain an understanding of the basic sales cycle. Could be a good opportunity if retail is your profession.

Cons

It is a typical retail job. It is physically demanding with lots of lifting and ladder climbing. Also, the pressure is high on associates and sales leaders to perform sales skills and convert people into buying customers...no commission or bonuses for a job well done and sales targets met for the associates...so where is the motivation? Monthly bonuses for assistant store manager and sales leaders but it is small and not based on your individual performance. I get weekly reviews but again have not been compensated for extrodinary KPI's either. If they would be willing to pay...they would retain quality employees who would focus more on a job well done. Also, if sales pressure for the particular stores weren't so high they would work more harmoniously together and not be in competition...there are sometimes multiple stores within a a 15-20 minute radius of eachother...this is confusing to the customer when in their heads...a Pier 1 is a Pier 1...to them who cares which one they shop at or return at...it's Pier 1 that still making the money....but this is not so, they pin the stores within a region to be in competition with eachother. Distasteful IMO.

Pros

good way to pick up some extra hours during the holidays
employee discount on their lovely products
friendly coworkers
free workout

Cons

they do not allow employees to EVER exceed (20) hours per week - and over 20 hours a week is required to receive any benefits
seasonal employees are at the bottom of the food chain and do not get trained well
shifts were mostly to unload truck or help handle Xmas Holiday traffic.
shifts (for seasonal employees at least) were not frequent enough to be able to witness the EXTREMELY FREQUENT changes they make to all their displays... resulting in some awkward moments when customer asked where to find things, etc. (all your best intentions and trying very hard to be observant will be in vain. i really can't stress this enough.)
work was surprisingly exhausting and included moving EXTREMELY heavy displays around, lifting plenty of furniture or resetting statements full of dishes.backbreaking labor

Advice to Senior Management

if you must hire so many seasonal employees for Christmas, i'd highly recommend to hire them a little bit earlier before the season starts so they can:
1) learn the store for a bit, and not get thrown straight into resetting huge statements full of dishes/furniture/moving incredibly heavy stuff around!! or unloading truck until 1, sometimes 2 in the morning. some of us take public transit you know. these stores are huge and everything constantly moves around.
2) take a little time to train carefully, ease into hard-selling the Pier1 credit card a little bit more gently, instead of hanging the weight of the world on it
3) give a fair warning when you hire that they'll probably only be getting like, 10 hours a week, so definitely only take the job if one has no real financial responsibilities, or only to supplement another job's income.
4) be up-front about the on-call nature of the job. don't mess with these weird "flex shifts", most people find them insanely inconvenient and just kinda degrading.
5) updates to training materials are badly needed, maybe create some materials that show how to sell specific types of furniture, how to match home decors together, etc etc. it's not a given that anyone is going to really KNOW how to do this. or at least do it as well as seems to be expected.
6) also, you desperately need to get rid of the ONLY EVER using "SHE" as the pronoun in all the corporate print-outs. that's just bizarre and slightly offensive, considering how many men not only shop there, but work there too.

Pros

- Great co-workers
-No trash talking or gossip
- Great opportunities to learn about sales goal and numbers, they include you in the sales rather than hiding them from you
- 25% discount to employees
- The more money the company makes the more payroll hours they have to extend shifts and add hours, hardworking employees get a chance to make a few extra bucks
-Managers are smart and experienced
-Managers are good with giving time off if it is requested in advance
-You know what your schedule is at least a week in advance
-You are allowed flexible hours, great for college students are working parents
-Pressure to open Pier 1 rewards cards can be high, but you only get encouragement when you have trouble, and you get praise when you do, you aren't a "failure" if you can't.
- You get opportunities to do fun things, like set up for new events, and get some artistic freedom in how things are displayed
-10 minute break for a 5 hour shift (paid) and a 30 break for any shift over 5 hours (unpaid)

Cons

- During the holiday's there were less hours for the permanent employees (people not JUST there for the holidays), we lost 5 or so hours a week for about a month while the seasonal employees got the same. When the season picked up and the store hours extended we went back to normal hours though.
-Some of the training during the holidays was less than desired, I was constantly having to do things for, or redo things that seasonal employees messed up.

Advice to Senior Management

Let your employees know when they are doing a good job, and give them opportunities to advance or work more hours.

Pros

Some of the core employees of my store are what make my job enjoyable. If it wasn't for them I would have been gone long ago. I also liked the customers. You can tell most of them were very appreciative of the help they received, as most retail stores will not go above and beyond for the customer nearly as much as Pier 1 associates do. It always makes my day to really make an impact on someone.

Cons

Shoplifters. May be a regional thing but it is frustrating to watch. And HR rewards them for it. One of our regular shoplifters complained that they were being followed. They got a gift card. My coworkers got written up. These are the same women that run out of the store with vases and paintings while their friends distract us with questions about other merchandise.
During Spring and Summer everything usually runs pretty smoothly. But this is the third year in a row that I have almost quit during the holiday transitions. I don't know if this is an in-store issue but the manager hired on at least 10 new girls. Most of which ended up quitting or not showing up/being late to almost every shift. Even if it's not holiday time, the turnover rate is pretty high. We have two to three very dedicated associates aside from management that would love to have more hours. But instead, all of the hours are given to girls who don't care about coming to work. So when they don't show up everyone else picks up the slack. And now that minimum wage raised, all of the new or seasonal employees make more than the girls that have been here for years. So I am basically training (since the managers are always busy) and covering shifts for the new/inexperienced employees that make more money than I do. Humiliating. This is the last year I will be at this store.
One other thing is that management changes rules and policies so often that you never know if you're doing something right or wrong. Along with how we unload truck, how scheduling works, the things we're supposed to say (and not supposed to say) to customers. Always changing. So you're always getting reprimanded because you never know what rule they decided to change that day.

Advice to Senior Management

Reward your more dedicated employees with something more than a 10 cent raise once a year. Most of the time, they are what keeps your store running. Most employees do not stay longer than 6 months to a year. The ones that do, deserve to have some seniority or some sort of recognition. Honestly, showing some appreciation for any of your associates in general would raise morale, lower turnover rate, and in the long run make your customers happier. Also, I hope at some point there is something done about how we are not allowed to approach shoplifters. Most companies have some sort of loss prevention in place.

Pros

--25% employee discount on store merchandise.
--Nice co-workers.
--Fun work atmosphere
--Detailed and helpful training.
--Learn a lot about the origin of store merchandise, how it's made, and how to put an interesting display together.

Cons

--Sales Associates only get 4 hours per shift.
--Lot's of pressure to constantly follow customers and get them to buy something in the store.
--Manager(s) seemed to cross the line of professionalism and play favorites with the Associates who got on their good side. In turn, they would get more hours.
--Younger Associates in college grade would rarely help other Associates when it came to shifts needing to be covered.

Pros

25% discount
Pier 1 bucks occasionally
Occasional bonus twice a year if sales goals exceed current goal
Great unique products
Great Co-Workers if you're lucky

Cons

Too many expectations for too little pay.
Expected to hound customers even when they don't need assistance.
Senior Management are not on the same page when planning for transition (change of displays/merchandising), how efficiently truck is being opened and merchandised in store. (lack of personnel sched.) 
Lack of sense of direction and sales leads don't know whats going on half the time. There is no communication between management. They just go around slacking off & blaming eachother when things go wrong.
Schedule changes without being notified! And getting a stern talk when u do show up 30 min. Late because store manager changed ur time once again!
Having to wait to leave your shift when someone doesn't show up or is late. 
No training for newbies when hired for seasonal!
Other seasoned sales associates have to take their time to train them as fast as they can when it's the sales leads job to do so & not getting paid any extra for it.
No product knowledge  since senior management was changed.
Some Closing associates do not pick up store well & certain closing sales leads do not go back and correct them or coach on how it should be done right.
No Seniority.
Very little hours, no more than 16 hrs. 20hrs if someone calls off.
Sales leads wine about how they hate their job to new sales associates.
The list goes on...
Seasoned sales associates are being underpaid and under utilized & are not taken into consideration for promotions. Maybe because payroll doesn't permit or because of favoritism. 

Just want you to know what really happens on the inside, not all pier 1's are like this.

Advice to Senior Management

My suggestion to Regional and Corporate Managers/Supervisors is to know who you're hiring and what skills/specialties they have to help Pier 1 be a more employee friendly store.
Also, make sure your store managers and sales leads are THOROUGHLY trained. Before sending them out to run a store and in reality they don't know how and rely on others to do their job and cover for them.

Pros

- Store discount is fair
- Met a lot of great people

Cons

- Hourly wage could be better.
 - Store manager does barely any physical work, and mostly sits in the office for the better part of her shift..
 - She never compliments anyone for their hard work and dedication or for a job well done.
 - Constantly denies people requests for days off, yet she makes sure she takes her comp/vacation time.

I could go on and on.

A large part of your experience with this company, or any for that matter, will have to do with the effectiveness of the store manager you work with. If your lucky enough to work with one who is competent, easy to get along with, and actually works with team then you'll enjoy your time here... After all, it is retail.. not a dream-job.

But if your unlucky enough to end up working with a manager who is grossly incompetent, doesn't know how to deal effectively or lead a team, does zero work and clearly isn't a people person, then you'll be in for a nightmare.

In my store, we are all pushed unreasonably to do an unreasonable amount of work in an unreasonable amount of time. I can't wait for my exit interview with my regional manager because he really needs to know who is running his store.

Advice to Senior Management

Become a little more involved with who your store managers are as leaders. I guarantee you'll be in for an unexpected surprise.

Pros

The merchandise is pretty nice. I enjoyed buying some of their stuff with my employee discount. My coworkers were rather nice and supportive. The customers were also mostly very nice. You don't really get any rude people.

Cons

There's seriously not enough hours, at least for the "Christmas workers", which is what I was. Okay, so I started out with getting only 7 hours of work in one month. How ridiculous is that? Every month after that, I usually only got 4 hours of work per week. How do they expect people to live off this? It doesn't even pay for gas! And now, they're not even scheduling me for real hours now that Christmas is over.
They have these "flex shifts" where you have to call them, even on a day off, if you're needed to work or not. They've never needed me to work these shifts, so I don't see why they can't just call ME if they need me.
They expected a lot out of me, even though I'm new and only getting to work once a week, which limits my getting used to the job and learning new things. Whenever I asked for help, the manager treated me like I was an airhead, as if I was supposed to know what I was doing. Therefore, I hardly received any praise or feedback (both negative and positive) that made me want to work harder or try to improve.

Advice to Senior Management

Give your employees more hours, especially the "Christmas workers", and get rid of the flex shifts. They're unneeded.