Pros
Staff seemed down to earth.
Cons
Poorly managed with barely enough budget from head office to keep the lights on. I know most people come away from a job bad mouthing the company but anyone with an ounce of sense could walk in and see it was clearly a shambles. My 'management training ' consisted of showing my how to do a transaction on the till which took all of 30 seconds then I was left to serve customers immediately after that for the next two days, Very small number of staff and the only full timers seem to be management. I would start my shift at 915 where they had one member of staff on the till. 3 hours later that staff member was already cashing up to go home leaving three of us to face rush hour. I'm not exaggerating for effect. I was only there for training, so if I wasn't there, it would have been TWO members of management to face rush hour alone. You don't have to have management training to know that you should rota your part time staff to come in at the busy hours to support the other staff! AWFUL ALLOCATION OF STAFF You are only allowed 30 mins to eat and the breaks were scheduled so poorly that we would have to wait until the next part timer had come in ( nearly 6 hours into the shift) then take turns. Since I came in after the other two managers (15 mins later ) I had to go last, so would have to wait another hour. First thing I noticed in my branch was the appalling state the store was in. The manager said he'd been there two years but 'hadn't had a chance to clean things up' but it takes two seconds to pick a shredded, mouldy old box up from the floor. Stock was cluttered with old boxes and various paper/ cardboard that was collecting dust. The staff room was a dingy little back room that may have been a toilet at one point. The building looked like it hasn't seen any maintenance or upkeep in years. The floor has chunks missing and used sugar packets that had been trampled into the floor to the point there were now fused into it. May have well have sat in a changing locker for the 30mins, would have been a bit more pleasant. It may seem nice enough looking when you walk into a card factory but that's where the effort stops with the company. walk past the 'staff only' door and it's all running on just enough steam to get by. The company spends the exact amount just to get customers in and not a penny more. Even the shirt I was given was an old one left by someone who had walked out before me, they didn't have one in my size. (L) staff were nice enough but mostly full of women in their fifties who were in for 2-3 hours and gone. the rest were nice, but, and without sounding nasty, seemed like they probably wouldn't get by in a more professional company so put up with everything and got on. One manager had the communication skills of a potato. Was shocking. A customer came up to him to say a few nice words about a member of staff and he sort of squirmed, awkwardly smiled and looked at the floor. probably got his job because people would put up with this company left, so he got promoted. Could see he didn't have a good relationship with his staff. some ex employees come away bitter about a company being more about profit than people and usually it's not as bad as they make out, usually due to some kind of fall out with management but I can honestly say that it couldn't be truer about Card Factory. Only consider the option of working here either if you're part time and want some beer money and your shifts wont be long enough to notice how badly its run or if you're on the brink of homelessness and have kids to feed
