Overall A Good Place to Work, Great Perks - Retail Associate Gap Employee Review

Sales goals can be a bit high as far as getting people to apply for Gap Cards, usually 2 per shift. When most people who shop at the Gap already have them or have already applied and not gotten approved. Rotating between Gap, GapBody, and GapKids can be annoying. You usually find your groove in one location and do really well there, then when they rotate you to a different part of the store your performance drops. Clothes are constantly moving around the store so sometimes it's hard to keep track of where certain items are, especially if you haven't worked in that particular section in a couple of weeks. They require you to do what they call "figure 8's" around your floor, basically you can't just stand behind the counter or at the front to greet, you constantly have to be walking around to appear busy and deter people from shoplifting. It looks better when you walk in to see employees walking around but when you work early morning and have had no customers and there's nothing to fold or put away it gets really tiring and annoying. Managers weren't too clear on dress code, I was told if it looks like something we would sell you can wear it. Tennis shoes can only be converse, no open toed shoes unless its summer. So after working there for a few months and wearing jeans/skirts and dress tops/graphic tees I was suddenly told I wasn't allowed to wear graphic tees unless they were promoting a certain brand i.e. the (Red) brand, but was never told that prior, kind of embarrassing. They also have you try on every type/style/fit of jean and have in depth conversations with you about why that's your favorite and why it's better. Which can be helpful when selling them to customers, but kind of awkward when they ask where you usually buy your jeans and why you don't own Gap jeans (my reason was because I wore a 16, and most of their jeans don't go that high) which was humiliating to say in front of all my co-workers on the sales floor during a work day. The window staff (people who decorate and set up displays in the store) were very very rude and would hardly ever talk to retail employees. When they would be out on the floor decorating and a customer would ask for help they would just tell them it's not their job and they needed to find someone walking around. You are required to always be on call, so if you're scheduled for the day off and someone calls in and they call you, you're expected to come in and cover. Which makes having a personal life really difficult. You also have to call ahead to let them know you won't be there 4 hours in advance. So when you're scheduled for 9am (I worked in a mall location) I had to wake up at 5 and call, when no one would answer you just have to keep calling until one of the managers get there to take your call. If you consistently don't meet gap card requirements you have to go to "gap card rehab" where you are required to come in on your day off (while not getting paid) and watch videos on tutorials of how to get more gap cards. When the issue isn't the employees not asking (you have to ask at least 3 times, even if the customer says no. you are required to ask 2 more times) it's where they place you at what time and how busy you are. There were several days I worked in gap kids and got 10+ gap cards, then worked at gap body at 11am and had 1 customer my entire shift. I had my son after I'd worked there for awhile and my manager was on vacation when I found out and told everyone, so when she came back I assumed she knew but I never worked with her and never got a chance to talk to her about it, so when I finally worked with her she came over to me while I was working and asked if I was pregnant and I said yes, I thought she knew since the other managers did. A couple of weeks later I found a cyst in the bottom of my foot and requested to be able to stand still while working if we weren't busy and was told I wouldn't have to walk as many figure 8's but still needed to move most of the time. After that happened they stopped working me at gapkids(where i usually worked and performed really well) and moved me over to gapbody and had me working weekedays from 9am-1pm (when no one was shopping for bras and panties) so my performance started to slip, then when I would receive my email with my schedule it said off every day, I wasn't due for another 3 months (June), when I called to talk to the manager about why I suddenly wasn't scheduled, she was never in and never returned my calls. When I went in to get my check she wasn't there either. Went to the store a couple of times to shop and see if she was there but she never was. After I had my son I called to find out when I could come back to work and never got called back by anyone. I got schedules until September and could still use my discount, but wasn't allowed to work. And eventually I just stopped trying to work and they eventually stopped sending me schedules and cancelled my employee card.