Gap Employee Reviews about "work life balance"

Pros

I loved working at the GAP. I had a great team and worked there on and off for a decade. I had a great work/life balance and my GM was very flexible and accommodating. The discount at not only the GAP, but Banana and Old Navy could not be beat. I would still work there part time if my store did not close.

Cons

Basic retail cons. On your feet, rude customers, too many tasks with too little time. This can be found anywhere.

Pros

Gap loves their people. They believe in work life balance and hours are sometimes good depending on store location and season.

Cons

hours could sometimes be bad.

Pros

You can learn a lot if you're going in as an entry level financial analyst. If you can put up with the unprofessional attitude you get from many people, you will find that there are always opportunities that open up, especially since it is a revolving door.

Cons

1. They pay below industry average. I got paid 15% less, to be exact. 2. Zero work/life balance and they couldn't possible care any less; and they make it pretty obvious as well. 3. Vacation or Paid-Time-Off? Haha. Try asking for it and they will make you fell like a criminal. I will never forget when the director there approved a trip I was going to take to Europe, and then without a care in the world, forced me to cancel it; the ticket was not refundable so I had to pay a fee to reschedule. 4. Unprofessional: the director got mad at me because I wasn't able to fix an Essbase database (mind you that I was a financial analyst NOT an IT guy) and kicked my cabinet. 5. HR; don't bother talking to HR, they don't care either. That was the last straw, which is why I left the company.

Pros

Work/life balance is better than most retail companies...if you're on a team that cares about it.

Cons

Very difficult to be promoted working on the production team whereas merchandising is exceedingly rapid. The product management team is a joke.

Pros

Great focus on the community. Investing programs (philanthropic) that support underserved communities, focus on volunteerism, strong senior leadership. Solid benefits with 401K, health, product discount (50%).

Cons

Being such a big company, some brands and areas of the company are stronger than others. The HQ employees can maintain a strong work life balance whereas store/field employees struggle more with work-life balance. Speciality apparel is such an up and down business so it can be frustrating when business is not going well.

Pros

-Pays above industry standard -Pretty good work/life balance if you are good at your job -Job stability- did not furlough/lay off employees at peak of Covid when many retailers did

Cons

-Very corporate ("words to live by", bogus trainings, must over-extend before getting promoted even when promotion is deserved) -Constant last minute 911s / EOD deadlines -Lots of under-qualified talent that they pin training on to other employees rather than the company training properly -Very difficult to switch function from within the company

Pros

I generally enjoyed my time at Gap. I had a wonderful team and had great cross functional partners. I’ll have some life long friendships from my coworkers. At Gap, people are usually very supportive and it’s a positive learning environment that encourages people to expand their skills.

Cons

That being said..... your employees need to be compensated for all the additional skills you need them to learn. If someone’s job requirements are suddenly increased then their title and salary should be adjusted accordingly. People’s roles get rearranged and moved around pretty often. The HR team is a little sketchy about this and I don’t believe they have your best interests at heart - I think they try to placate you in order to get you to blindly accept more of a workload without any compensation. Also I’m seeing a lot of previous reviews saying there’s a great work/life balance and that was definitely not my experience. A usual day went until 7pm, which wasn’t terrible but isn’t great. And then before design deadlines there would be 2-3 weeks of 11pm nights back to back. When there was a deadline approaching, everyone knew it meant we would be stuck working very late in the office for weeks. However, I’m happy to say that Gap is generous with its employees when they work late. We were able to take cabs home and got free food deliveries on late nights, and this made staying late much more bearable.

Pros

Central location, some friendly coworkers. Employee discount is nice, but many times regular promos will discount more heavily than employee.

Cons

This company is run by old timers (read: old white males) who are out of touch with the times and don't want to take on any risks. Your opinion doesn't matter here and will fall on deaf ears. Still running on PCs and Windows 7. Website is dated and runs on unstable in-house tools. And guess what? Mobile is JUST becoming a thing! Archaic practices, LOTS of printing and manual labor. Company isn't doing well, hence deal driven and heavy promos. Poor work life balance and generally feels like a corporate sweatshop from 9 to 5. Would not recommend working corporate if you are a young millennial. Corporate culture is stale and there is a lot of red tape.

Pros

Company is growing again, great employees, potential for growth. The salary for the position I held is at or above average for the role at other companies. I always felt my work was valued by my director and manager. Higher management is very engaged with the field for example the VP of distribution knew all of the names of the supervisors in each of the buildings throughout the network.

Cons

Tenured peers and managers are difficult to work with and resistant to change. Work life balance is a challenge due to potential OT and sixth day that you are required to work when it is busy. Path to upward mobility is unclear. The company is attempting to expand but is not adding the support needed to do so in the areas of supervisor, maintenance or HR staffing. This is not the fault of the company but the location of the facility is not great. Fishkill is located in between Poughkeepsie and Newburg which are urban wastelands infested with drugs and crime. Rent in the area is outrageous and homes in the decent areas near the building are priced highly and have oppressive property taxes.

Pros

Great company, strong leadership team to develop me in my role. Worked for many years and feel like I grew as a leader.

Cons

Retail in general is a tough environment to be able to have a work life balance. Sometimes working holidays when the location is open can make that difficult when you have a family.