This is one of the worst jobs I've ever worked. I never got to know a lot of people here (I worked here for over a year) because we weren't allowed to talk while we were working and often I'd be lone working. I'd work so hard to fold the clothes tables only for it to be totally messed up again as soon as I moved onto the next one, meaning as soon as I finished I had to start all over again. People would leave bits of McDonald's takeaways in amongst the clothes. On the tills customers would often be on their phone so you couldn't communicate with them. Managers (one in particular) had a real superiority complex. We'd be in for a certain amount of hours but they would always, without fail, make you stay 15-20 minutes longer than your shift to put away the rubbish dumped by customers at the till, rather than getting you to do this during your shift. In this store it's all about working FAST and the work is incredibly repetitive. Also you can never find anything because they move the whole store around every week or two.
I was on a temporary full time contract. When they offered my a permanent contract I asked for 14-18 hours instead and was given an 8 hour contract. Overtime very limited. I struggled to pay my rent for over a year before finally giving up. I applied for evening positions with more hours several times and never got anywhere.
The heating was broken the entire time I worked here meaning the whole place (especially the fitting rooms) was incredibly overheated, making it absolutely unbearable to work in at times, meaning staff got grumpy. A couple of times customers fainted due to the heat and they still never bothered fixing it.
Company ethics are nowhere near as great as they claim to be. The Bangladesh factory collapse happened about a year into my employment there and was a big motivator for me to leave. On the walls of the staff room they have pictures of bored-looking factory workers at their machines in dull surroundings. Supposedly this shows they're not using sweatshops but in my opinion these look like only a couple of steps up from that and the factory collapse really proved that.
