So I started working at Rituals because I was ready for an easy life - as a wellness company I expected to be taken care of in regards to my mental health and expected a certain level of 'chill' in our daily activities. I'm a grafter, but recently left an intense hospitality role that took a lot from my mental and physical wellbeing. I applied for the role straight away and was delighted to start my job in such a beautiful store. At first this was absolutely the case, I loved the store and our gorgeous products, our cruelty free ethos and such. First thing I started to notice, which wasn't really a bug bearer as I was used to it working in hospitality - that the delivery palettes were an absolute nightmare to even get through the door - whoever was packing these had no consideration for health and safety (the palettes were piled HIGH) or how wide our door is. Our stockroom is down 2 flights of stairs, we have absolutely no option but to run down with baskets of stock and get the palettes off the shop floor as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, this was consistently happening when the shop was open (which certainly is the bug bearer) and we had customers browsing/waiting to pay - as we were in peak mystery shopper season and had a whole customer journey to take every single customer through this was extremely stressful. One person needed to at least be on the shop floor and one free to put a transaction through the till, when it was busy and the delivery was substantial this was extremely difficult to manage with only 2/3 people on shift. Onto mystery shop - of course we had to get one, on one (of many) of these very high stress/exhausting days. We got a terrible score, first thing management wanted to know was who took the customer? Now the manager was on holiday at this point, a supervisor deemed it necessary to text in and say that it wasn't her because she was doing at least 3 other things that day (she changed her story lots) and it must have been one of us - she threw her whole team under the bus that day and management believed her (we know it was definitely her but as a team we were disappointed and felt it as a team) which honestly I thought was absolutely deplorable - from management and that supervisor. A new manager had started who was a friend of the area manager (they told us this repeatedly) and was on an absolute rampage from the day they started, we were told even though we were making well over our daily targets - that we should be making more and were never good enough, our customer service was never good enough, our baskets were never large enough (products wise) and we were never recognised for going over and above/getting very large sales. Cleaning was never good enough, I remember coming in to an absolute telling off one morning after being off for 4 days that all sorts of stuff hadn't been done and how it's not on etc etc (I asked my colleague when her last shift worked was, it was like myself 3/4 days prior) and I did push back, I said that if you want us to mop/hoover/move fixtures/ dust/ etc then you need to put more than 1 person on at night to do all this on their own. I will say, management did fix this for a while and put more staff on at night, they also recognised also that the delivery situation was poor but there wasn't much that could be done, as the company would not pay for an earlier delivery slot. Again, management on lots of things can only really make do with what they are given (which was never very much.) Lets move on now to loss prevention. Buchanan Street in Glasgow is absolutely rife with gangs of thieves - they watch your store all day and run in and grab things when you are all busy. We have begged and begged for dedicated security personnel to watch the door and deter : nope. Cameras at least? Nope. Not worth it or cost efficient is what they say - So not one mention for their staff's safety. We are told to guard that door like our job depended on it, if you turn away to help a customer and they hit at that point it is our fault, if you are deemed a 'rubbish' member of staff you are shoved on the door and if you go to.. do.. your job then it's the constant eye rolls from management all day as if you can't do anything right. I have witnessed our youngest member of staff cry after being shouted at, I have witnessed an honestly lovely/respected and empathetic assistant manager break down in store after being bereted for months, I myself shed 1 tear and left a week later. You are expected to give them absolutely everything to in their own words 'only sell some shower foams'. I also witnessed a colleague of mine who was supposed to be working a part-time contract, agree to work full-time to help the store manager out - after some months it was taking a toll on their mental/physical health and even at home, so was told they couldn't reduce the hours because they needed cover too much (lots of staff leaving by this point, every single one worked at least a 2 week notice but no new staff hired) well the staff member was sent home one day because they were so exhausted, upset and couldn't keep any food down. Were the hours reduced right away? Nope, but was still expected to work 40 hours per week - even to miss a uni lecture to cover a shift apparently they couldn't find cover for - staff member left 2 weeks later. I myself, was offered to reduce my hours for term time but was then told no and I survived with 1 day off a week after work and college for months waiting for new staff, even offered to be a keyholder with extra responsibilities and absolutely no extra pay? I have over a decade's worth of customer service experience up to management level and I do not work for free "so if college doesn't work out you have your foot in the door" absolutely laughable. They demoted a supervisor and then told her she can keep her keys and hours (after I handed in my notice effectively rejecting my offer) but not supervisor status/pay. Pretty poor show. Currently they have 3 members of staff left, everyone left the company in the space of about 4 months. Myself and 2 colleagues handed in our notices within 3 weeks of each other. Store manager was heard saying to one of the staff who are staying "I'm getting a whole new team", and I really hope that they do, as we were all clearly so awful that management were ready to try to put us off our new jobs - so far as to say that they know everyone who works there and we will be 'eaten alive'. Other things to note, sick days. If you call in sick and you are anxious that your manager will think that you are 'at it' unfortunately you are right and it's not right at all. You will not have a sympathetic call with your manager. On my last shift I was asked repeatedly if my colleague was out last night because she said she was feeling a bit fluey. I have heard from other staff who called in sick that things were said like "well what's wrong with you? Can you really not come in there's only 2 of us on? You need to call me every day until you can come in." There is no "get well soon", or well wishes for a speedy recovery. There is also not enough staff rotad on for sickness so you will feel like there is no choice but to go in, so to give your comrades an easier shift especially on delivery day. On another note, the amount of times your tills/pos/network will go down in a day is getting a little comical. While the company sent our managers off to London - our network went down about 4 times that day, not able to get through to technical support at all, dozens of customers left because they were in a hurry to catch trains etc and there was absolutely nothing we could do. This is a daily occurrence, you cannot process anything - you can't scan to check a price, order online, endless isle or process transactions for well up-to maybe 15/20 minutes at a time. Rituals have money to treat their managers to a weekend away while we are being left with that ^combined with no staff, over-worked key holders/supervisors (you are not supposed to work over 5 days in a row but this sadly has never been the case for supervisors/ASM/Managers) I have witnessed the store manager working about 14 days in a row and same for the previous ASM. As much as I don't agree with how our store manager has handled us as a team from the get-go for a multitude of reasons I won't list here (although you can get the general idea) it is certainly a company issue/area manager issue to sort out adequate staff and pull rank to make sure all stores are pitching in to cover (as our store covered most of the others), actively find cover for management roles, fix networking issues and sort priorities out in regards to sending management away to fancy conferences when their staff are left to just deal with it with no support. I don't even know if I wanted to get started on Book of Rituals. BOR is Ritual's training platform, sounds good right? You can access these materials to brush up on your knowledge any-time, it's constantly updated each month also. It would be a great resource, if you weren't absolutely hounded every single week with whatsapp messages from management, face to face conversations and such to get your percentage higher because you are 'bringing down the team and our area manager is not happy' - our management was quite good at giving us time in work to do this but it was still an expectation you did it at home. We were bribed with paid time back for completing it but this time was never actually given back or even spoke about again (that's 2 hours I will never get back, I was pretty angry as I had so little time to study with only getting 1 day off a week and they wanted me to study... Book of Rituals???) also, for you to actually complete BOR you also had to do their external 'GoodBitez' mindfulness/behavioural exercises taking about an hour each with a 20+ multiple choice exam at the end which you had to complete in full (you were unable to skip anything... I tried!) to get your % up. Rituals release a newsletter each week which you also must read in your own time. They have condensed their 5 different apps into one so at least that's something, when I started I was emailed about 1000x telling me to download this and that without any explanation of what they were so that was fun! All of these different apps needed redownloaded/updated/etc etc so often and our new manager was very pedantic at making sure we ticked these boxes or downloaded something or another it was exhausting. We were told it was our responsibility (at home) to complete this health and safety training thing with about a hundred videos - each of them between 3minutes and 55minutes long, these videos couldn't be skipped but you had to hit play, then 3-55minutes later the 'complete' button would be free and you could continue. This was also checked on often by management that you had to complete. Now lets talk about the uniforms - these uniforms do not come in larger sizes, if you are on the larger side then please bare this in mind. I have heard of a member of staff in another store needing to sew panels into her tunic to make it fit. Sort it out Rituals. Also, the uniforms are total cultural appropriation (in my opinion) they are very akin to the Chinese traditional Qipao dresses (although definitely not as beautiful) and many times I have been asked if we are a Chinese/Japanese store. Uniforms are uncomfortable and sweaty, even in the summer you are expected to wear thick tights with a dress and dress trousers with the tunic - as well as a Rituals silk scarf round your neck. I did notice when other stores posted on our community page, that these rules were not enforced as stringently so perhaps it was just by our management. It does say in the employee handbook that we were supposed to wear Rituals makeup, red lipstick and paint our nails red - luckily (and rightly so) this was not enforced by our management, I would have definitely insisted our boys also adhered to the same sexist rules if that was the case. There is so much more, but I'll leave this here. The whole store needs a right good shakeup of upper management, I hope the new staff are treated with respect and enjoy their time at Rituals, I will never work for their company again personally as there are jobs out there who will pay you lots more and treat you so much better!
