Shop Manager - Assistant Shop Manager APEX Textiles Employee Review

Pays slightly more than minimum wage at £8.50 an hour. The customers are nice. Staff get 35% discount but have to use it online instead of in the store. (then you have to pay postage?!)

Bonus system constantly changes so that you can never actually achieve it, it changed 3 times during my year there. You will never receive the bonus. Very high pressured, I was asked to stand in the street in the rain handing out leaflets when I was working alone and had no customers (this happens a lot!!). Everybody who works there has to send and receive a daily report to the owner, you receive this even on your days off. The owners are not experienced in retail. CCTV installed everywhere except for the toilet, staff are watched using the owners phone. If you are sick and need to close the shop during your shift you are fined 2 x however many hours the shop was closed from your paycheck. Very strange contract. There is a lot of time when there is nothing to do/the shop is empty and clean, however you are not allowed to sit down and must find something to do. During winter it can be very quiet/few customers.

All of my colleagues (store and office staff) were professional and talented, a pleasure to work with.

A job that seemed 'too good to be true' turned out to be exactly that. Staff were treated incredibly poorly. I watched employee after employee quit, or be terminated without cause - the staff turnover is exceptionally high. A company that had the potential to be extremely successful, due to its talented, hard-working staff, was unfortunately a stressful experience for all involved. Shop staff worked up to 20 consecutive days without a day off, and any expression of concern by coworkers was met with adversity and rudeness. The management refused to acknowledge working regulations and laws, frequently miscalculated pay, denied holiday and, eventually, forbid staff from talking to one another - monitored throughout the working day on CCTV. Working outside of contracted hours (including weekends) was treated as expected, without overtime pay or holiday in lieu.