assistant manager

sales associate

associate

retail sales associate

assistant store manager

Athleta

Athleta is an LLC owned by a four brand corporation. That being said, it's can sometimes be hard to feel like you're working for a separate company. Corporate pushes the pressure and stress of getting credit card and loyalty sign ups, however, their structure sets you up for failure. Their credit card and loyalty systems are connected, one card, one account, among all four brands. So, if someone already has another brand card, there isn't much reason for them to sign up asides the initial discount. Yet you're told to push and push. It would have been easier if Athleta was treated separately instead of connected. 

Management among Athleta consists of one General Manager with three Assistant Managers. If the store is a high enough volume, there also is an Assistant General Manager. The three AMs are all full time, 45 hours a week, 9 hour days. As an hourly Manager, you're there 45 hours a week, but usually only average 38-39 hours of pay after breaks, late clock ins, and early outs. You can't be in the store by yourself, so you're usually clocking in late because the person opening with you (especially if the GM) is late. If closing, you usually finish up a good 15 mins early and clock out. Overtime is absolutely prohibited. Even the slightest bit of OT will be a verbal warning. Work/life is extremely poor and below average even for retail due to usually working 3+ days in a row with only 1 day off.

Each AM comes with their own area of responsibility: Experience, Product, and Talent.  Experience is responsible for brand awareness, event planning, marketing, outreach, and "Play to Win" efforts. Product is responsible for the complete operational success of all visual and merchandising standards. Talent is responsible for the recruiting, hiring, scheduling, and development of all non-management associates. Each AOR is not equal in what each AM is held accountable to and often feels unbalanced and unfair. 

Your success and enjoyment at Athleta will depend on your GM and volume size. If your GM isn't that interested in developing you, you won't feel appreciated or supported. If you're in a low volume store you'll feel unmotivated and bored. If you're in a high volume store you'll feel stressed out and chaotic. 

Asides opening and closing, a typical day will consist of core leading on the floor, chatting in and out associates, as well as keeping up with the daily tasks. Daily tasks include unpackaging shipment, checking shipment on the floor, and back stocking any extra that isn't needed. Most of these tasks you will delegate to associates. Keep in mind, your AOR is a requirement of your position and cannot be ignored or overlooked due to your general retail responsibilities. With three AMs comes a lot of feelings of their being too many cooks in the kitchen. It can be hard to take charge and direct if management has conflicting styles among each other. It also makes it hard to find any office time with only a single computer in a small office. A member of management always has to be on the floor. 

Days can feel extremely chaotic depending on the volume of store or occasion. This can be an extremely fast paced place to work and it's hard to feel like you have the time or support to catch up. There are a lot of back of house operations, such as ship from store orders, that can be quite time consuming. Athleta keeps all their back stock stacked on shelves or shoved into bins which makes it a disaster to try and look for anything. 

There easily can be 20+ associates you're helping the GM be responsible for. Not every associate has the same availability, is good on the selling floor, or good doing back of house operations. The training in this department usually is lacking which can feel like you're never fully staffed or prepared for the day and tasks even with 20+ on the payroll. 

Athleta itself is still a small concept of a company, so there isn't much opportunity for career growth from AM to GM unless you've been with the company for awhile or willing to transfer a good hour or 2 away. It's easy to feel stuck and stale. Depending on the volume size of the store, the pay is great and above average, as are the benefits. Stores and managers can sometimes be catty with each other because districts are smaller. There always feels like a sense of negative competition.

If Athleta ever breaks away and becomes it's own business, I feel like they'd be a better company to work for. Currently, I would only recommend working at a high volume location for the higher pay or at the GM level. The dress code is the absolute best and most laidback you'll ever find. You pretty much can wear anything, including pajamas. 

I fell in love with Athleta's mission and purpose. I was very excited to work here and be a part of opening the new location on the central coast. 
However, I quickly learned that management at the store are disrespectful and dismissive of their employees concerns. For example, they will schedule you when you have already requested time off 3 weeks in advance, cut shifts of employees at the last minute or after you have only worked 2 hours, they gossip, don't respect their employees, and are incredibly unprofessional. You will get asked like clockwork to work extra time during your shift and if you cannot stay extra hours you will be shamed by management even though it is THEIR FAULT for not scheduling enough people. You will be scheduled even when you have indicated you only want to work a certain amount of hours because we're "so busy" and "need all the help we can get"... There is also such a huge emphasis on getting credit cards when there is no incentive or commission at all!!! So much drama between a few managers it is ridiculous. I have been in the stock room doing my JOB countless times when I have been asked to leave for 10+ minutes so the managers could "chat", more often than not one manager would always be in tears (not surprising why she quit). Our talent manager just hired a handful of seasonal employees, however, they ALL went home for the holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) and we have no seasonal employees working over Christmas break- which makes no sense because now the nonseasonal employees all get to work on Christmas Eve even when we worked the days before and after Thanksgiving. Oh, also we have no break room whatsoever! We have a metal foldout chair in the corner of the stock room that is our designated "break area" which is such a joke. When a sales associate sits in the comfy chair in the manager area she will be asked to move to the break area.

Working at Athleta gave me strong experience in leadership, customer experience, operations, coaching, and KPI-driven performance management. The role required balancing sales expectations, staffing challenges, operational execution, and customer engagement in a very fast-paced retail environment.

The most enjoyable part of the job was building relationships with customers, coaching and developing team members, and helping drive strong business results. The employee discount and loyalty marketplace perks were also appreciated benefits.

The most difficult part of the job was the high-pressure culture surrounding metrics, inconsistent leadership experiences depending on store management, and maintaining work-life balance during constant operational changes. Team morale and workplace culture could fluctuate significantly depending on leadership communication and support.

Athleta can be a great environment for individuals who thrive in fast-paced retail leadership and performance-driven cultures, but store-level management dynamics can heavily impact the overall employee experience.

Great enviroment, the group of ladies are really nice and care for each other. Love the energy of the group and the managment is really nice and organized. 
Very fast paced enviroment, lunch breaks are short compared with what you do while on the floor, always on the go, always straghtening, organizing, etc..
The pay is really low for the effort that the position requieres, (part time sales) and how is this coherent with the BCorp standards? From my understanding a BCorp suppose to be very mindful on how to make, distribuite and impact  their WORKERS, community, environment, and customers. From their supply chain and input materials to their EMPLOYEE BENEFITS and charitable giving. So if your part time sales people (which are 90% of your employees) are pay so low, how is this impacting positively those involved? Some of the employees have 2 or 3 jobs that have to juggle .... 
And then in a non suggestive way we have to wear the clothes which I love and are great and, yes you get a great discount!  But if you have a low hourly rate this cannot be sustained ...  Explanation, for example to buy a pair of leggings you have to work at least 4 - 5 hours to break even to pay for those leggings .... if not at the end of the day you will be actually loosing money when working there :(
:( :( :(

I don’t recommend working here at all . Save yourself before it’s too late . I could right a whole 10 page paper on why it’s so bad . I have to admit I used to love coming to work but when management changed it was the downfall of Athleta. First of all they don’t know how to hire responsible people , second they don’t know how to keep people . We had 1-2 employees quit every week, and no one but seemed to noticed it was a problem. We are always understaffed . And don’t know how to do a balance schedule. They only schedule like 3-4 employees on the weekend and it’s the same girls working every Saturday and Sunday when there are 15 of them that work there . They hire people with only one available day of the week just so they can get the discount which is unfair . You try your best to help out and they take advantage of you . You give them an inch and they take a whole more , if not more . Why is it that I’m an employee and I have manager duties , I don’t get paid enough for that . I shouldn’t have to train new workers. You can do them 101 favors but if you need one little one they can’t do it . The managers don’t even know how to manage, so are so lazy and make the employees do everything. Half the time you have no idea where rheumatoid are because they are always in the back . Managers get so irritated when you ask for breaks , and barely want to give them to you : we are overworked we deserve them. Over all this place sucks and no one is doing anything about it. 

This was honestly the worst job I had ever experienced. They should be absolutely ashamed of their training process. First of all, for product training I was told to "look at the tags." They push and push for you to sell their product, but don't give you the necessary tools to do so. They also expect you to sell all these credit cards, but don't give you an tips on how to sell them. They want you to display this fake smile (which I have had no problem doing with previous employers), but you can't because you hate your job. The customers are SO rude and stuck up. They talk down to you and make you feel like you should be honored for them to shop there. This job was so stressful. I was never fully trained on one thing at a time. They called themselves having me "shadow" a specific task, but it was 5 tasks at one time and weren't even explained in a thorough way. And Last, the manager there my last day of work was the last straw for me. She tried emphasizing that they have a fun work environment where you can have fun, but wouldn't let me have a simple conversation with a co-worker while the store was dead and no tasks were assigned. For example, I asked a co-worker where she got her brows done and the manager says to me, "Yeah lets not talk about that." Then not even 30 seconds after that she goes on talking about how cute her nails were!!! Ugh. Terrible experience. I do not recommend.

The overall vibe of the store is great. The staff gets along well, however the latest change in management has created a strain within the work environment. No one feels trusted, listened to, supported, or appreciated. New management isn't taking the time to properly train the new associates. The new management has no idea what they are doing, they are constantly providing misinformation about store policies to both customers and new employees. 
The GM clearly favors one assistant manager over the other two. The GM has approved six, that’s right SIX consecutive full weekends off for the assistant manager she likes most. If that isn’t nepotism, then I don’t know what is. She caters to this particulars assistant managers needs over the others because of her connections to HQ.  
Aside from the lack of knowledge and the nepotism, the new GM does not take stress or feedback well. On one occasion, the GM made one associate cry on the sales floor in front of customers and on a separate occasion a customer witness her yelled at an associate on the sales floor. It was clear that the encounter had made the customer uncomfortable because as I was ringing her up she was very vocal about the GM’s unprofessional character.         
I used to look forward to going in for my shift at Athleta but now i dread it every time.

I have been fairly lucky and have worked with managers and staff who are friendly, actively have an interest in my goals for the future and are willing to work with me if I need to fix my schedule or need time off.  However, definitely let staff know well ahead of time if you need off (or put it in the system ahead of time), to save a lot of headache. 

Working part time I'm able to manage my work and life/school schedules fairly easily, and I make sure to communicate with the scheduling manager any changes I wish to make to my schedule and we move from there. 

However, it's not an easy job, there's some heavy lifting you'll need to do if you want to be a part of every aspect of this job. From managing shipment boxes of products or office supplies, organizing and moving clothing, changing mannequins, cleaning the work areas/BR/office and back of house and taking out trash. This will teach you time management, organization, and teamwork skills.

Not to mention the communication skills you'll need not only with managers and staff, but to the customers as well.  This job will help to teach you soft/hard communications skills that will improve your confidence when addressing others and to be more assertive in your own abilities. 

All in all, it's a decent job with a good community. 

The job is only good if you have a good GM and leadership team working with you. Otherwise it can feel very toxic and you get absolutely no support from district or regional managers when problems come up. The company seems to care more about numbers than it's people and constantly pushes for credit cards and exceeding goals. While goals are incredibly important, they are not everything. You could be doing everything else right, running the store efficiently, keeping customers and employees happy, getting all tasks done, and no one will see that or care unless the higher ups are making their bonuses off of credit card and sales goals. The PTO policy and pay is also not competitive at all compared to other brands/retail stores. Overall, Athleta has seemed to be going downhill since the first year I started based on how many changes have happened. For the last ~2 years we have been questioning what's going on because of how messy and unorganized things have been with our products, shipment processes, excessive promotions, indecisive marketing, the corporate leadership teams, etc. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
In the beginning it was working with a company whose mission fit well with my values to provide quality products and services. It very quickly became “Gap-ized” meaning to many locations, less exclusivity while lowering quality in products, service and working environment. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Scheduling with inadequate expectations . Not enough hours budgeted for quality performance of day to day operations or customer service. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Minimal respect or commitment to employee agreed scheduling or job responsibilities. Culture went from ethical to toxic. Bare minimum pay increases across the board. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Unrealistic time and budgeting expectations created much stress for employee satisfaction or acceptable work conditions-very often short staffed creating poor customer service as well. 
Because schedules were never consistent or predictable, life/work balance was difficult.

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