massage therapist

customer service representative

front desk agent

membership representative

retail sales associate

Elements Massage

Where do I even begin. I worked with elements for over 3 years and over the course of that time I worked at two locations that were owned by the same person. My first year being hired was that a brand new location. Studio is beautiful being that it was new. We were always running out of supplies or short something. I always figured it was because we were a new establishment. Flash forward to me going on my one year at this point I'm begging for a raise. I was one of their top therapists at the time, I had memberships, I had reviews, it was clear I was doing great. Whenever I would ask to set up a meeting for a review for raise I am told to wait till one year review (the date you're hired)...very stupid. They don't even try to consider the hard work that you put in or even bother to look at your numbers, they just tell you to wait one year for your review. I wasn't about to wait so I left elsewhere where they were willing to give me what I wanted. Getting a raise is almost nearly impossible especially for this particular owner. He is beyond cheap!!!!! When it comes to his employees and studio. We have to beg for basic necessities such as bottom sheets to change our tables,  or for them to resupply our sanitation supplies. We were constantly running out of business cards. Constantly running out of everything! It was annoying and mind boggling that someone could be so careless to let us constantly run out of things that we so badly needed. I eventually left because I kept getting denied my raise. I ended up going back shortly after for the security of being booked. The location I had left them for wasn't great at advertising so traffic was slow. I will say they do a really good job at advertising because they have a steady flow of clientele. Going back was no different tho, this time I was at a different location even busier than before. Honestly the studio was ugly. Like it's completely falling apart. It's not that hard to shut down for at least one day or two or go in there at night and fix up the place. I see no money being put back into the studio, the carpet should be replaced not just 'cleaned', the bolsters are useless they don't even properly hold up the client's leg. They're so old and worn it's barely a cushion. Too cheap to buy decent face rest covers so clients have to put their faces on starchy pillowcases. It's downright tacky. Tables should be routinely checked and functioning, you got tables that sound like Chewbacca going up and down. I take a great sense of ownership wherever I work and at this particular place there was no sense of ownership from the owner himself. It's the little things like that that add up and make a difference. The worst of all was his lack of care for the therapists. He does not value his therapists he thinks we are replaceable to the fullest. His turnover rate is insane but he can never point the finger at himself. Clients stay for great therapists and great therapists stay for employers who are willing to pay them what they're worth!!! Facts! What's worse is I've seen him treat so many managers like poo. He grinds the most out of them. He's too cheap to hire an assistant manager, so our managers are constantly bombarded over and beyond with extra work. I probably had six managers over the 3 years of working for this owner. They always left. I still give Elements the benefit of the doubt. I do believe it is a great company and like what they stand for and have to offer. With great ownership and management I'm sure there is great potential for growth. Just not at this particular location.

When I first was granted the opportunity to work for Elements, I was overjoyed with the amount of support and open arms they had for me. I had previous selling, front desk experience, and the front desk staff all seemed super nice, at first. The boss was unbelievably generous, and I'll always wish there were more bosses like him, but it was more of the females that kind of ruined the experience here for me.

Me and this other new girl were hired right off the bat, and when we were starting our first week, they already scheduled us all over the place, with the nerve to have us both individually close by ourselves. I wasn't too comfortable with it, but I've closed before, I figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Clearly, I did everything all wrong in their eyes.

The first week, me and the new hire got along just fine. It was only after the next few days, she seemed to try to up-do me. She would take away all the phone calls, all the work, then try to tell me to do something, when she rarely gave me the chance to prove myself. Not to mention, the place was super dead and slow; you're sitting at a desk all shift, and sometimes want to chit chat to your co-workers. It was a hit or miss if they responded to you or not. Quite frankly, the new hire seemed fake, and I didn't get along with her too long afterward. 

Then I had to close by myself. I was on shift with a favorited employee there, and she was babbling my ear off pretty much the entire half of the shift, but we were just getting to know eachother. I asked why half of the duties I was told prior on in the week weren't done, and she didn't have an answer even though she'd been there all morning. Needless to say, when it came to teaching me how to close, all I was told was to santize everything top to bottom (which I did) vaccum and mop (I did also) and check out the last two people with a few other miscellanious tasks that I completed as well. There may have been two minor tasks I didn't know what to do with. Long story short, I was offended the next day by my manager that I did a terrible job and she expected more. I respectfully apologized, asked if she could teach me herself to improve towards her expectations, and she simply wouldn't budge. Apparently I came off 'aggressive' by telling her that I did my job, that she should check the cameras and ask the therapists to confirm that instead of taking other girls words over my own. 

To make matters worse, she made me waste my gas driving twenty five minutes to the place, just to fire me and let me go back home. 

I had SUCH high positive vibes for this place. I honestly adored the staff, and the boss, especially. But truth be told, it proved itself way too good to be true. I don't like that people are scheduled to be alone, especially their first week. Not to mention, judge them on a few mistakes if that was the case before they've had time to prove themselves. All in all, don't work in a place full of females. They'll turn on you real quick before you've even gotten the chance to consider friendships with them in the workplace. 

I've been a therapist for 11 years, started as an independent contractor for a few years but got tired of all the extra work that goes into booking my own schedule and having to deal with collecting payments from clients. 

A friend that was working at Elements suggested I apply. I've been at Elements Massage of Chester for 8 years now and can't even believe it's been that long. 

The management team includes studio owners (both female) that are super accessible and enjoyable to work with. I've had so many opportunities to advance my career with training programs and have taken some really great classes free of cost. Elements recently rolled out a program for advancing to higher levels of training that allow me to increase my pay rate considerably and give me a different title, making it more desirable to book for clients. *Clients in this area are also amazing tippers and extra generous around holidays/birthdays. 

All appointments include turnover times built into the session timing so there are never true back-to-back appointments, and we all always get scheduled breaks after two appointments maximum. The owners are great about making sure we as therapists get in for massages ourselves too and we're all paid to massage each other (not all massage businesses do this, I've had to pay for massages from coworkers in the past or done trade massages where the other therapist doesn't get paid). 

I have awesome health insurance through Horizon and get to contribute to a 401k too. Most of my clients have been with me for 6-8 years but I occasionally see new people. It's been really fulfilling to be able to keep so many regulars for so long. The front end staff is great about making sure clients book out appointments so I know my schedule will always be full one way or another. 

The only non massage tasks we are asked to complete is keeping our treatment rooms tidy and throwing face cradles/towels/blankets in the wash. The owners have professional cleaners come into the studio regularly. Bathrooms and other cleaning responsibilities go to the front desk and management. 

Team culture is awesome and we genuinely all get along. There's plenty of people who all do things together outside of work too because we actually like each other! Therapist turnover is super low. Most of the front desk are on the younger side but they seem to stick around for at least a year and are trained well. They have a cheat sheet on how to book each therapist since we all have different preferences and specalties. 

Schedules are pretty flexible. I started as part-time and quickly changed to full-time and added nights and weekends to pack my schedule but once I had regulars, changed to some day times and mornings with no problems. 

Never have to worry about not being booked, never have to worry about not having time for personal life, never have to worry about issues with coworkers. 

Where do I even begin? I will start with positives. The massage therapists are all very nice people. I got along very well with them and the other front desk staff of the same position. We also got a free monthly massage and deep discounts on additional massages. That's it. Management was extremely disorganized. They would text me off hours constantly about things that were not urgent and could easily be handled the next day at work. I frequently got texts reminding me to do basic job duties that I always did regardles. Management was very patronizing and condescending on top of extreme micro-managing. It's a simple front desk job, yet I was made to feel like a gopher would have done a better job than I did. They also spoke badly about other front desk workers to me and would turn around and speak badly about me to those same people. They also lied and said they focused on soft sales, however it was by very definition a hard sales position. Management will not own up to simple mistakes (let alone huge ones) but will scrutinize everything you do as if they are looking for you to have messed something up. I second guessed everything I did even when I knew I was doing things correctly. I worked less than 20 hours a week sometimes and found myself so stressed out and exhausted from the environment alone I could hardly do anything after work. I was also not able to take my lunches unless it was convenient to the manager. Often it would be taken in the last hour of my shift. They would conveniently disappear around my lunch time or time off so I had to sit and continue working or the front desk would go unmanned. I was never offered to take a 10 minute break. The only times I took one were if management was not there or if they made the incorrect assumption that I was to take a lunch that day. There is almost never enough front desk coverage and oftentimes people come to work sick getting everyone else sick in the process. Forget vacation time. There are only just enough people to spread thin over the schedule so usually there isn't even another employee who can cover you regardless of what you need time off for. Expect the manager to constantly ask you to cover their weekends though so they can get a 3 day weekend while some people can't even get 2 days off in a row. Never expect a raise, but always the promise of one with you review that never comes. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture.

I think it really just boils down to management. Elements is a great if you’re just starting out and if it wasn’t for Covid, turnover time between clients really saved my body and career. The fact that there is want any sanitation protocols before this baffles me. The fact that you only got 5 minutes to flip your room (which was apart of the hour massage the 5 before and after was the clients time to dress and undress) but we were expected to flip the room and jot down on some paper to later enter SOAPS it was so just unrealistic. To add extra time between before Covid you had to have a doctors note. Even though they really had no choice but to implement these protocols it was for the better for the mental sake of the MT and of course the other obvious reasons. 

There isn’t really room to move up usually you would have some sort of lead therapist or liaison. Turn over rates I feel like are the reason for this I saw 3 MTs leave in the year and a half I worked there. These MTs were working 6-8 hour shifts with the thought of “this is how it’s suppose to be” when we were under paid and there was no definite pay raise initiative other than “if you promote add on you can give your self a pay raise” putting the responsibility of your paycheck ultimately in your patients hands. 

Add ons are short cuts to promote healing and modilites applied for the client not the massage therapist’s insensitive as an alternative to a pay raise. This inturn and gives the wrong connotation to these and negatively effects the actually healing process behind the modality. By it being a survival tactic for the MT  rather than actual healing for the client which is the whole drive behind an MTs passion. To promote relaxation and facilitate healing.  This is a burnout tactic.

The pros where you were able to see your client retention and new client retention when we did our quarterly therapist analysi. A bonus at the end of the year and to get the feel of how a buisness like this works. If you’re reading this as an MT ask for 30-40% at least I was working 18 dollars per massage hour and 12 as an intern (unlicensed but in school) with the promise of you’d be paid if your hours that couldn’t get booked equaled out to be more than what your booked massages were. Which would never happen because they paid minimum wage for unbooked hours which is less than half of your actual hourly wage. 

Overall Elements is a good brand.
They are better than other chains because they book every 75 minutes rather than every hour, giving therapists ample time to get ready for the next client. The pay is so-so... depends a lot on your area as with each massage you likely get more in tips than you do for your massage rate. I was paid $20 per 1 hour massage. No pay during non-massage minutes. Tip was $10-35 for a 55 minute massage. The rest depends heavily on management. Without proper communication between everyone, it is easy for there to be a lot of burned time and gaps in the schedule which is bad for everyone, including the owner - obviously. SCSS would never seem to quite grasp to for example not book a client weeks out at a time that would create a half hour or 45 minutes gap in which the therapist had no choice but to not be massaging where if they had told the client to move appointment time by a mere 15-30minutes that could be avoided. Same day? Sure. A week out? No. That creates issues. Also, in a lot of locations the owner/manger does not massage. This is not true for everywhere. But usually they arent even an LMT. This creates lack of understanding between the front and back of studio. There are no paid vacations and you only get the state mandated PTO of .3 per every hour worked which technically can be used for sick or non sick days. 
Overall: good place to get started in your career or if you arent ready or wanting to make your full potential amount of money by working for yourself.
You dont need to bring anything to work other than yourself and clean well manicured nails. 
Uniform for LMT is elements shirt black pants or capris and sneakers. For SCSS it varies on specifics but its professional casual no jeans, name tag.
Pay is in my opinion a bit low but they seem to have a good competitive pay thing going and you get raises every 6 months depending solely on performance and how much money you make them. Fully booked = 5 1hrs per day. 
Before being hired make sure you ask how many therapists vs. Members your studio has.

After the interview, and 3 weeks of waiting back on a backround check; the job offer was given. Training consisted of at least 9 hours of watching videos, and taking quizzes. I made it clear during the interviewing process that this job would be my first in that feild, and using the technology expected. Trained with a total of three or four people, all but one signing off on my competence in the training process. I was training for about 3 weeks (one was spent on the computers), but I hardly had hands-on time to learn how to use the programs used, the training videos did not do a good job of teaching that either. There was poor communication in staff/mangement, and a distrust in management from some of the staff. Got let go after the three weeks because one trainer brought up vauge concerns, the more specfic ones having a solution if prior communication was had.  Taking time off during the training peroid was an issue as well. I had an important last-minute issue pop up, and I asked a day in advance (when I knew) to either take the following off, or come in late (offered to come in another day to continue what I was missing). I was first told to request time off on the app used, but then told I could not do so because I was in training. An agreement was made eventually, but it seemed some of the other staff were not made aware that I would be in late, resulting in frustration from everyone involved. Sales people were kind and mostly understanding during training. My last week working, I communicated that my parent was out of town and I had to check in on my young brother while the other parent was at work, sending check-ins to make sure he was alright, and responding later when it was slow. During the phone call in which I was let go, my phone usage was brought up; that week being the only notible time where I would check my phone outside of the 15 minute break. All in all, training felt difficult and the poor communication added to it.

Management takes on you guilt trip when calling in sick; first thing when training for LMT cert. is never work on anyone while sick. They should know this but they don't care. It's a business.
Management talks about LMTs unilaterally, there's literally NO PRIVACY between management and employees.

Special privileges for those LMTs that have been there for a long time. (Favorites)

You don't get good pay; you really put your body through the ringer for them working on 3-4 people (per shift) back-to-back. So think about it - do you want to age your body rapidly by working for elements? Getting low pay, no benefits, dealing with miserable clients and co-workers.

Tipping is up to the client. So if you work on someone for 80 min and receive a $7 tip that sucks. It has happened, lots of cheap clients. But management plays dumbs, they'll tell you you're still getting a base pay for the length of the session but after taxes it's much lower than they tell you. Is it worth it?

Thinking back when I was training as an LMT in school and watching the people from elements come to the school to discuss what it's like to work at elements, they tell you how good it is but once you work there it's a whole different story, it's a big lie. It is seriously like recruitment for the army. Don't go fighting someone else's battle, meaning, don't make someone else a profit while your body crumbles little by little and when you inquire about more money that's when you get labeled trouble.

Many female therapists have notified management about weird clients (uncomfortable) but because management doesn't want to lose the business they just shuffle the clients around so they don't interact with the therapist that complains about them. Like the Vatican does with priests.

You have clean the place after your shift with no pay because management "expected" but it's expected to get paid better than $16 hr per session, right? Nope.

Just don't bother. Work in a REAL spa. These places don't have a soothing vibe, they look like waiting rooms for the elderly.

I’m 60-years-old, re-creating myself, and have been given this wonderful opportunity by Elements Massage in Spokane, Washington to continue growing my skills through their exclusive and free educational website and hands-on training offered as routinely as possible given COVID restrictions respected and adhered to in an effort to ensure everyone’s health in accordance with the CDC guidelines ~ just as they do within our studio every day.

Recently, I almost lost my mother and found the management and co-workers so compassionate that they were willing to let me take as much time as I needed to be there for her.  In turn, with the days off in my schedule, I settled as much as I could to make certain she was cared for so that I could return to work on my very next shift 4 days later to be just as supportive of everyone else as they were to me.

I’ve owned and operated businesses of my own, so I’m well aware of the details Elements Massage provides fluidly and as humanly flawlessly as an employee can hope for at any given moment.  Suffice it to say, I am grateful beyond mere words for this wonderful and encouraging experience.

There are those who would debate the pay-per-massage, but when enhancements are learned (at their expense) and added to each session, gratuities are considered (even though they fluctuate), and the fact that all other aspects of securing clients ~ even when inevitable cancellations arise, and all other facets of running such a respected and inviting studio are expertly researched, supported, and guaranteed in motion from one moment to the next, I feel well compensated for my efforts and time that I, in turn, devote to everyone at elements and our guests.

In essence, I L💞VE MY CAREER at Elements Massage.

So, I started off at this job very hopeful and happy. But after talking to other Elements employees in the state, I’m pretty bummed out that I even wasted my time here. The Elements in Avon DOES NOT fairly compensate their employees. Every other elements employee I’ve spoken has started at about 22-25/hour, even fresh out of school. Elements in Avon will start you at 16-18 per hour with promises of raises that never come. If you’re coming right out of school, expect the lower of the two no matter how good you are. You spend all of this money on school and continuing education for them to absolutely stiff you on your salary, as they don’t expect you to know any better. You will be completely exploited if they think they can get away with it. They’re your typical upper middle class, white, business owners doing their best to fill their pockets on your hard work. The Elements business model is absolutely terrible and completely exploits new massage therapists. You pump out 5 massages a day usually, which is so damaging to young hands, with no break. They do not care about you. They ONLY care about making money. It’s an okay place to start to have a job on your resume, but mark my words, you will not have a successful career here. This is not a place to plant your roots. This is not a place to grow. This is the place that will keep you poor, practically begging for a raise, while the owners reap the benefits of your hard work. You will make 3 times more money at private massage centers or a medical office or even just starting your own business. We spend over 19,000 dollars on school to make BARELY 18,000 a year at a “massage chain” like Elements or Envy. Do not accept this. Move along quickly. KNOW YOUR WORTH. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Massage therapist 181 salaries reported	$42.52 per hour
Customer service representative 13 salaries reported	$16.61 per hour
Front desk agent 62 salaries reported	$14.94 per hour
Membership representative 40 salaries reported	$16.84 per hour
Retail sales associate 14 salaries reported	$17.61 per hour

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