sales associate

stocking associate

order picker

customer service representative

store manager

Eye-On-Design-Drapery-Shutters-&amp

This place used to be far better a couple years ago, but things have been changing drastically the last year or so and getting worse by the minute. From cutting hours to cutting benefits, extra work for no extra pay, less help available when you need it. You name it!

We were told last summer that hours for employees would be cut "temporarily," why? Apparently $2.5 billion last year was not enough revenue for the company last year. This "temporary" cut to hours was only supposed to be until our peak season around the holidays. Well, peak season came and went, hours did not go back to normal around this time as previously told, and now over a full year later, and what was supposed to be a "temporary" cut in hours has now become quietly permanent. You can forget about them offering you any sort of overtime too.

They also used to offer a $300 bonus for getting good ratings from customers during the holidays and other bonuses throughout the year, but last year? Nada. The wages offered are already the bare minimum as it is, so cutting something employees depended on and especially around the holidays? You can tell how little this company values its employees. This made even more laughable by the whole "teamwork!" aspect the company is constantly trying to push.

Previously we also only had to work one channel at a time (chat, text, email, etc) but anyone working the evening shift now is expected to work multiple channels at the same time because management cut part-time employee hours to save on costs. One thing I liked about this place when I first started was that help was always available when you needed it. But, if you need any extra help with any issues that might come up now, good luck! There is still a phone line to reach out for escalations, but that's also being cut soon. Instead, employees are expected to use a group chat for co-workers that no one ever responds to. But you can bet management will be micromanaging your every move if you go over a break for over a few seconds or aren't in a certain channel almost immediately.

Overall, what used to be a decent place to work at is quickly becoming worse by the minute and just like every other corporation that doesn't value its employees. Don't even get me started on the customers that shop at this place... Be prepared to deal with the most entitled people on the planet. Between management and the customers, hard pick on who's worse. 

If you’re a creative professional hoping to grow your design career, this is not the place. The store might look beautiful, but behind the scenes, it’s stressful, disorganized, and demoralizing.

A typical day? You’re expected to do everything; greet walk-ins, offer free design services, ring people up at the register, clean, answer phones, chase down backorders, and hit impossible sales goals… all while working in the middle of chaotic foot traffic. There’s no time set aside for training or growth, and you’re constantly distracted and pulled in different directions.

The pay? $20/hr with a $750/hr sales expectation. You could sell $500,000 and maybe see a $300 “commission” after taxes—if that. The backend can’t keep up with what we’re selling, bad furniture delivered several times, but you’re the one who gets penalized.

The management culture is toxic. Fear-based, not supportive. If you speak up, ask questions, or set boundaries, your schedule gets “adjusted” (aka weaponized) until you either fall in line or give up. They control your hours and treat you as disposable, even if you’re outperforming. One-on-one meetings are rare, and when they do happen, they’re mostly focused on numbers—not your development or wellbeing.

Full-time schedules are brutal. You’ll likely work every weekend with no two days off in a row. You’re expected to be “flexible,” but the company isn’t flexible back. Part-timers who ask for time off risk losing hours altogether. Raises don’t happen, and HR just passes the buck back to the store managers.

The only good part? The other designers and associates. Some coworkers are kind, creative, and just trying to survive like you. And yes, the showroom is beautiful—but after a while, even that starts to feel like smoke and mirrors.

Bottom line: This company still sells the dream of design-led retail, but internally, it’s stuck in outdated, fear-driven practices. They need to hire real creative leadership, raise pay to match expectations, and stop treating designers like disposable salesman.

Customer Service has been revamped in the past year and it hasn’t been good for the company or its employees.   The restructuring was ill-conceived, poorly planned and poorly executed.   Caller wait times have increased dramatically and associates have less time to follow up with customers — which forces customers to call back over and over — which increases call volume and creates longer wait times.  It’s a vicious circle.

In the four years I’ve been there, it seems that changes are made to keep the company “in line” with “industry standards.”  That’s not a good enough reason if the changes don’t work.  They’re hiring more associates, but their training is abbreviated.  By the time they get on phones, they’re unprepared and quickly become discouraged.  Recently the company started using temps who don’t seem to have much invested in their job.  They have terrible language skills, no enthusiasm and are just plain lazy.

Working in Customer Service is not fun anymore.  No one has time to do the follow up work necessary to make customers happy and it’s very stressful.  I often work through my breaks, come in early and NEVER leave on time because of the work load.  Several coworkers in my level have quit recently, along with two supervisors and a manager.  I’m not surprised.  I recently applied for two openings in Leadership, but was disappointed when both those jobs went to lower-level associates.  How does one go from Level 2 to Lead while skipping over Level 3 completely?

In the last year, we’ve gotten new desks, new office chairs, a new kitchen/lunchroom, new computer monitors and new “soft phone” system.  Those are nice, but I would rather have seen that money go toward hiring more associates with proper training and some raises.

If things don’t change soon, I will likely be looking for a new job after the holiday season.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The staff at the  location I was working . The Customer's ,for the most part , were nice . 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The new sales requirements and compensation structure. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
When I first started , it was a whole store team culture. The brand identity was known for a style and quality .  We all supported each other and were cross trained .  We had shift meetings for store & product updates in a 1 hour meeting before your weekend shift(s).  We concentrated on the full customer experience.  
Sadly due to new corporate ownership the  it is more metrics centric , not that the customer is not important . It is more selling as much as possible to the customer than anything else .

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
As a "Design Expert"/furniture sales associate, your day starts by checking in with the Manager on Duty to be informed of the store metrics and goals for the day and your expected goals and metrics . You are asked what your expected sales for the day will be , pending quotes and expected customers and design consultations .  Proceed to the sales floor and sign into your email and appointment calendar to address customer issues and contact new design clients .
Greeting and assisting customer that are in the store , answering  phone calls for customer service & support.
Being updated  on a half hourly basis of the store progress in meeting the daily goals  over a walkie talkie . Working on existing  design clients projects on a design computer or register desk computer. Ringing sales for walk in customer. Lastly display flor maintenance , including restocking product shelves and bringng visual and product  displays to standard .

Crate & Barrel is the Disney World of home goods.  One of the benefits of working at Crate & Barrel is the beautiful setting.  The store I worked in had a great team of happy workers. People worked as a team and supported each other. The managers were reasonable and fair. Every store has it's own culture.
     Some stores in some States pay commision, others pay an hourly wage. Raises are meager. Last Christmas, Corporate had to raise seasonal workers hourly pay $1 an hour to attract Christmas help.  This resulted in an increase of $1 an hour for everyone in sales.  
     Job reviews while filled with high praise for your customer service, will be determined by your ability to shill credit cards that have an interest rate of over 28%, capture email addresses and maintain a high number of untis per transaction.  When your store does well, managers will be rewarded with bonuses but the workers on the front line do not benefit. Corporate is out of touch with the front line employee needs and the over the top expectations that they have for these employees.
     The work on the sales floor is fast paced during the holidays and extremely slow at other times of the year.  Sales staff is expected to be knowlegable about the products being sold. Crate & Barrel has many sales tasks that go beyond just ringing sales. But helping customers find the perfect item for their home or a gift can be fun. 
      For part timers, the hours in the store are varied in quantity depending on the time of year.  If you need a steady income this is not the job for you. If you want to earn a bit of money, score some sweet deals on home furnishings using your discount, and you are willing to feel pressure to market a credit card to ensure the success of a Corporation, Crate & Barrel might be a match.

I took pride in my job and it took a lot of work to get the store visually up to par with the other stores in the region. It was a lot of physical, dirty work that my visual manager and I had to do on our own at 5am/6am unless we were fortunate enough to get a couple of merch associates to help. I would be so exhausted from the entire week that I spent my days off recuperating and mentally preparing for the following week. Also as part of the management team, you have to have open availability, close at least one night a week, and work a weekend day. 

Overall, there's no consistency with training from store to store. You'll find fairly new associates training new associates on products, standards, and policies which often leads to misinformation and bad habits. They hire candidates who have no experience in the position they were hired for. Assistant managers should have more say in who gets hired for positions within their departments especially if it's a team leader role. 

Managers within stores who don't want to move up should be moved around to other locations. It's easy for them to get set in their ways so this would allow them to look at things from a different perspective. It gives upper management a chance to see how they grow or don't grow even in the same position. The managers who want to move up should be mentored properly. Having an Individual Development Plan (IDP) is great, but it's not effective if the store manager doesn't follow up. Also, the IDP only focuses on development within the store. Not all want to stay at the store level. There should be opportunities to shadow or work with the team in the corporate departments. 

If you are looking at Sales you will you only be part time. There are no full time Sales or Merchandizing that they are hiring for ever! They will work long hours, 8hrs, they tend to be boring and just exhausting. 
You learn the basic of registrar, ordering,back orders and lots LOTS of product knowledge. If you are lucky, you will learn some thing along the way like the back room or back order. They do not like Sales team in the back at all! You more then likely get in some kind of trouble. 
Management... like many places you got your good ones and just terrible ones. For the sales, they show you who their favorites are!!! Half the time. I just wanted to do my job and not be bothered by them. If you need help they are their for you just like everyone else is. Something on registrar have to be approved my a manager and they can take a while to come get to you. Often times leaving you and the customer annoyed with the wait time. I did not fill welcomed by them if i had to share a problem or concerns. They just email each (other management) other and share with the problem that someone shared with them in confident. Often times, They keep quite and look the other way. Just so they do not get involved.  
Co-workers, they know how to work around the system and the so called "favorites ones" will take advantage of it. Often leaving the floor and returning just to be seen on occasion for their whole shift. They have lazy-er employees just like everywhere but you know who they are here and so does management. 
Parking here (Houston) is just a mess! Not worth standing on your feet for hours and walking 5 miles to get to your car. Unless you catch the bus, if you are lucky!

CEO is no longer apart of the company! That's saying something!

So for me the best part of this job was the days go by decently quick as long as you stay busy and
Keep moving. A pro and a con is the overtime! Pro you can make really good money and not spend any of it because When I was hired I was told it was 8 hours Monday through Friday 7am to 3 pm and an occasional saturday but they were optional immediately after my first day was told that the loaders come in at 6 and work till 3:30 because they were busy right then. I was ok with that come to find out a week later when I got my training and started using the lift lift driver had to come in and work 10 hours Monday through Friday 5:am-3:30pm and the only Saturday I had off was the very first Saturday I worked there every Saturday from that point on was made mandatory at 6 hours about a month later they made saturdays mandatory 8 hours! And then they even threw the occasional mandatory Sunday! 8 hours it had become to much not to mention barely any holidays off and if you got covid you were required to use your own sick time and vacation time to cover the days you missed...... all round the money did not make up for the job after the second month your dead tired and will stay that way until you quit get fired or move on from them because honestly there schedule is going to be that way for atleast another year and a half maybe 2 years but I feel like there just going to make that the shift schedule. So all in all if your not doing anything with your life and want to make a bunch of money quickly but never have time to go out in the weekend or make plans for a weekend trip without having to use your vacation time with not very good benefits and not the best pay rate! CRATE AND BARREL IS THE JOB for you!

It started out okay as a part time job. The training was not detailed enough and personally could have done a self guided training. There are changes every week and no hard policies for customer service and these entitled customers they attract. Customers know it too, so they get any and everything they want by being mean and complaining and disrespecting you daily. The most abusive behavior is always rewarded and your overall ratings are insulting by far. Theres not enough structure and too many folks making overall decisions for changes so end result you have tons of useless updates weekly over and over until you wave the white flag.  The system is always being worked on and finally if you are not burned out by now from all of this mayheim, you kinda just walk away from a chaotic run position with no sign of completion to a smoother run company. There is a culture of popularity contests which permeates throughout this company, so when they have their contests if you are not a favorite do not expect to win. The employee discount (30%) is a joke because you always pay shipping which is about 15% of your purchase. That really makes sense especially since merchandise is so expensive. I did better as a plain paying customer with free shipping promos. Not a fan or customer going forth at this point. One last thing..They publicized their pledge of 15% and personally I did not see any vendors of color added, but I saw alot of frivilous celebrated days internally acknowledging diversity added which makes no sense but it felt like a suttle way to appease employees of color. In the end the message is clear-business as usual.

My store felt like a tight-knit group of employees that all generally got along with each other and cared for both the customer and each other. We felt at odds with higher-up rule, which sort of came a head when we were given 30 days notice that our location was to be shut down - an announcement given about a week before Christmas. So that really soured the end of that job. 

I enjoyed the people a lot, and I actually liked/cared about the products we dealt with and the customers we served, but there was a constant push from higher-ups to meet sales and Credit Card expectations - pretty typical of retail but frustrating nonetheless. Perhaps our location was shut down because, even though we were popular and did well enough, we never put excessive pressure on ourselves to meet these ridiculous expectations.

Anyway, the store is likely as good as the culture within it, but generally good people seem to be drawn to the stores (I worked at 2 in my time), so it should be alright.

That being said, you will likely be taken advantage of - most of our workers were quite underpaid for the effort they put into the company, ESPECIALLY during our closing - we were doing duties that should have been given to professionals, such as personally loading heavy pallets of salesfloor furniture (tables that displayed product and the like) on to outgoing trucks. My loyalty to the company was met with little gratitude monetarily, and growth was difficult - if a position on the next rung of the ladder was available, you MAY have a shot, but I had heard of good, long-term employees who were never able to grow in their positions, besides taking on extra responsibilities and figurative authority with no real compensation.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Sales associate 34 salaries reported	$20.33 per hour
Stocking associate 20 salaries reported	$1,475 per week
Order picker 11 salaries reported	$24.64 per hour
Customer service representative 3 salaries reported	$15.67 per hour
Store manager 4 salaries reported	$29.75 per hour

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