sales associate

retail sales associate

retail assistant manager

store manager

seasonal associate

Pandora-Jewelry

This is for the Times Square (42nd St) location, who also manages Herald Square.
When I started this job, fellow employees told me to run away as fast as I could. Here are all the reasons I should have:
1. I was hired part-time (20 hrs listed in my official availability) because I was a student. My first schedule (given to me a day in advance) I was given 39 hours. After four separate discussions with a manager, my hours never went under 30.
2. Good luck asking for time off. Even
it’s approved (unlikely) you’ll have to remind the manager over and over and then you’ll probably still get scheduled for those days. If it’s approved (unlikely) you’ll have to remind the manager over and over and then you’ll probably still get scheduled for those days. 
3. There were about 10 managers who all directed you to a different one. No single person in charge and they all had different rules.
4. if you had a 9 hour shift, it would be on the schedule as eight hours because they don’t include your breaks, and they only included 8 hours in your count for the week even though you would be there for 9. 
5. they will schedule people literally for 39.75 hours so they can avoid giving benefits while working them to death.
6. they were so over staffed most time, so you’d just be standing around, and then they’d yell at you for your sales being low even though there were 15 employees and 2 customers. 
7. they offered a super insulting bonus, it was impossible and no one ever got it. One of the requirements was to open 15 credit cards. for reference, that’s almost double what the store got for the month on average. 
8. The were ridiculous about breaks. they required you to go clock out before you took your jewelry off and go downstairs, which took several minutes. and then you had to put your jewelry back on before you clocked back in even though it’s part of the job. this wasn’t a big deal, but it was so petty and showed how they only care about money. they had a chart were they wrote down whenever someone went over, EVEN TWO MINUTES, so they could go back and deduct it from your pay. 
8. the employee turnover rate was so high because no one wanted to stay there, so it was impossible to create any sense of community or team.
9. you had to ask to go to the bathroom, like a first grader. 
10. open 365 days a year, people would be denied vacation time to go home to their families for christmas.
11. during holidays, if the line was at the door during close, you’re staying an extra 2 hours to serve people until they stop coming, and no, you’re not getting overtime pay.
Overall, they acted like this job is your whole life and required all your care and attention, but only paid you not a cent above minimum wage. I worked at a different Pandora before I moved and loved the product and getting to be so personal with customers, which is why I went here to continue working for the company. If you really want to work for Pandora, try the SoHo or World Trade Stores. Please, take the advice I ignored, and run away as fast as you can.

I worked with PANDORA for almost 2 years. PANDORA is franchised, so experience will vary by location. I worked at 2 different locations, and my experiences at both were similar. 

You have to have sales experience or extreme comfort with talking to people. You need to be able to remember tons of small details and be prepared for customers to be nastier than expected. Many customers take out their sticker shock on you, as they learn that PANDORA is not as affordable as it once was. Both locations I was at served similar clientele on paper, but in practice, the one location I was at was in a lower income area and I encountered noticeably more sticker shock. This made sales very very difficult. 

PANDORA pays minimum wage (or just above) for sales associates, and the commission structure is paltry and can be easily manipulated by miserly franchisees. You get .5% of all your sales, and 1% of all your sales when you make your budget (which is set far too high most of the time). You are on your feet, having to talk and talk about silly little charms to people who just need a thoughtless gift (for the most part). Some people are really into the product and those customers are FUN and you get to assemble some really nice jewelry. Other than that though, you will find yourself absolutely swamped at the most inopportune times during the year, with most of the times being quiet. The exception is holidays, where you will have line ups out the door. During these times you may be stressed enough to feel sick, as the waiting customers glare at you for "taking too long" with the customer you are serving, and will become visibly annoyed when they see a free sales associate go to the back to take a drink or to go on lunch. Managers did not intervene when customers became irate, and more than once it was deemed acceptable for me to have been reduced to tears because of a customer. Keep in mind I was a top sales associate at both location I worked, bringing in a substantial amount of their sales. I did not benefit from my hard work like I would have if I were in a different sales job with a meaningful commission structure. 

You are not permitted to sit down while working on the sales floor, even if you are standing still, sorting a shipment of new charms and would benefit from a table and chair. 

PANDORA is a great company where manufacturing is concerned, but is a typical retail minimum wage environment prone to cattiness and lack of respect and appreciation for employees.  I had fun with the job, but its not sustainable.

Working for Pandora inside Disney's Magic Kingdom was the best part of my job, working in Disney. Because it was in Disney, employees would have to work long hours, up until 4 am at times. Management ALWAYS worked Opening (7 -8 am) until about 4 or 5pm. Assistant manager barely worked and was extremely rude and had no intention of helping with anything. Would always make an excuse to leave early.  Associates at times would work 10 - 13-hour shifts, with only ONE 30 min break and a small 15 min break upon discretion of sales lead. 

A typical work day was to come in with full Disney costume and hit the sales floor. Work with over hundreds of guest a day and sell charms. In between getting left alone on the floor, no ability to go to the bathroom because leads and management were non-existent, always somewhere else. Have a very fast lunch in Disney break room as we had none. If you had a great sale no one would recognize your hard work as sales Lead will not want to help you grow, and visualize you as a threat, therefore not giving you the "good job" you deserve or your manager deserves to know. 


If your going to school they will not work with your school schedule. The schedules would be emailed EXTREMELY LATE and always having the email line "sorry for the delay" At times, schedule would be available to you only one day prior, leaving you with no time to go to Dr's Appointments. 


Selling the jewelry was fun but that is about it. As a company itself, Pandora has no intention of mentoring and growing the talent it has inside already. Management knows nothing about managing, encouraging and promoting from within. The Sales Lead team is inexperienced in their craft. To move up within the company, you would have to be friends with so and so, and if that person liked you, then you would move up. So if you didn't kiss up, your existence would be none within the store and the company itself.

If you want your talent to shine, and have a positive and upbeat work environment where core values are the company's objective, and you can grow from within, this company is NOT for you then.

Working with two separate Pandora Jewelry companies in different roles gave me a unique perspective on both; their similarities and their differences. 

The first Pandora was owned by a large independent jewelry corporation. It was excellent. Training was outstanding. Coaching, role playing, mentoring and the review process were all exceptional and timely. Advancement was possible and encouraged if you were willing to relocate and travel. Compensation was excellent and full benefits were offered. While a manager at this company, I was valued and my talents utilized. 

The second Pandora Jewelry was owned by an individual. It was much smaller but definitely had its advantages. It was very busy.  It was fun and challenging.  The training was my responsibility. Often times there wasn’t time to train adequately.  There was little room for advancement.  Compensation was less as it was a smaller company. There were no benefits offered. At this company, I was not in management but did a lot of training, new hire orientation and merchandising. My previous experience as a manager was utilized here but not compensated. Though I adore Pandora and loved working there, not having benefits and adequate compensation were why I moved on. 

I did the visual merchandising for both Pandoras. Visual Merchandising was done according to planogram guidelines. It was fun and easy. With the smaller Pandora, there was more room for creativity. 

Management styles differed greatly between the stores. If you like structure, go with corporate. If you want more freedom and a less structured dynamic, go with an independent owner. 

Pandora sells itself. It has changed since I was there. But it remains a quality product that the customers love. 

I started working here in 2018 and let me tell you in my experience worst place to work ever. From the only 2 years that I worked there I experienced horrible conditions. I was a full time college student who was trying to pick up a job after school for about 20 hours a week, when I submitted my availability I assumed that they would schedule me for 20 hours a week because I was a part time employee but no I was mistaken they considered my availability as a perfect opportunity to schedule me a full time college student taking 7 classes a semester for almost 36 hours a week and when I asked if I could get benefits like health insurance they told me no because I’m a part time employee. When have anyone ever heard of a part time employee working almost full time hours but you know I was a naive 18 year old who was just looking for some extra money on the side after school and I was taken advantage off. This company especially the store in Norridge will take advantage of you and then they will also blame things on you that wasn’t your fault but because someone brought your name up management decided to blame you and cut your hours. I’ve had so many different horrible situations from that store I would have to write a book about them to be able to tell them all. But my general message that I’m trying to say is  if you have a choice don’t work there it’s absolutely horrible and you will regret your decision of applying for that job. They also have a tendency of paying the seasonal workers more per hour then their regular employees make per hour so. 

I was an employee for years, and i never noticed how bad the favoritism was until just recently. You will get called out if you’re checking you’re email, or on social media, but it’s ok if another associate is playing games on their phone the whole day. Or if another employee is watching gaming videos all day as well. Don’t bother busting your tail to get the job done either bc all that does is get you a shift you didn’t ask for....again, because if you’re not a favorite, you get screwed, whether the shift is convenient for you or not. The favorites get the shift they want though, even though they don’t get off their tails and do anything. The lack of communication is really bad as well. No one seems to know their head from their butt, and every week they’re changing policies and confusing the heck out of the employees. There is also the vault manager who, if he doesn’t like you, you won’t be there long. Many times have i seen temps get let go within the first week bc they didn’t like the way they were talked to by the vault manager, or he just didn’t like them. Also to note, he abuses the point system just to rid of full time employees he doesn’t like. Don’t worry about moving up with the company either, only favorites get that privilege too. The whole company has always been like high school used to be, with plenty of drama and employees dating each other. Heed my warning, unless you kiss butt to be a favorite, there’s no point in working here. You’ll get screwed otherwise, and get no sympathy from ANY of the management. They could care less about what anyone has to say. They are going to run things how they want, and the favorites get all the privileges and can be as lazy as they want.

Overall
I’ve been in sales for awhile now and I have to say that my first week training here was the worst experience of my life. Not only did the store manager threaten my employment with the company  unjustly but he also went on to call me later on that day to fire me and hang up with no reason as to why I was let go. I will be reporting to HR. To anyone trying to work here, just DONT. The store you train at is full of people that don’t want to help you, they just give you looks as if bothered by your existence. The hiring manager is highly unprofessional, he will address you in very disrespectful ways. For example: training videos were to be completed by a certain day, but the website doesn’t always load correctly or there’s usually errors with the videos . The training manager was informed by MANY of the trainees that the site wasn’t working. We were told to move on to the ones that do work. The following day the hiring manager comes in and starts to tell all the trainees how disappointed he is in us because we didn’t complete everything and goes on to say that he expects more from us and so on etc. the training manager took no responsibility for what she told us about moving forward with the training website and let us take the blame. Later on the day the hiring manager singled me out of the 6 people that were training along with me to insult me and to say exactly these words “I have a profile on indeed with hundreds of applications, don’t make me regret hiring you” I couldn’t believe he said that and that wasn’t the first time he addressed me like that either. Overall worst experience I’ve ever had in a work place . HIGHLY UNPROFESSIONAL

I enjoyed working at Pandora Jewelry. They are structured and show where you stand daily to see how close you are to making commission. How much you make in commission depends on you so not only are you encouraged to work as a team to make numbers, but there is also individual drive to keep selling more and establishing  long term connections with customers. Management lets you share your ideas in meetings that happen twice a month to help improve the store. And the hours are not only flexible (if you are balancing another job or school), but they are also standard shifts with a set closing time. Coming from food industry, I greatly appreciated the atmosphere. It's laid back, but challenging enough so day-to-day tasks don't become boring. I love getting to know the regular customers who come in looking for more charms to add to their bracelets. I also love the creativity I can get to exhibit in helping customers create new styles. I also like meeting the travelers from out of town. They appreciate being listened to. New customers everyday come with new challenges and more chances to test your selling skills. Management is great overall and each store manager has the opportunity to run the store how they wish. This is both good and bad depending on the manager. Raise opportunities are always there as well as promotional opportunities.

This may vary from store to store due to the brand being a franchise.  However, on the back end, the left hand does not communicate with the right, so there is constant issues with ordering, unless you have a great key account Manager. Key account managers are VERY political, and they have a lot of authority over your store. Several orders have been "missed", or "glitched", out of the system, unless you own ten or more Pandora stores.  Leading to a serious delay in product arrival, impacting the customers view of the store.

 In store the culture is very positive and loving. Highly sales driven, but invested in development and coaching. Hours are distributed fairly amongst associates based on performance (may vary from store to store). Clienteling is a huge part of the business. For senior management there is a lot of fun travel (may vary from store to store). LOTS of growing pains. Pandora is ever changing, and is struggling keeping up with their growth, so there is a lot of trial and error which can be frustrating. 

For a franchise owner, they are often more unfair than fair, and there are a lot of broken promises. 

Orders are NOT shipped by order date (first in, first out). This goes back to favoritism and politics. You may be the first to place an order, but if a "bigger fish" orders more than you later, your shipment will be adjusted if you even receive it at all. 

Little opportunity for growth unless your franchise owner has several stores. Little investment into your development.

DO NOT WORK IN PANDORA TIME SQUARE and HERALD SQUARE LOCATION. I learned a lot working at Pandora, however, I was always miserable. First off  I was just an associate but there was no work-life balance. I was hired as part-time but worked full-time hours even after requesting multiple times as part-time. I worked in the Times Square location and It was very stressful. The management there was horrible, they would give you attitude for not reaching your sales goal even though it was set at an unrealistic goal. There was a lot of drama between management but I enjoyed working with other associates. Also, they would purposely give you 6-hour shifts so you could only have a 15-minute break. When the store hours were changed associates were not notified. There were so many times when I was supposed to leave at 9:30 pm but couldn't leave till 10:30 pm because the managers were taking forever to close. Also, every day that I would come in there would be new rules changed and every manager has their own rules it was so annoying to keep track.  Men would come and flirt and harass the sales associates all the time. I've had so many encounters with creepy customers constantly asking when my break starts or writing their phone numbers on receipts. Also, no one ever works here for more than 3 or 4 months, when I was hired and when I left it was all completely different people. If you are looking for a sales associate job please do not work in the Times Square and Herald Square locations.

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