cashier/stocker

customer service representative

sales associate

sales manager

associate

Rainbow Shops

I personally have another job, therefore I don’t really care about the hours I get here at Rainbow only due to the fact I have a full time job WITH benefits and better pay elsewhere. I have only kept this job as a little extra money in my pocket just to spend on whatever I want or a little extra if I have a bigger bill like my gas. Call me crazy, but I also love working. I always have. I’ve been with the company for over a year even though I had a short leave for about 2-3 months due to moving and having no where to stay at the time. Maybe this is just my experience, but I still feel the need to share it. The management is awful for the most part even though I’ve come across pretty amazing managers here at the company who have transferred from different locations, nobody really trains you to do anything and you have to do it yourself and teach yourself which is honestly awful. Every place runs their show differently, for example; One McDonald’s could do one thing, but the one that is 3 blocks away could do something different. I feel it’s very very important to have patience, and I feel this place doesn’t have much of it and that’s why they don’t train anyone. The pay isn’t great honestly and you’ll have good hours one week then the next you could be working 11 hours total that week. Never expect to have the same hours every week. Originally when I started out I didn’t have another job, I said in my interview I wanted 25-30 hours which is typical part time, had it for a while, then boom. A random cut. The cut continued and continued so I just found my second job, where I am a manager at and was hired right on to be a manager, therefore I know management regulations, how to do certain things that only managers can do. So, no offense... but thank god for my second job hiring me, because I really feel like if I didn’t have my other job, I’d be in more debt, I’d be so stuck it wouldn’t even be funny. I’d be starving, so would my dogs and step daughter. The store is all over the place, things stocked so much on one rack that it’ll collapse if touched the wrong way. There’s no benefits at all, so if you’re thinking this job will give you health dental or vision coverage, you’re wrong. There isn’t much room to grow sadly, they’ll talk about promoting you but won’t. So you’ll get excited thinking “yes! I’m going to be promoted! I’m going to get a raise!” for no reason, even then the sad thing is, managers barely get an actual raise. You don’t necessarily get to discuss a pay raise, they give you what they give you which from witnessing coworkers who were going to be promoted to 2 that did, it’s about 50 cents. There’s a lot of drama, pressure, gossip and your personal information does get thrown out to other employees which is completely inappropriate but also unprofessional. I get it, it’s rainbow. It isn’t as big of a hype as Lee Bryant, or Tommy Hilfiger for example, but that doesn’t mean an employees personal information should be unknowingly given to other employees and talked about. It’s a disgusting act. I had something personal going on in my life, someone asked if I was okay because I didn’t seem like myself, next thing I know 2 people who had only worked at the store location for 3 days approached me and asked if I was okay because they heard about what was going on. Only speaking to these girls maybe two times, I was appalled that I entrusted a MANAGER with personal information, who later on said I had lied about what was going on, which was a completely false accusation due to the fact nobody there has ever been with me outside of the place. I was hurt, but I believe more so angry over anything. So if you have something going on, just keep it to yourself because I can guarantee it’ll be talked about and it completely violates your personal bubble that you carry with you, food for thought. And like I said maybe it’s just my store, the people I work with. But after that and more stuff I decided to venture back on indeed to find a better job one that will act with professionalism and true care for anyone that works there and enters there. Now that all of the bad stuff is out of the way, I will say that the customers are amazing. They’re the highlight of my day when I go in for my shift, they’re funny and love to strike up conversation. I love interacting with them, helping them and just talking to them. The job is good if you’re looking for a little money on your pocket for the extra. It’s a very easy job, shipment is easy, cleaning is easy, walking around the store and straightening is easy, all of it is completely easy, right down to the bank slip and register counts. Sadly it’s just not worth the easy stuff, it’s just harder than it needs to be. 

I hope my comment will help anyone who’s considering applying to rainbow, just because this was my experience doesn’t mean it will be yours. Every place is different, and every rainbow is different. Sadly my experience just wasn’t what I had hoped to be.

I have a love/hate relationship with rainbow. 
PROs:
The flexibility of the scheduling works great with my hectic life and school schedule. As long as I give sufficient enough notice, giving me time off and changing my schedule is never a problem. The people I work with are cool, I have no issues with any employees. I got promoted really fast. I've worked at other retail establishments for years and it was impossible to get a promotion because of outside competition. Rainbow will 10/10 promote and train current employees for management positions before they hire someone for a management position who is not already a rainbow employee. The work is very easy, probably the easiest job I've ever had. Everything is super simple and the technology used is outdated, so just about anyone can learn their system and pick up quickly. 

CONs:
The pay is absolutely horrible. Rainbow should be paying their employees way more. From the lowest to the highest positions inside the stores. Starting pay (Nevada) in minimum wage [$8.25 per hour]. When I got promoted it just so happened that my yearly raise was at the same time. With my "promotion" and the yearly raise, I got a total of a $1 dollar raise to my wages. My management raise was .75 cent and the yearly raise was .25 cent. If you think that was bad, I was told that that was actually more than what others had gotten for their management and yearly wages. The system used is super outdated. The registers are old as I am. The printers are even older. When any equipment breaks they just send refurbished ones, which eventually breaks a couple months later and the same replacement process is done. You assist customers and do shipment on the sales floor. Because of that its really easy for customers to steal. Just imagine having to process shipment, ring up customers, get fitting rooms, answer the phone, and help customers look for items all at the same time. They send anywhere from 7 boxes (on a "good" day) to 50+ boxes (on a worse day). We get shipment in EVERYDAY, its easy to get behind and the stores get so packed with merchandise that it's hard for customers to shop, and hard for employees to recover and do shipment on the sales floor. There is absolutely no overtime. If you hit over 40 hours in a week, you get a write up. If you clock in wrong by accident and a time card adjustment has to be made, you get a write up. Most of the stores are understaffed because people don't want to work with all the rules and under these conditions; which just adds to employees being over worked and underpaid. Corporate complains about shipment being pushed out everyday but they don't give us the payroll or extra hours to either hire more people or stay longer hours to get the shipment done. When your management its tough because you usually don't have enough sales associates, people always call out, some even go on break and never come back. If your a closing manager GOOD LUCK. You have to deal with everything that wasn't done during the day PLUS the task for your own shift. This doesn't go for just my location, it's honestly the same at all the rainbow locations. You can literally get a write up for almost anything yet as long as you show up and somewhat work its hard to get fired.

The good: it's better than being unemployed, weekly pay, a flexible schedule (meaning different days off every week ) which is good for me as I have a chronic medical condition n go to appointments. Also if you are a few minutes late not a big deal...there is no point based attendance system here. If you like clothes n accessories you see the freight before it gets to the floor n get a discount. Most of the coworkers are fun to work with.
The bad: The pay. Sales associates are never full time. They usually only get up to 30 hours a week n that's if things aren't slow n they have open availability. I have seen sales associates scheduled for as few as 9 hours in a week. Ppl quickly move on once they realize this if they have bills to pay. Move on meaning they just don't show up anymore. The only store employee who gets 40 hours or more weekly is the store mgr who tops out at 45 hours a week.  The two assistants  mgrs each get about 35 hours a week each. The rest of  the hours are divided amongst the sales associates. Payroll hours are based on the previous weeks sales so unless you are a manager you will not get your hours to pay bills. 

Given how tight the company is with payroll hours which leads to less store coverage they have totally unrealistic expectations about the amount of shipment you can get processed. It is also hard to monitor the sales floor n thefts will occur. Shoplifting leads to shrink that the store is held accountable for at inventory time. A store mgr with a bad inventory can be fired although you can't keep ppl from stealing n you work short staffed. Most stores are located in urban or lower income areas n could benefit from having a security guard but the company is too cheap to pay for that. 

It's a cool job right now but I can't see myself doing this forever. Even as an asst mgr who is single without a family to support  living in a lower cost of living area I still work 16 hours a week elsewhere to make my ends meet. 

The store mgr can randomly take ppl off the schedule if you are absent too much in their eyes or there is some other conflict.

You have to be very persistent about taking your lunch break if you can cuz Rainbow does not care if you keel over from hunger or thirst. As long as someone is ringing up sales n processing shipment. 

Lastly the only ppl eligible for benefits in the store is the store mgr. My manager recently lamented to me that the health ins costs for her n her partner we're almost $800 a month or $200 a week. Her kids are on Medicaid. She is not eligible for medicaid because she works n the wage she makes but I had to direct her to the healthcare exchange aka Obamacare to get healthcare she could afford. 

That's what I had to do for myself

Rainbow was my first job and I came into this industry with a mindset that it was going to be fun and friendly but as a former employee and being there for a couple of years I've seen a lot and lost a lot of respect for Rainbow Shops. To begin with the store itself is crowded and dirty we once had a customer use the bathroom in the fitting rooms and I believe its due to the fact that the store is dirty. Management is terrible and always in drama it's chaotic. The job is demanding, stressful and takes a part of you slowly day by day. Management fails to motivate employees. Imagine putting your all into everything just for them to say " do better" rather than "thanks" or "do more". Their pay is terrible even as an Assistant manager they still pay terribly. The company is cheap and will fire anyone over the slightest mistakes. The turnover rate is very very high. I've seen many people come and go. Some won't even last a day before leaving the job. Recently there was an incident that was a life or death situation in the area I work at. Rainbow doesn't care about their employees or what they have to say. All other stores in the area were closed as well as a Rainbow for a bit but as time went on they choose to remain open. That itself was a red flag for me because I refuse to put my life in danger for a job. They don't care about your voice, your safety, or anything. They only care that you get the job done and get the job done well. When asking for a raise, I wish you good luck they always avoid trying to give raises and when they do it's barely anything. At this job you get paid minimum wage it's barely anything to work with especially living in the Denver Metro Area. The customers are rude and loud a lot of theft occurs here. Overall, I would not recommended working at Rainbow it is not worth it AT ALL.

A typical day at work consisted of clocking in and finding out where I would be needed. Some days I would just work the floor, put out merchandise, help with the customers and other days i would be behind the register. On a normal day, I would be doing merchandise when the store would slow down. From working with Rainbow, I have been taught several things. A couple of things would be the proper way to deal with money, how to work the register, how to interact with the customers and more. When it came to management, they ran a well oiled ship. Every day we would have a checklist of what was needed to be completed that day such as taking down the old banners and replacing them with the new ones. Management was very nice and willing to work with you if you were having problems. My co-workers were also great to be around. As soon as I started working with Rainbow, they took me in like I was family. Every now and then we would have a disagreement but then again who doesn't? They made each day easier knowing that you had someone to talk to at work and someone to share the enjoyment of the job. The hardest part of the job were the days/times we became swamped. Some days we would have so many people in the store and lines that ran halfway to the front door. That was the hardest part because we were all trying to do everything we could to keep the customers happy but sometimes things happened like the registers would go completely offline and we would have to do everything by hand. The enjoyable part of the job was helping the customers. Even when we could not find what the customers were looking for they still managed to leave the store in a good mood. It was extremely satisfying to help people on an everyday basis.

On a typical workday at Rainbow we would have probably like 40 boxes of replenishment to put out. Mainly house boxes that contain up to 400 items. It typically takes a hour and a half to fully check everything off in the box and then hang and sensor it. When I was at Rainbow I learned that time management was very important. Having so many boxes makes you have to use time management as your number one factor. The management team at Rainbow was awesome when I first started working there but as it progressed the store started falling apart. When I became a manager I tried to do things the way I was taught when I first started working there because it made it easier but the new managers didn't like it. But after I showed them why my way was easier they then understood why I was so focused on getting them to do it my way. Working smarter not harder was definitely my motto. My co-workers were ok at first but since we were all sales associates at the same time they couldn't handle when I became one of the managers. They didn't really know how to take order or direction from me because they weren't use to it. Anytime I asked them to do something they would think I was joking because we were friends. That was definitely the hardest part of the job but I realized my true friends going through that situation. And the most enjoyable part of the job was being able to merchandise the store anyway I wanted. Fashion merchandising is something that I really enjoy doing.

Hello, to whom it may concern:

A typical day at work always has its challenges, from the computers going down to sometimes someone forgetting to punch out, thankfully these things don't happen to often. we get nice rush hours where everyone seems to want to checkout at the same time ha-ha its like they all agree to do it before they come to the store. every once in a while a customer will try to return items they DIDNT buy at our clothing store but patients is key in every situation that is definitely what time and experience has taught me.

Management is great. Its always refreshing when your supervisor is demanding but understanding of the reality in day by day scenarios. Customers simply will not act like in books, or always want what we put out, its our job to make sure the customer is able to see the product we put out and make sure the store stays clean at all times. 

My co-workers respect my authority as their Shift Lead and like my constant drive to maintain a fast paced work ethic. whenever there is some slow time there is always something that needs straightening, no matter what it is, and of coarse there is always merchandise that can be put out if we have the space. 

The hardest part of my job is simply the rush hours, and when we get inventory shipments late in the afternoon when we only have about two or three hours before we close but hey its a clothing store so these things are going to happen.  

The most enjoyable part of the job is the customers. They come from all walks of the world and they always have a good story to tell.

At first, it might seem exciting, but you’ll get depressed really quick. Most of the time, you’re just walking around, fixing things, making sure nobody is stealing or damaging items. Sometimes you’re putting price tags, censors, and hanging clothing. 

Management can be very immature & unprofessional at times. Feels more like a scolding, instead of them teaching you or directing you. Asking for a day off or a shift swap and obtaining it is very hard to come by. Even if someone you loved dies or something misfortune happens, they aren’t understandable and would still make you work. 

Also very sneaky. A lot of office workplace gossip, hostile work environment. Won’t let you know if you’re fired for a while, will randomly take you off the schedule with or without reasoning.

Dangerous work environment. There’s always a need to call the police, or get security involved. It’s also dangerous inside, such as no AC or heating unit. 

Favoritism happens here. If they don’t like you, they’ll make you do all the longer/harder tasks. If they like you, they make you do the easy tasks, but don’t let this sway you. Easy tasks are usually for the managers who stand by. With that being said, managers make the employees do all the dirty work, while they just stand around and do nothing (or do the easiest tasks ever).

I’d recommend this for possible a teenager in high school. I doubt all rainbows are like this, this is just applicable to the one I worked at.

Expect hours to be cut if you are part time or "not productive".

Expect customers to be some what rough, the majority of rainbows I worked at over 5 + years were not in the best of places, but not all are rude and negative I meet a lot of great people that was a pro.

Expect things to happen or change at the drop of a dime. If it's not the 1st of the month or tax time it could be very slow but you will never know what drama the wind may blow in.

Expect the DM or RM to come in and tell management that there will be some kind of floor plan change.

Expect to do a lot of MARKDOWNS, and PUT BACKS.

Management can be tough and hard to deal with depending on who they are and how they work, but generally you will notice trends in most of the managers from various districts.

Career advancement: Not so much sometimes there are no annually raises for bogus reasons. Your hard work wont get your further or noticed  just over worked. You may advance but it may take a long time unless you really have a passion for the way this company runs.

I did learn alot about servicing customers and breaking out of my "shell"

Previously had multiple issues with the tech side of things IE system or register crashes.

Over view: it is a fun place to work, you meet a ton of great people, but you also see a ton of great people leave due to feelings of mistreatment, or not seeing a future. Management suffers at times, but can be good if you have a good leader.

Rainbow is the kind of retail job that you only hear about in your nightmares but kicks it up to a much more draining degree. The company has decent pay with you being able to earn the longer you work which is a plus however for the most part, the amount of work you have to put in ultimately doesn’t feel like the right amount of money. If you’re lucky or really just any other store than the few unfortunate souls that have rounders full of clothes outside (which you’re expected to pull in and out of the store daily for opening or closing and you better believe wheels break.) then your time may be a little less grading than my experience. Expect to be open 365 days a year and absolutely working holidays if you don’t opt to join the union. I’ve never seen lazier managers than the ones that exist at rainbow and honestly if you can deal with carrying the entire store on your capable minimum wage sales associate shoulders, then this is the perfect company for you. The way I see it, they’d let you do everything for them if certain things weren’t in the rules that they weren’t allowed to do and even then the rules tend to still get broken. If you get good managers, honestly I can see this being a great job but corporate always stresses them out because whoever runs the company must know they’re running out of money and penny pinches as hard as they possibly can. I pray for anyone employed for this company with me included. The stories I could tell are so unreal  and I never even knew the store existed before I applied. Beware the rainbow.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Cashier/stocker 20 salaries reported	$30.50 per hour
Customer service representative 17 salaries reported	$19.44 per hour
Sales associate 3 salaries reported	$15.17 per hour
Sales manager 10 salaries reported	$1,375 per week
Associate 10 salaries reported	$1,395 per week

Working at Rainbow Shops: Company Overview and Reviews

Rainbow Shops

Rainbow Shops Ratings

Popular jobs at Rainbow Shops

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected