retail assistant manager

sales associate

store manager

seasonal associate

assistant store manager

The Cotton On Group

Cotton on is a very chaotic company, they are very disorganized. You have a million projects to do in a day and they pile up with no extra hours for support or coverage. They will cut hours given significantly, by almost 100 hours at times. But you are expected to complete every task and have perfect visuals by the end of the day. 
The company itself is very much a visual company, the amount of task work they give you within the day does not allow you to interact with customers. 
There is no sense of urgency in many ways. When a manager quits or a new store opens, it will take them months to replace or hire someone for the position. So that results in other stores covering for the struggling store and being overworked with little to no compensation of store coverage.  Recruiting doesn’t send any applicants to the District Manager. Pay raises are usually fought for, because cotton on gives the bare minimum for the maximum effort you do. 
A lot of Store Managers take advantage of the employees, especially Assistant Managers. 
Deadlines are hard to meet due to the lack of support and coverage. 
They pay really well, but the pay in the long run is not worth the amount of stress and teams that you run through. 
Nothing is every thoroughly prepared and set. Monthly schedule calendars are constantly changing last minute. On promotion updates, the document is sent out but then later in the day or two days out they’ve added additional things out of nowhere. Typically a bunch of new pages, not just one or two things. 
The values of Cotton On are posted in the store, but the implementation of the values is nowhere to be seen by anyone higher up in the company. Mental health is vouched for in the company, but on a store level it’s not there at all. 
A lot of favoritism displayed from District and Regional managers. Anyone on that level does not like to interact with employees of the store and only interact with Store Manager. 
Anything regarding your personal life does not matter to this company. If you are not full in for Cotton On, you are shamed for it and made to feel guilty. There’s no work life balance. There is some in the beginning but as you get looped in, it’s all about work. 
All the evaluations of the companies, go ignored so your voice isn’t really heard. The same problems and concerns have been happening for the past 12 years, and nothing has changed. 
Cotton On is not a people first company. They run through teams so much faster through any company, because they can convince you to join the team due to the pay. This company sees their employees as replaceable not valuable. It’s also really hard to move up within your own store, regardless of experience. External hires have priority over internal. 
I hope one day they’ll listen and improve, because they can do incredible things; they just need to listen to the current employees. 

Cotton On has a long list of values. But they are purely for show. Especially during Covid they put people last and refuse to accommodate teams with necessary PPE or safety support. To save money hours were cut leaving a manager or associate a line for several hours. Higher ups come in and tout values that they expect the managers to uphold without upholding themselves. There is not integrity or ethics in the way the Corp managers work. The expectations are high for hourly staff with more and more work gets piled on as workers hours are cut and people continue to get sick. 
Many employees have gotten sick from working with sick colleagues or from customers but management instead focuses on low traffic and sales and how to improve those areas. Instead of closing stores when staff is sick they pull managers/staff from other stores to cover in stores that are never sanitized. Also HR refuses to act ethically in ensuring that store managers are not letting sick employees work. 
Recently store hours were reduced, this was due to traffic being low and staff being in store and not having customers making purchases. This has resulted in full time employees not being able to work full 40hrs. 
I would not recommend this company. Like their products- they appear to be of good quality only to fall apart very quickly. Beware- you will be offered great work life balance, but it comes at a price which is stress from having limited time to get an overwhelming amount of tasks done. Also upper management does not give positive feedback, praise, or recognition. They like to talk about what a fun company it is and how much they do for employees but you never actually see it in action. You just hear about it. Like most retail the stores are responsible for the most but get the least amount of perks or recognition. DO NOT RECOMMEND! 

Overall, Cotton On was an okay place to work until covid. Management caused a cluster of cases at our location pre-vaccine by mishandling covid protocols, and HR did not care and actively hushed us when anyone complained about it - our manager would tell us not to wipe down counters between customers because it “scared the guests”, rarely enforced social distancing, and came to work sick, taking her mask off to cough. After the few friends I had at work left due to these conditions, I truly felt like no one cared at all about me, despite being with the team longer than anyone else and being one of the better workers. They also would rather hire outside for keyholders than promote perfectly good employees that had worked there for over a year and were frankly more qualified than the new hires. The environment was very catty and felt like high school all over again, with people talking behind others backs (including managers) rather than actually encouraging employees to do better. They would rank everyone’s performance on register each week, but certain managers would hop on register only when they knew the customers would boost their numbers so they could outrank others, and some employees would end up on the “bottom” because they would be stuck on the floor doing the actual work that others couldn’t do correctly and were only given the slow shifts to work register. The workload wasn’t too bad and the pay was what you’d expect for an entry level retail position, but I don’t think I’d ever want to work here again - I’d rather go somewhere with better communication, more team-oriented work, and honestly less immaturity. 

I found it challenging when people would come out an "support" my store, but couldn't arrange to get things done. They didn't have the money for it, was the gist of the answers I would receive. However, they did have the money to take the leadership team to Disneyland. 
There was an actual day we had to open later in the store because we had a whole section of a wall fall down. "luckily it didn't happen when we were open" or maybe it shouldn't have happened at all. They were in such a hurry to open the store and make money that little effort went into the construction of the building at all. 
I had a Visual leader come out to help me learn visuals according to Cotton On standards, but she really only wanted to come in early on her own and have me do the grunt work/mess she created. 
They were unapproachable and I was made to feel irrelevent in the store, while they were frequently heard making negative comments about me, by my staff. My business was over exceeding its goals, but only because I was way invested in what I wanted to accomplish. It's disappointing the turn over and lack of training and total disrespect they have for their employees. I had high hopes for this company when I started. Such an incredible disappointment. 
As a Store Manager, we were supposed to be able to approve timecards, etc. Mine always showed me locked, which was baffling to anyone trying to show me how to edit my time. My DM complained about her frustration and nobody knew how to fix the problem. I worked there for 7 months and they still couldn't figure it out. 
The list is long readers. Stay far away from this disappointing company. It's a very "Mean Girl" type of atmosphere.

where do I begin...I was so excited that a new company was coming to the area, I had heard and such great things about the product, I did my research on their website and their values were something I was looking for in a new company. as a very successful retail manager I came with tons of experience both on the operation and visual end, little did I know I was hired as a "glorified sales associate" the company does all the hiring and recruiting, human resources consists of one person that seems to handle everything for the entire company...I was expected to run an entire store on my own from fitting room to shipment ringing out customers while still maintaining a high level of customer service all while executing visual merchandising updates that came in on a daily basis, all done by one person...meal and rest periods are non existent! I was lucky to get a full break...the district manager would micro manage everything...she had no clue what was going on half the time...unrealistic goals and expectations were set..when expressing my concerns her reaponse was "this is the way it's always been done" wow! the funny thing is she is no longer with the company..I'm sure age left for the same reasons...it's just a horrible situation...I do not recommend this company...the need to get a lot of stuff together...like their pos system...the first few weeks I was open I was only able to ring out cash transactions because their register system is a disaster...and only 2 people handle IT for the entire country! insane! overall keep looking for other employment not worth it!

Working here feels like constant scrutiny, the work itself is not hard but you're constantly pressured to hit KPIs and if you don't, you're made to feel badly about it. There's definitely a cliquey environment, if management doesn't like you as much as others, you get bad hours even if you perform well. A typical day is spent ringing up customers, refolding clothes, dressing mannequins, chatting with customers to build the sales, etc. There's a big pressure to sell add-on items (WAP) and charity items (foundation), if you don't you are looked down upon from both your manager and district management. I gained a lot of experience on how to deal with customers, but they was from dealing with it hands on, not from actual training from management. When I was hired I did not receive proper training, mostly everything I learned was on my own just through day-to-day work. The workplace culture here is unfortunately bad, very "mean girl" energy where people will talk about you behind your back and it feels like you're walking on eggshells with the gossiping. I had multiple instances of bullying that I reported and nothing was done, and only continued to get worse. The most enjoyable part of my job was helping kind customers and talking about the charity foundation, which I do believe does actual good. The bottom line is that working here you have to unfortunately have a thick skin, coworkers and management can be very rude and catty and it feels very isolating.

I worked at Cotton on for about a year. When I started there was no manager. One was hired but she took credit for all the work the associates would do. I did feel bad for her though because the district manager was VERY mean to her about almost everything she did. The district manager talked to us like we were children who needed help doing anything. Very demoralizing. My manager left after 6 months and I was put in charge of most of what she did, but never received any training or pay increase as I was running the store. I was constantly working 12 hour days as another keyholder would always show up late or not at all. The district manager almost laughed when I asked him about becoming the manager. It’s no wonder they can’t keep most of their employees around for long. They would always say they ‘promoted within’ but I never saw that happen. They lied to my old coworker about giving her a promotion just to get her to go to another store, and never followed through on anything they said. Not surprising, really. They are a very unprofessional and disorganized company. I wouldn’t recommend working for them. They have no system and make employees feel unappreciated. One of our registers was broken for 3 months and IT was useless and said it was ‘too expensive’ to send out someone to repair our printer, when I knew it was more than just a faulty cord. I would never recommend working for this company.

I was a store manager at Cotton and had over ten years of retail management experience behind me. I was recruited coming in telling me this was a great expanding company with a lot of room for growth. The expectations are impossible for a manager to do. You are always alone and always tasking with very little time to help customers. Loss prevention is a nightmare as nothing is sensored and you are there alone in a large store. The benefits for the company are horrible and often are not accepted or dropped by local doctor's offices. Vacation is also a big issue as you are promised one thing but then told another. Also good luck being paid on time or correctly as the timeteq system is a joke and often wrong and when payroll goes to fix time instead of directly depositing money into your account they issue you a pay card that you can use as a debit card or you can ONLY go to WalMart and take out your funds all at once but it has to be the first time but will charge you three dollars even though they say it will not. Lastly, be aware that as a store manager you are a glorified sales associate and be aware that you will be treated in a disrespectful way by upper management. I highly recommend that if you are looking for a job in retail management stay away....go to another respectable employer and take an ASM position you will get paid better and your life will be much happier.

For starters, they promised a fully climate controlled warehouse (Its been a full month yet there is STILL no AC with no progress in sight & they’ve turned the only working ACs off (Which are in the restroom)  which makes it even worse. 

They also stated the shifts would range from M-F, 7am-8am to 3:00-4:30 pm and that OT was occasional yet we’ve worked a full 8 hour day on a Saturday and had a full mandatory week of OT from 8:00-6:30pm. 

The training is also atrocious, you have your orientation with one of the leads on your first day but on your first actual day, you literally get tossed with a random employee to train you. You have to hope that they know what they’re doing or else you’re going to be LOST. I’ve seen them have fairly new hires train other brand new hires, and it’s like watching two newborns drive monster trucks. You also have to hope that the “Leads” know their stuff or else you’ll be told to ask another “lead” & so on and so forth. 

They also consistently compare this DC to their previous one in LA, and the 12 hour shifts they’d pull off, essentially comparing and bringing down morale. 

I’d look elsewhere, maybe HelloFresh, GameStop or Amazon. Even UPS. 

I've worked with Cotton On for 4 years now. The work environment is very different depending on your management team and store type. Larger stores are much more intense and expect a more sales oriented service while smaller stores have the ability to give a much better long lasting connection with customers which I really resonate with. Even as an associate I treated the store as if it were my own and within a few months became a key holder(support manager right above associate) Opportunity to move up isn't always easy. You must be able to bend over backward and work your hardest but beyond hard work you really need to have a genuine knack for the retail environment. I began feeling unappreciated after flying back and forth for the company and having nothing else to show for my work or an opportunity to move up farther. Which in the end reminds me that in retail you are replaceable. If your game plan is to stay in a company and move up I recommend you move OUT of the stores and into offices if possible. Solid job for someone in school, fun people in general and the work environment is all about being yourself

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