design consultant

window treatment installer

administrative assistant

production associate

installer

The-Shade-Store

What is the best part of working at the company?
The best part? There might not be a best part - this family owned business has grown so big, so fast - and no one in senior management has experience managing a business at this scale. They hire experienced mgmt/leadership pro's and then fire them within 6-12 months. This company is being led by egos, rather than business need.   

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Customer facing staff - the design consultants and the M&I pro's - take ALL the heat for errors in manufacturing, shipping, and scheduling.  Senior management hides in Port Chester, unwilling or afraid to deal with their incredibly dissatisfied customers, or to address the systemic failures.  

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Super stressful, the majority of the staff is unhappy and looking for new jobs. There are no annual cost of living raises, there is no recognition of the toll taken by employees in dealing with angry customers. While you are given PTO days, the expectation is that you will be available 24/7 to address customer concerns, even on your day off. There's no bench and little to no support.  Feels like a house of cards, about to crumble at any minute. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
50% angry Customer Service issues, 25% trying to get answers internally, 25% sales. However, the expectation of each sales person (DC's) is to sell a minimum of $1 million annually, with higher goals for the more senior DC's.  The "bonuses" received for selling $1million - $2 million annually are a pittance of what the company would actually have to pay to hire another $1m selling DC.  All of which leads to frustration and distrust/disrespect of  the senior leadership team.

The management issues seem to extend throughout the company. Micromanagement appears to be a core part of the culture.

Directors often give employees the impression that they are easily replaceable, and many employees have experienced or witnessed abrupt terminations. One pattern that stood out to me was how frequently employees were let go on Fridays or just before the weekend. Whether intentional or not, it created the impression that management preferred delivering bad news at a time when employees had little opportunity to immediately respond or seek clarification.

While I was not personally fired, I saw this happen to others on multiple occasions.

More recently, the company promoted some former lead installers into management roles. Unfortunately, many of them now spend their time enforcing directives from upper management rather than supporting their teams. Because they previously worked in the field, they often act as though they know everything, which has created tension with former colleagues.

The overall environment has become increasingly toxic, particularly for installers, although many designers and office employees appear to share similar concerns. Most people remain because they need a paycheck, not because they feel valued or supported by the company.

The Job itself was fairly easy at least for me it was. I've been in the field for years before joining the company. Even tho I had to pick up the slack for my coworkers when they couldn't finish the amount of work given to them. I made myself a valuable asset to the company. I was in the top 10% for best measurements and least mistakes in the company. 6 months later i had  a major car accident on my way to my first appointment of the day.  This  caused some herniated disc in my L3 & L2 it was really bad that I couldn't walk for weeks and needed physical therapy for months. The shade store called me 3 days after the accident demanding for me to work. Claiming I only had a couple days of PTO and if I didn't return after I'd get terminated. I was devastated cause I was planning on making this my career and growing within the company. After seeing how they treated their employees after such a traumatic experience I had to reconsider and put myself first. I'm not here to discourage anyone from applying here I'm just giving you a heads up with some unfortunate possibilities you might encounter if you got hurt on the job.. my best advice is be extremely careful even if it's not your fault cause they won't make things any easier for you. So as long as you don't get hurt you should be good.

I was hired before the covid pandemic. I was interviewed three times before receiving an offer(3 years of prior experience). Compensation is nice, but this comes at a cost. They don't respect your personal life and will overbook you with appointments and expect you to complete them all. They do pay overtime but when you're getting home at 8pm every night and you HAVE to be at your first appointment no later then 8am. It's not worth it. Management will do nothing. Plenty of statements made about change coming and I never saw anything resolved or improved. This is a great job if you don't want a social life outside of work. This company talks a big game but, in the end it's very disorganized with poor leadership. Also, scheduling can't even do their job properly because, customers have the option to go online and book an appointment which will sabotage your entire day. Every job was minimum 45- 1 hour drive time in-between. You don't know your schedule until 8pm the night before. All in all I wouldn't recommend working for this company. The designers are poorly trained which leads to a lot of remakes and the management will do nothing for you. 

Lots to learn but many people to ask for help. It’s very low key and you’re given time to do the work. There is no shame in getting it wrong and managers are kind - they want you to succeed.

There is no direct manager in the showroom - you manage yourself and coordinate your schedule with your coworkers. You have to be able to get along with people and be more generous than selfish. You have to be a self starter and willing to learn something new everyday. 

Customers are great and the product is beautiful and not a hard sell. The showrooms are comfortable to work in - they are modern, lovely spaces. The company is image conscious and they aren’t afraid to spend money to make money. 

My experience is that TSS always makes it right for the customer. Even when the customer isn’t right. They are very liberal with their remake process and often take the hit for things they are not responsible for. Hopefully they can tighten that up so the company can continue to be successful. It’s a smaller company and you have direct access to the owners - you can literally call them on the phone as they make their cell numbers available.

I've worked in a few retail environments and this is a typical high-end / luxury showroom schedule.  Most showrooms are open 7 days a week, making working weekends a necessity.  Competitive benefits! 
The shade store values hiring competent and talented employees, and it really shows across all teams!  There is plenty of support to be had, regardless of how quickly the company grows.  Well it is difficult to balance work and life while working weekends, and working with regular interruptions with showroom traffic, generally speaking this is a very great job!  Base pay is generous And there are also commissions and bonuses to be made, which is very unusual for a retail environment.  It's easy to see why many employees have been with the company for several years.

Pros: As a employee Window Treatment Installer it has a lot of advantages over working for other companies; company van, on-time pay, hourly, supplied tools, pto/ holiday pay, medical/ dental, overtime, no skylights,  product is delivered directly to customer home, etc.  Cons: hourly does not include up to two hours of driving a day ( 1 hour start of day to job and 1 hour at end to home), long days, no seniority or respect for body of work/ longevity : new hires / guys with less experience can make more. If you take pride in your work and want to give  the customer the best experience possible,  time constraints will have you pulling your hair out. You have to clean up sub-par work by co-workers/ sub contractors, bonus structure is heavily flawed, new responsiblites are added without additonal time to complete tasks or compensation. Salaries and raises are not based on merit/ quality of work, more so on  one's ability to negotiate. 

The Shade Store is a company that expects near perfection out of its employees. While shipping out a product that simply is not worth the money. There are many clients that have good experiences with this company. Although there seems to be more and more individuals who are fed up with this company,  clients and employees. The products that are shipped out come in damaged far too often. When not damaged it can be the wrong color, size, or missing crucial hardware needed for installation. This seems to be happening more and more often. There has been days where I will go a whole day with out be able to successfully install a full job(stop) due to these errors. It is very hard to take pride in this work and to be held to such a high standard when the product we are representing is far from what we are selling it as.

The pay was alright, but you don’t get raises until you rise to the next level which isn’t always the quickest. The way the commission works is also a joke, it’s never the same metric and I felt like they finessed jobs enough to get out of rewarding the installers/measurers.

The customers can be a-holes when something goes wrong (it happens a fair bit) and they love taking it out on the installer. 

Work/life balance is completely non-existent. The way they work the overtime causes an unwillingness to work extra days when they need them. They will cram as many jobs as possible, it’s a company making money so yeah, causing days to be long all while finessing the next week so you don’t hit overtime.

The person who setup the routes needs to look at a map of the cities. There’s no reason for job A to be over an hour away from job B while still being in the same  appointment window.


What is the best part of working at the company?
Liked the team energy.  Great staff.  

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Inexperienced and incompetent executive team. Played politics and didn’t listen to security recommendations. Almost got burned by ransom attacks.  Anyone could walk in and hack their systems.  Family run and completely blind to the real world.  

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Competitive and managed by fear and intimidation.  Not a good environment.  

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Start early, work late, tower based executive meetings, constant refusal to follow industry standards.   I experienced family owners that bragged about their homes or cars.  Telling how great they were, it got tiresome.   No leadership by example.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Design consultant 165 salaries reported	$70,273 per year
Window treatment installer 102 salaries reported	$28.34 per hour
Administrative assistant 34 salaries reported	$29.06 per hour
Production associate 15 salaries reported	$15.23 per hour
Installer 2 salaries reported	$27.25 per hour

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