floor supervisor

sales associate

assistant store manager

assistant manager

seasonal associate

Vans

I was offered a Part-Time management job at my Vans store a few months ago and I was extremely excited for the opportunity.  I have always admired the brand and the life-style they promote so I felt very fortunate to grab this job.  Unfortunately, just after a few months of working at my store I have come to the conclusion that this is by far the worst job I have ever worked...  My training consisted of four total training days, 2 opening, and 2 closing shifts.  The days of opening training consisted of my extremely unkempt/non-managerial manager complaining the whole time how she didn't want to be there and constantly telling me to wait to continue training because she had alot of catching up to do.  This is most likely because she is only 22, very young to be a GM, and it seems that she has had very little experience being a productive individual in a working environment.  Then I was offered 2 days of closing training which consisted of the GM complaining she didn't want to be at the store too late so she would do the closing procedures if I could just handle fixing up the store and counting down the drawers.  A good month went by after those four days of opening/closing training before I had my first opening and closing shifts by myself which ended with getting scolded for not doing a litany of tasks/reports that had never been shown to me during my pretty much non-existent training and to this day I have only had a handful of moments where the GM or Assistant GM could show me proper company procedures.  Needless to say this makes my shifts extremely stressful and dreadful and I live in a constant fear of getting a call that I have forgotten to do something important.  There is little to no communication from our GM to our staff other than when she isn't happy with our performance or gossiping to us about how much she hates the other girls at the job and can't wait till corporate approves more write-ups on them so she can justify firing them.  Common topics discussed with my manager usually range from inappropriate bedroom topics, to gossiping about which employees they are trying to force write-ups onto because they want to fire them... Real professional...  I have also never seen a work-place employee be as snarky, mean, rude, and unprofessional to customers as the GM's of my location... Vans also seems to hold its floor supervisors to a completely higher standard than the Assistant GM and GM since we seem to be the ones in charge of really running the store and completing daily tasks and are the only ones to get criticized on our stores performance while our GM's play high-school drama girl club.  Vans also has extremely poor employee benefits other than a decent discount on products.  We are expected to work all holidays with no, yes NO, holiday pay.  I plan on leaving this job after the Holidays this year (call me old fashion but despite the horrible experience I'm having I would never leave a store/staff dry during the busiest time of the year).  Moving on... I was required upon getting hired to have at least 4 completely open days of availability since I was only part-time but as of late I am not allowed to request 1 single day of the week off on my availability, which has locked me into only being able to work this job.  I am required to work from 15-25 hours a week according to the terms when I was hired but reach closer to 35 most weeks because I am called in multiple times a day on my off days and tend to stay for extra shifts the days I work because it has become apparent the GM can never staff the store appropriately throughout the week  Since I started the GM and Assistant have had 4 weeks of vacation, during our back to school day sales, labor day sales, and our floorsets to the holidays.  Seems they like to make sure they aren't the ones in-charge during the crucial times of the store.  For the holiday season all the employees were notified of the shifts they were working to adjust their Holiday schedules with family/other jobs accordingly for a month now, but, this past week our GM received a call from our DM and RM (district/regional managers) that supposedly said that they had re-done all of the stores holiday schedules and it is absolutely mandatory that all stores follow their schedules.  The changes to schedules were simple... Floor supervisors are in-charge of opening and closing the store on thanksgiving and black friday.. Really, I mean really?  I find that extremely hard to believe that a company would be so incompetent to put their extremely untrained part-time workers in-charge of the two most important retail days in the year.  Sounds to me like the young GM's are trying to get out of their responsibilities again.  Vans on the other hand offered the stores prizes if they beat certain goals during our holiday season.  I will list the prizes... $25 Vans Gift Card for Sales Associates, $50 Vans Gift Card for Floor Supervisors/Part Time Managers, $100 Gift Card for GM's...Thanks Vans, you have really made your part-time management staff feel really appreciated... I will continue to bow-down and take it from my corporate masters I guess...  P.S.  I could easily write a whole book on the abysmal state of the Vans store I work at, and I haven't even started to get into the sales goals we have to meet that the GM's are completely immune to that keep us fighting to keep our jobs every shift, but I think this has been enough to get my point across...

This review is location based, I have heard of other locations being great places to work.  It's clear that my troubles have been a result of incompetence in the GM's performance.  But still, no Holiday pay to your employees?  We are leaving our families, for some on the only days we sometimes get to see them, to secure your business's pockets, you should at-least share some of it...

(TLDR) I worked here for a good amount of time. When I first started, the managers were pretty cool. Over time, as they got more comfortable with me, they started to become a nightmare. 

Before I start on the managers, the main issue I had working there, I may as well quickly go over the job itself: it's pretty easy and laidback. There's many things that they train you on when you start like being on the sales floor, register, stockroom, greeter, etc. All the usual retail things. Once they find the one you're best at, it's ALL you will be doing. They will not schedule in any other zone unless you complain to them, and even then, they probably won't listen. The stockroom is almost always backed up since they often force the stockroom manager to instead be out on the sales floor since most of the managers camp in the back office or just go take walks around the mall. The pay is alright, for a retail job. I rarely found myself struggling to pay my bills, but there's little-to-no extra spending money for food or whatever else you might need. 

Now for the main issue, the managers:

Like I said, when I first started working here, the managers were pretty chill, understanding, personable, and relatable. It definitely never felt "too corporate" for me. It was generally an overall enjoyable experience. And, while those traits never necessarily went away, as time went on, all of the negative traits started to come out. 

They can occasionally be very rude and passive aggressive towards you and they expect you to be a mind reader. If you do something wrong or mess up, they WILL NOT tell you and try to help you fix the issue. Instead, they will continue to punish you anyway by cutting your hours and/or giving you the cold shoulder. Only after *literal* months have gone by will they finally schedule a sit-down with you and question you on whether you "actually wanna work here" and if you're willing to "put in the work."
When they have sit-downs with you, it's not a conversation, but rather an excuse for them to TALK AT you instead of TALK TO you. Half of the problems they have with you are literally things that they just made up. Any attempt you make to defend or explain yourself will be written off as you being "defensive." 

They have obvious favorites, and the only way to become one is to basically kiss their butts and overwork yourself. I guess this isn't too different from any other job, but it's extremely noticeable. They have this weird mindset that we come to work because we WANT to or something? Like we're just so passionate about the brand and the experience that THAT'S the reason why we show up. Not a paycheck or anything, no no no. 

On top of that, lower-management is basically expected to eat, live, and breathe Vans. If you're not one to overly engage in their group chat or meetings, or even stress about KPIs at home, you are not the right fit for them. 

Like another review said, often bribe employees with food or a false-promise of more hours "once the busy season starts". Not sure what they expect to achieve here with this, because it rarely works on anyone over the age of 19, but it's pathetic nonetheless. 

The communication throughout management is also atrocious. One manager will tell you to complete a task one way, and then another manager will decide they want the task done a DIFFERENT way, and then you're forced to waste your time and restart, all while the blame of it being "done wrong" is placed on you. 
If you have an issue and you tell a manager, very rarely will they spread the message to the rest of management. It's basically lost in the void and there's no reason to even express concerns about anything. 
Issues will often go months or weeks without being fixed, or even addressed for that manner, because once you tell a manager, it's in one ear and out the other. Your options are either; a.) constantly remind them in hopes they get annoyed and finally help you just to shut you up, or b.) deal with the issue and wait 6 months for them to do something about it.

They also bring all of their issues from home into the workplace, often taking it out on the employees and behaving very unprofessionally around us. Not that this is the most professional or "corporate" environment on the planet, like I said earlier. But there is a level of professionalism that is expected at at job that these managers severely lack. 

That being said, there's maybe two managers that worked there that I actually liked. They often complimented me and made me feel like I was valuable to the job. Those managers were few and far between though, and one of them didn't even start off as a manager, instead being a coworker who shared the same issues as me that was later promoted shortly before I left. I wish those two the best and hope that they don't lose their minds too soon. 

Overall, if you're looking for a quick job for the summer with alright pay and so-so hours, I guess this is a good fit. Maybe as a second job rather than your primary job. I wish that they took employee complaints more seriously and got rid of their superiority complexes, as it would make the environment much more healthy, and leave former employees, like myself, not completely disgusted when looking back at their time spent here. 

So, it was all fun and games. Super laid back place where you can learn strong work ethic if thats what you desire. Coworkers have been cool, I really liked the majority of them cause there was a significant lack of workplace drama. Assistant manager is awesome, he is honestly a god send and the only reason why I still visit my old store. 

As an associate, I loved the culture going in having been heavily involved with shoes, skating, fashion, and music. This place was heaven and I loved talking to people about either skatboarding, the music that was playing or the shoes we just got in. I did well at selling so I got a lot of floor time, back to school is the best and I prefer the fast pace as opposed to all the downtime. Always willing to do any task, my supervisor taught me the ropes, how to sell better, handle problems with grace, and, was just overall enjoyable to be mentored by. Good guy, would make a killer manager and he deserves it. However, he always got the raw end from the AM and Manager who ended up getting let go for internal theft. 

Super held me up, he got moved to AM, I got moved to supervisor. 
The manager who was covering from another town had his AM come over and become Manager. That's when things turned south. 

I liked the position and was enjoying the advanced learning, overall, I was really loving my job and the store. I was a star seller and was appointed with teaching new comers how to sell and be associates, even got put in charge of teaching associates how to style and sell outfits. This woman always had a scowl on her face and not that far into her time started picking favorites, which you could tell by her scheduling habits. found out she would constantly talk bad about me when given the chance and was always condescending to the people she didn't like, including bumping heads with her AM. 



She ended up getting super sick for a couple months, leaves me and the AM as acting AM and Manager, then comes back for a few days. While catching her up on everything we've been doing and implementing (essentially it was a bad time for stores in our district but we were on top without a formal manager) she me fired by pursuing a policy break with the new district manager(i went next door to retrieve a shoe that was stolen and ditched there, I was notified by an employee of the other store,) after I called the Loss Prevention manager in front of her at her command, explained the situation, and was told by him that "it seems like some kids played a prank", was "no biggie", and that I should be, "all good". 

Needless to say on a visit after that incident I found out that she promoted of her favorites and still had not been at work for another few months.

Once management had changed, the job became so much more doable. Hardest part of Vans is when it gets busy and multiple people call you for help at once (can become chaotic), but our team is so reliable when you need any kind of help. Finding a shoe in the bays (sometimes they’re not in the right spot, alphabetically) or needing a breather when overwhelmed. Even when creepy customers walk in and say outlandish things to you (sometimes homeless people, thieves, scammers) or a customer becomes belligerent for whatever reason, our team has always had my back. The morale is always high even when there’s a scuffle between coworkers, we always hash it out. Cannot recommend Vans enough, though it does depend on the management and location significantly. 

Here are some other points you might want to know:
Vans recently went through lay-offs and let go of some of the best people we had, some with 10+ years into the company. So just know you could be dealt with the same.
This is a very labor-intensive job. You may want to be somewhat physically fit when seeking employment here. It involves carrying light to heavy ladders multiple times a day and putting them back where they’re stored, carrying multiple stacked boxes of heavy shoes, and running back and forth between the back and front of the store. Also, you cannot be afraid of heights here. The highest ladder is pretty high and your legs will inevitably wobble. I had that fear but got over it after exposing myself to it enough. 
You might find having ADHD is a massive con at Vans. If you have trouble remembering things or need accommodation they will most of the time not allow you to write things down. Some customers will ask for a lot of shoes at once and depending on the number of shoes, you’ll have to remember the type, color and size. Some customers get visibly irritated when you ask for their size over again. It happens to the best of us, don’t sweat it.
The pay is very dependent on how your store is doing. The better the stats for the store, the more hours you’ll get, the more you’ll get paid. That said, the store will do less-than-satisfactory during the weekdays and months when holidays aren’t around. You will work and be paid less because of this. It’s best that if you’re an adult needing to pay rent and bills that you have a second job beside Vans, or a full-time instead of. This is a great job for part-time students in need of supplemental cash, not people looking to make a living.

Otherwise, this is a great job with a great atmosphere and even better people. Love my Vans family.


● Work-life balance
The schedules are put out late, your meal breaks are scheduled so you violate. Forget trying to schedule doctor appointment or anything else important, even when you give written or verbal notice a schedule you anyways.some managers leave early every day clock in for overtime that you can never apply for and try to do as little as possible and blame you when it's all done.

● Pay & benefits
Even when you put in for sick time the manager forgets. she always says that she will get you on the next paycheck but it never happens. The district manager is aware of numerous shortages on the register, people calling out for numerous chefs and still getting more hours and you do.

● Job security and advancement
Although job security and advancement should be on seniority and work accomplishment. Typically people are given favoritism. They provide no time for training, and just throw you to the wolves without any proper training.

● Management
During a pandemic you would think that everybody would rally together, instead district manager and management team bully and intimidate those that do not fit into their group. Don't let your University age kids work at the Petaluma location, it will get written up for being a minute late, not paid for sick time, and changes made to their schedule without forewarning. They also schedule most of the kids during their classes and against their availability, which creates an incredibly stressful work environment. There are certain people who steal money from the register or product, and management turns the other way.

● Culture
They preach that they accept anyone as they are. I have seen them be incredibly judgemental with so many University age kids. This is usually there first or second job and with the stress of school management tends to make the work environment very hostile. They are very judgemental and will navigate customer complaints to the three or four people that they want to push out of the store.

● Overall
The culture, ethics, and overall district manager and management team were lackluster and incredibly disappointing. They have no diversity, no accountability, they have nothing to offer. The stores in disarray, there's dirt and dust all over the floor and on the displays, when a customer walks in usually associates are all huddled together at the register talking. Management is nowhere to be found and think that the store is perfect. I would not let my 20-something year old relative, friend, acquaintance ever work for vans.

I’ve been working with Vans for going on 2 years and it is troubling how the management pushes you to be sort of a pushy car salesman, a customer will often tell you their price range and as a kind human being I try to work with that and get them the best option for their money, and when they go to purchase the option I presented I am shamed for not pushing higher price points and pushing the customer to buy much more than they came to buy. Every time a customer purchases less than three items or does not purchase expensive enough items we as employees are shamed for not doing a good enough job at selling to them. This is just one small issue we as employees face every shift. Every hour in our earpieces the management rattles off a bunch of numbers informing everyone in how the store is performing, telling us the average dollar sale currently, the average units per transaction, the amount of people coming into the store vs. how many people are buying things, how much money we have made this hour vs. how much we need to make by the end of the hour in order to make the stores goals, all cross referenced with how we performed on this day last year, often with phrases like “We have 30 minutes to make 800 dollars or we will not reach our goal, there’s at least 1000 dollars in the store right now (referring to the customers as potential dollars) we can do it!” This type of announcement happens every hour, open to close, blasting in everyone’s ears while we are still expected to sell and speak to customers unfazed at the rambling in our ears. If I do not make my sales goals at the end of the day I am pulled aside to assess what I can do to sell better, instead of management understanding that customers don’t always want to buy things pushy sales people are required to pester them with. I used to love Vans until I realized that this company is not about community, or family, or self expression, or about giving customers what they need, it’s about money, Vans only cares about money, and it’s apparent in the way they push their employees to be money producing machines and in the way they blatantly rip off apparel designs from other artists and companies. Work here if you want 50% off all vans products and affiliated companies but that’s the only perk and it is not worth how much you get paid, I’d bear it if I made more but they give associates the government minimum required wage and it’s just not worth it.

I worked at the Vans Distribution Center for about three years.

Of the jobs I've held, this is certainly my favorite employer so far. There are both team and solo projects, so if you like working alone or in a team then the option will likely be available.

During heavy volume seasons you can expect to work 5 or 6 nine hour shifts (8 hours only on the sixth day); while I was there, the hours were rather steady - you pretty much know which months are the most hectic and which are the most slow, so you could plan accordingly - though I am not sure if it is still like this now.

I gave the pay wage 4-stars in comparison to California minimum wage and what other similar companies seem to be offering; so while it isn't great pay versus cost of living - it is however decent pay when compared to similar jobs at other warehouses.

They do notice and vocally value the employees that stay on task and those that go above and beyond and there is room for growth! They do promote within and will even lowkey groom you as such even without really telling you so at first; they keep their eye on their workers and keep tabs on potential.

There is vision, medical, dental, life insurances, 401K and also stock trading available once you become a full time employee.

Every so often they will do something special: for example, every Christmas and Thanksgiving they have employee dinner and raffles for prizes, costume contests on Halloween etc


Pros:
• Competitive pay for a warehouse associate position in Southern Cali
• The number of approachable and trustworthy upper management is in the majority
• They will try their best to accommodate personal needs/requests
• Game room
• In my opinion, this is such an easy and laid back employer, there is very little stress involved if you have the energy to be on your feet all day and like to actually work
• Great employee appreciation!

Cons:
• There will be a few months where the order volumes are very low. So you may be seeing 20 or less hour weeks occassionally
• Keep in mind that this is a warehouse! So when it's cold outside then it tends to get a bit colder inside and hotter on hot days. Be sure to dress accordingly and hydrate on the hotter days!!
• Of course, there are a few bad seeds, gossipers and what-have-yous also working there, but that's normal in most work places

My managers were always very understanding and encouraging. They have always lifted me up, gave constructive criticism, celebrated my successes, and were really understanding of my own personal needs and problems that arose that interfered with my work. If my availability changed at all, or even my preference for what shifts I wanted to work, they were really open and accepting about that. Any time I requested off was approved, and they never made me feel bad about that (not that I'm saying you should request tons of time off, but if you need it off here and there, they are great about working with you). I know that even if there were associates that didn't get along or mesh well, that the managers would try to be sensitive and not schedule them together.

A lot of the customers that come in are loyal customers that have bought shoes from us for YEARS, so there's a sense of "family" there. You can develop a really great relationship with customers, whether it's your first time meeting them or they come in once a month when you're working and you are on a first name basis. The district manager was always really involved and knew me by name, despite being a new hire, and a lot of the higher ups at Vans are involved in even the lower level stores, so a lot of the employees even end up meeting the CEO of the company. Pretty cool. 

Some associates only care about making money and don't tend to work hard or help out, so the associates who work hard and pick up the slack tend to bear the grunt of the work, while the lazy ones just coast through work. I would help out a lot in areas no one else wanted to work in, because everyone would want to do sales so they would receive good numbers, thus my numbers would suffer and I wouldn't receive the praise / rewards they would despite the work I was doing and they were not. From what I saw, a lot of my superiors worked their butts off for years for Vans and had difficulty getting promoted, or would be promised certain positions without any follow through. A couple of my coworkers were promoted from associates to leads because they "paid their dues", but would do less work and expend less effort than I would as an underling.

Vans is a corporate run company and they mean do to well for their employees but struggle when looking at things as a bigger picture. They struggle with proper communication between corporate office and store level. They mean to do well by including anyone to join the Vans Family, to make the working environment a safe zone for employees, etc which is awesome- but they struggle with so many things along with that. Any major updates, they lack to keep up with: the technology used in stores are out of date and for a company growing as fast as they are, they need to update!!! The store employees are working every day and night (INCLUDING HOLIDAYS) to make this company succeed but they can't succeed unless provided with up-to-date technology that is actually RELIABLE. Along with technology issues, they need to update the systems used to calculate any other updates within the company; like pay increases. If you increase all employee pay rates, THEN MAKE APPROPRIATE ADJUSTMENTS TO PAYROLL/HOURS USED AT STORE LEVEL. It's a pretty common sense concept if you think about it, but apparently not. For a company that is doing as well as Vans, they need to have better communication from corporate level to store level. There is no way that so many mistakes or misunderstandings should be happening as frequently as they were EVERY WEEK because the corporate level employees have 1) never worked at store level so they have no idea how anything works or 2) they had no idea what was going on period until it was already too late. This is a world wide based company....so things could be going better if they really listened to their employees instead of just pretending to care through "heartshare."

Vans was very co-operative with personal life and had fairly flexible hours adjusted to you, however hours can also be very unpredictable. I'd sometimes get 25-40 hour work weeks and other times I would only get 4-9 hours a weeks. This heavily depends on season, location, and the amount of employees. It was a very face-paced working environment at times, it can definitely pick up out of nowhere and have you running back and forth grabbing 5 shoes for different customers. They follow corporate protocol which was having to constantly approach and essentially bother people you already spoke to asking if they need help and pray they remember your name to say it at check out so you can reach your sales goal for the day (no you don't get any commission on it lol) 

I met some amazing people while working at vans, a few I'm still close with even after both of us moving on from that job. My boss and majority of employees were awesome to be around every shift but there was one commonly disliked manager that would essentially bully sales associates. They had been at that store for so long they couldn't really be fired which was unfortunate because I felt they were a reason a lot of people ended up quitting, obviously this is personal experience and doesn't apply to every location. The one bad manager and slight harassing you have to do to customers was really the only major negative things I had experienced while working at the company. Vans was my first job so it taught me everything to do with customer service and I also learned a lot of history revolving around the company that I still retain to this day. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Floor supervisor 35 salaries reported	$20.05 per hour
Sales associate 26 salaries reported	$16.72 per hour
Assistant store manager 20 salaries reported	$22.02 per hour
Assistant manager 3 salaries reported	$20.42 per hour
Seasonal associate 16 salaries reported	$16.87 per hour

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