sales associate

stocking associate

stylist

retail assistant manager

designer

West Elm

If I'm being perfectly honest, in my about a year and half of working with the company I had no growth. My store life was miserable because you will work with part timers that are only there for the discount to get the 40% off. That is the only thing enticing people to stay at this job and they are mostly part timers. I was a full time stylist and constantly suffered at the mistakes of part timers due to lack of communication or them just flat out not caring to learn anything new that got implemented. I ended up being one of the 2-3 people that weren't managers that knew more than just selling a sofa to a customer. And that is where the problem lies, I'm fixing customer service problems that should be taken care of online/phone reps and meanwhile your sales per hour goal will either tank or flourish randomly depending on if you got a customer that was ready to spend 5k at that moment. You get lucky, or your part timers get sales while you are the only one that knows how to solve a problem that shift. I would work with a customer for a whole week and lose the sales to another business after giving them my time and effort on styling advice for their home because West Elm has "free" design services. If you are looking for a part time position it's fine to pick up a shift here and there, but I strongly advise to look at other options for full-time. You will end up getting stressed, frustrated, and depressed til you decide to leave your position. Lastly this is how I came to the decision to leave. I had an amazing GM that actually cared about his people and improving the work place. The company decided to remove him from our store and move him to fix the worst store in our district. Then they took my new and very good assistant GM to that same store leaving us with no management other than a new GM hired from outside the company. They then forced an old manager who stepped down to a more their speed stylist position to be a manager when she did not want to. This new GM actively avoided responsibility because he was afraid of confrontation/resolving  customer/business issues. This ended up making people call day in and day out asking for the GM and he would tell me, "tell them I'm busy or not here," then proceeded to stand and do nothing. How can a business hire someone that can't even talk to people be expected to lead a store? That mixed with the amazing amount of laziness/problems from part timers and awful customer service is the reason I decided to leave the company.

If you're thinking of working at this West Elm store in Highland Village , Houston, think again. 

The store looks so beautiful and peaceful on the outside, but behind the scenes it's horrible. 

The hardest part?

The manager is the worst: lacking in intelligence , dishonest, biased towards favorites and brutally indifferent to customers, denying even modest discounts even when it costs the store a several thousand- dollar sale. In 6 months, she has arrived to work over two hours late 4 times, causing employees to wait for her and share her fraudulent and false recording of hours worked in the system to cover her tracks. Sales associates stand around eating, talking with one another and ignoring customers. Stock is a disorganized mess, and the items that show on the computer as in stock are lost in the mess, so often stock workers just say " we don't have it" because they can't or don't want to find it.

Sales and discounts are confusing and mis-matched so that few know how they combine. The management stresses getting every customer's email, so they can send junk-mail as the cheapest marketing tool they can find.

Instead of working together as a team, sales associates compete with one another but only the favorites of the manager, M & C, get significant hours.  The rest must be content with 10-20 hours/week and even that fluctuates wildly sometimes getting zero hours in a given week. Prices of items put out by the visual  merchandising team are frequently wrong, and many items don't have prices marked at all. The sales team is lazy, totally lacking in any professional attitude and habitually gossip behind one another's backs.

The most enjoyable part of the job is the 40% off employee discount on merchandise.

I just worked there 6 months, but thankfully, I just found a good job at Crate & Barrel, where the employees are very professional, and the management is intelligent and respectful.

I started at West Elm as a stockroom associate. Taking in shipment, sorting it onto the shelves, moving and assembling furniture for the sales floor.  I worked in the stockroom for my first year and a half, then I moved to sales. Shortly after that I was placed where I am now as a Home Stylist. I think working in the stockroom first, allowed me to learn how the whole store operates, from top to bottom. It also gave me a better idea of the quality and feel of the furniture pieces, which then helped later on the sales floor.  For the most part it is your standard retail position, helping customers, stocking shelves, hanging promotional materials. As a stylist, I tend to have more one-on-one interactions with customers either in store or in their homes. Which was scary at first, but now its what I look forward to most, since its where I get to be more creative. The managers and fellow staff are all really nice, and helpful. There was a training period where you follow around another employee for a day or two until you see just how things are done. After that you're on your own, but no one expects you to know anything and everything at once. Simply because you are working directly with customers, there are bound to be unique questions, situations. Business casual attire is required, along with a good pair of shoes since you will be on your feet most of the day. One 10min paid break is provided, unless your shift is over 6hours, then you get a 30min "lunch" break. 

I only really have two main complaints. One would be that the technology (store registers, pin pads, computers) is VERY slow and out of date. Which can be quite frustrating when your customer is waiting on the phone or in person with their children, and we're stuck waiting for the login screen to finish loading. The other is that despite my experience and the length of time I've been with the company, no full time position has yet to be made available.

It was an alright job overall and the other sales associates were nice people but the GM made going to work not fun. GM is extremely awful and doesn't care for its employees or customers, makes rude remarks, talks bad about employees who have left and has been disrespectful to many of its employees AND customers alike. A lot of good employees, including past managers have left because of GM's attitude. I'm surprised that the company hasn't fired this manager yet since it has come to the corporate's attention not only by employees but also by customers. GM is also bothered when call onto the floor and spends most of the time downstairs in the office. 

Company as a whole is not that great either, there's no advancement and they don't want to hire full time employees even if you're good at what you do and are willing to work full time hours. They don't address complaints, in this case complaints that were made of said manager. The company is a bit unorganized, customer service is also awful as they are no help to customers or even to employees who are trying to help customers in store. 

The job is fairly easy if you've worked in retail before. You just need to familiarize yourself with the furniture ( learn the names and material they come in) to better assist your customers, and it would help if you're into interior design and decorating as many customers will want help on how to style their table or put together bedding and help pair them with curtains or something like that. But it can also get stressful when you have needy customers complaining to you with things you have no control over and to make things worse the GM is no help at all during those times. Also, even though they hire you for one specific role you end up doing everything from stock to visual to help process shipment. 

I wouldn't recommend working in this particular location, maybe some other West Elm is different with better managers.

There is no set training programs for management aside from the basic orientation that all associates go through when on-boarding, You are placed in to other stores for a few weeks, but there is no structure to the training itself.

Although you are given a clear-cut job description upon hiring, the stores are largely understaffed as overhead is the first thing to be cut (often on a weekly basis) when the Sales numbers are not in line with projections, so throw that job description right out the window. You will be asked to do everything, and then get chastised when your specific duties are not 100%.

The supply chain is very inconsistent. A customer will order an item that says it has a 2-week turn-around, then a day later the item hits back order, but you do not find out until 2 weeks have passed and the customer is calling you yelling that their item has not arrived.

Sales are rapid and highly reactionary to daily forecasts. Often you have little more than a day to prepare, adding on to a heavy enough work load. Additionally, marketing for sales can be very vague/confusing to the customer, adding to the frustration on both sides of the counter.

If you are lucky, you will end up in a store with a supportive leader. Sometimes you are not so lucky.

On a positive note, I was briefly able to work with several talented people from across the company in my first weeks on-boarding. It makes me wonder what could have been if I was in a different store.

Also, the sales associates that we hired were genuinely warm and hard-working. That made it a little easier to motivate to come in to the grind every day.

Like many others, I was seduced by the fun and easy store ambiance which betrays the reality of what lies beneath:a highly stressful operation that is barely able to contain the chaos. The store is massive and only shows half of available merch.

     Large crowds swarm the store and run you around mercilessly for desperately needed pillows and other adequate apartment sized furniture that is just barely above IKEA in quality. Confusion over numerous differing sales and coupons in competing company channels makes for inconsistency and confusion. Laborious, confusing, and time exhaustive process of ordering, since it mostly all done online. 

     The "ever dissapearing" Walkie-Talkies blasting in your eye constantly. Frustrated customers who overwhelm a scare staff (when they can get their attention). Broken furniture, an overworked and angry stock team. Only 2 non-manager employees get full-time hours and the lion's share of the sales. Bitter co-workers who seem to quit on a weekly basis. No one is happy here. The overburdened and insensitive manager can barely keep it together.
   
     In my years of retailing, I have never seen it as bad as it is here. Too many needy customers (lots of ego-driven energy vampires), too many items not immediately available, not enough employees, Too many unfulfilled promises by management-made during hiring process leads many to quit prematurely. You will feel like a caged animal that is constantly pushed and pulled-on. Not worth the discount to go through all this.

Deceptive job title and description. Was sold lies and false promises. You are not a "home stylist". You are a glorified retail sales associate.  The only "designing" you do is suggesting items from the west elm website to customers. Hired part time but being scheduled full time with no benefits. Terrible work life balance. Physically and emotionally draining shifts. Schedule is all over the place. Open and closings, only 1 day off between days. Demand you to work holidays and weekends. Treated like you're in kindergarten or a sweat shop. Micromanaging managers who aren't aligned with each other. Constantly yelled at for not acting like a robot. You are not allowed any moments to chat with coworkers or sit down. Must be constantly walking the floor talking to every single customer. Wants you to sell credit cards but is annoyed when you do or if you sell too much because now you're showing off. Design appointment clients are not prioritized. They won't let you work on your design projects on the floor. You have to request admin time but when you do they're mad. Will stop giving you design appointments if you request too much admin time. You will look bad to your clients because you'll go weeks without being able to work on the project for them. Literally just like any other retail job they're just more deceptive about it. They say it's easy to move up or move around. Maybe for some people. But it seems like you have to be buddy buddy or constantly push to get any response.

While working at west elm can be a rewarding experience, it can also be a very stressful and defeating experience. The environment can be friendly some days, and just downright hostile others. Like some previous employees have mentioned, the GM is not professional. It was a constant struggle to gauge what kind of mood she was in, and on top of that, the GM will talk badly about the employees and customers when she thinks no one else is around her. There have been many times where I have seen her be rude to her employees, and even towards customers.   Ultimately I ended up leaving West Elm in Summit because it became such an uncomfortable work place . I much rather work at a place where my hard work and efforts are appreciated . The gm in the summit store cares more about making sales than treating her employees fairly and making customers feel valued . There is absolutely no training, my first two weeks were spent fumbling around for answers and how to do things properly. Overall, this store is disorganized, customer service is lacking, but if you are good at selling products and have really thick skin, you may be able to survive this particular west elm.

I was hired as a stock person but over the course of the first few days, was never given any information about working in the stock room. They were teaching me sales. 
On boarding was slow and the manager of our store was rude and condescending. There was no communication and I'd come to work with no idea what to expect for the day. 
 There was absolutely no training except for me to be following one of the salespeople around as he put out fires. No modules to learn. After a week I was still waiting for ID so I could get on the system on my own. 
After a few days of feeling lost and confused and being basically treated as an annoyance by the manager I left. 
They have everyone multi tasking. They even have the sales people taking care of customer service issues. I have no idea how anyone can get good sales numbers if half of the time they are dealing with problems. 
And from what I could see, there was nothing BUT problems....every minute of the day. Seems like furniture is never delivered on time and poor quality. All I kept hearing was all of the employees complaining about run ins with customers. 
I could see pretty quickly that the job was just going to be a headache. I left for greener pastures.

A typical day involved greeting customers, staying updated on new products by walking the floor, and helping customers find what they needed. I enjoyed engaging with customers to understand their needs and creating estimates, which often led to sales. Over time, I gained a lot of product knowledge, which helped me feel more confident in assisting customers.

I also learned how to handle customer complaints by redirecting them to customer service when necessary, and I became comfortable answering phone calls and researching products for customers.

One of the things I appreciated most was the supportive management team. I felt like leadership genuinely cared about the staff and created a positive and respectful work environment

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Sales associate 8 salaries reported	$16.38 per hour
Stocking associate 10 salaries reported	$1,500 per week
Stylist 3 salaries reported	$16.00 per hour
Retail assistant manager 4 salaries reported	$21.63 per hour
Designer 5 salaries reported	$17.75 per hour

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