You are completely micromanaged and you have to micromanage your department leaders. I was told that I can't go and talk to an employee about his performance. I had to talk to a department manager who would then talk to that person. I also hated the fact that every month you need to find a "bottom performer". HR would ride you from then on to fire that person. Like most big companys, there were so many rules which made it very black and white, no room to be creative. You are told how to do everything, including how to organize your office in some cases. HQ is always sending stores these "great ideas" that are so stupid. All these suits that are in MSP/St. Paul need to get out of the office and try some of this crap out before they tell the entire company to do it. The company talks about work/life balance, but unless you are in a small store, you can pretty much expect to work 50 hours a week during the slow times, up to 60 over the holidays. If you are working overnights (which most ETLs do at least once), then you can expect to work 10-12 hour nights during the slow times, 14-16 hour nights during the busy times. The crapiest thing though, nothing seemed like it was ever good enough. You could have the most beautiful store with amazing numbers, but district and regional management would still come in and make you feel like crap because of something stupid.
