DSW Reviews

Did not give enough shifts

Rule by fear. They call it accountability, but this company believes in fear as a primary motivator. Training is a joke. New hires get 6 training hours to learn the culture, register, all the shoe product knowledge, and how to force people to sign up for rewards. Managers get 2 weeks, 3 if you're lucky. High pressure. Managers and employees are pushed hard to get every customer to give up all of their personal information for a rewards account. You have to sign up 90% of new customers to stay out of trouble. This company has one main goal. Avoid customer complaints. You can fired if a customer complains about you, especially if they say you were rude - even if it's not true. As a customer, ask for, no demand anything you want. Ask for a discount, demand to return shoes you've worn a few times. They will do what ever you ask if you threaten to complain. They measure "compliment to complaint ratio" with a goal of 7 compliments for each complaint. This forces managers and associate to try to manufacture compliments because home many customers really call in compliments? Another weird metric is cases per hour. The company expects managers in at 6am to put out the shoe truck of hundreds of cases of shoes. They tell you how fast to move and that you have to run between cases, never walk. The district and regional mangers come in to watch video of you doing this. After being told to sweat harder, you then need to put in your day's work after being exhausted and sweaty. As the company swears their all about customer experience, they cut payroll week after week leaving less people to help customers. Want to buy used shoes online? DSW dumps extra inventory by shipping shoes out of stores (charge send) to dsw.com customers. They tell use to clean them with shoe cleaner and make sure to put the paper and cardboard back in the box to make sure they look new, even if they were purchased tried on and returned. How do you know if you got one of these? They are shipped in white bubble wrap instead of a box. This also eats up time associates should be helping customers. Associates are only allowed 12-16 hours a week but are expected to have open availability. Top associates can get 22-24 hours in peak season. Here's the kicker - DSW has the internal goal of being America's Favorite Place for Shoes and America's Favorite Place to work. Starbucks offers more than 4 times the training hours and internally promotes tons of people. DSW consistently hires SMs and DMs externally. They offer no benefits to part-timers and no stock options to anyone. Starbucks gives you benefits, a college education, stock, free coffee and free drinks and food. That sounds more like America's favorite place to work. So does Google. This ship is sinking. DSW store has fallen from $47.55 a share to $23.45 a share on bad earnings. They blames softening market and women buying less shoes. During the same time their competition is up more than 30% stating that DSW's stock is stale and out of season. Summary: Look for work elsewhere unless you like high pressure work environment with no room for advancement. You are also expected to work most weekends and all holidays if you are a manager.