I worked here for many years (say over 7), and I never had any issues and always had exceeds, built up trust, all up to the day I no longer worked for Gap Inc. I was the top performer, a go getter, that never missed an exceed grade level, always was at the top till the last day. Until the last two years, my view changed on how Gap graded performance. When Art Peck said that the 3 goals of the company included investing in employee talent, I was excited. Previously I felt this was not a priority, Gap did not promote and invest in personal growth, all growth depended on the employee. I could not go to any seminars, they never wanted to fund them. Only college reimbursement or anything to maintain your certifications was funded (minimal investment). We never saw any retain talent initiatives, just a severance package to help you out the door that Art proudly announced. Then they took a few benefits away little by little. The 2018 bonus really frustrated everyone. At the CSSC, as an org., we all exceeded our goals for the org. bonus and of course there are a few who really exceeded above the rest. Instead of rewarding us, during the review process they changed the rules and said, "it was decided, no bonus", then later during a townhall meeting, Art said, which amounted to "get over it". For leaders, it was hard to tell your folks you worked hard for nothing. Frustrating as it is, they also added more work, splitting the company by spinning Old Navy off and purchase another brand
ProsFlexible time work, Decent Benefits, few great BPs
Conslack of transparency, no investment on future, loosing talent, bad pay, bias/racism, poor advancement, toxic culture last 2-3 years, poor hiring and promotional practices
There are a few aspects of this work environment that I found quite appealing and there are many company practices that were off-putting and debilitating.
The tasks themselves, order picking, packing, inducting, etc., for the most part, are easy to learn and execute. The multicultural atmosphere offers opportunities to meet new and interesting people. The pay is decent for the type of job it is and it is possible to get overtime especially during peak seasons.
This is a very physical job with a lot of walking, stretching, bending and lifting that can leave you feeling exhausted at the end of the day.
The company does not require employees to clock out for breaks but the breaks are extremely short and the break areas unbearably overcrowded. The bathrooms in the warehouse are often filthy and infested with flies.
The supervisors I worked with were hardworking decent people but decisions, policies, and rules were inconsistent and disturbingly arbitrary often enough to create much confusion, stress and animosity among coworkers. The Grow incentives are poorly designed and executed. It's really a fixed system that involves favoritism and cheating. The "numbers" a worker achieves through daily tasks are subject to too many variables, one of those variables being lack of continuity in any given area at any given time. Employees are rotated inconsistently and some people are always in positions where making Grow is possible and some people are bounced around so much that
ProsEmployees are allowed to listen to their own music via a single ear bud.
ConsExtremely short breaks in over-crowded break areas.
A typical day started for me at six a.m., where I would come in with a team of three or four associates to put out new promotions of the entire store (five different departments). Shipment usually arrived at eight a.m., so I would then unload the shipment truck while my promo team continued with the promotions. After all boxes were verified and accounted for, my promo team would usually be wrapping up at this time. At this time, my promo team usually turned into my shipment team. Promos are an extensive process so at this time, my team is already dragging, so I usually send them on their fifteen minute breaks to let them refresh and come back and let them know of the units, how much time we have to process them, and what went where. In this role, the assistant managers are supposed to plan pics(items that come in and where they need to go), only one manager was usually prepared, which slowed down the process in full. I spoke to the store manager on several occasions on this matter and nothing was ever done about it. My team that I had was very hardworking and we usually got most of the product out, but it was usually with us making decisions on where things would go. You never want to leave full product merchandise in the stock room, if it can sell. The store manager was more involved of what was going on in the "office". Schedules were always late. We didn't have a staff to work with. There were two assistant managers, one was a very hard-worker, and the other was
TL;DR - You'll need to devote a lot of your time and effort, but don't expect to get something out of it other than money.
The job itself is acceptable depending on where you get put. However, transferring between departments seems almost impossible due to the availability of said departments and even then only a couple get chosen.
Favoritism is there but it never really affected me since I had no interest in becoming permanent or moving up. I can assure you though, if you don't catch the eye of your manager/s, expect to stay where you are for a long time. That's if you get chosen to become permanent.
Management wasn't the worst, but by far one of the worst. Non-stop jams, understaffed, and people overall not doing their job. Training for my group was one day, after that they expect you to hit rate which wasn't surprising. For the most part managers don't really care about you but they don't hate you either unless you give them a reason to.
Also expect to work a minimum of 40 - 50hrs+ during peak season. Shifts can and will be up to 10hrs with or without a days ahead notice. They tell you that we might have a 10hr shift the next day but 9/10 you will be working overtime. Working all 7 days is also possible. I know this because the day I started the manager mentioned the team had already worked all 7 days so a forewarning if you don't have that time commitment.
Attendance is very strict, I honestly don't know if they accommodate students with their schedule but
5.0
Customer Service Representative | Connecticut | Jan 12, 2018
Do What You Love
I started with the company when I was 17 and stayed for 10 years before switching into my field of study and I have to say it was a great experience.
The work environment was laid back and fun but also productive and challenging especially during the holiday season. In every store location I worked in (and I worked in several locations) my co-workers were like family and it made the work days that much sweeter. I've made life long friends working there.
From a development standpoint, if you plan on managing a business (any business) then this is great start as the company trains you to "Run it like you own it" which means learning to run the business from front to back as a manager. You'll learn how to manage P&L, payroll, KPIs, and personnel. I've been able to transition a lot of my skills learned at Gap to my current company.
As you know there's no typical day when working as a retail manager but I can say that we did way more than just sell clothes and manage people. We hosted community events like job preparedness workshops for youth in the community, raising money and awareness for a variety of causes, and hosted fun team building exercises outside of the store. It was a great time.
Upper management was great - they lead with a people first mentality and the understanding that happy employees = healthy business. All employees were given great incentives through the rewards program which was nice and recognition was given regularly. Upper leadership regular
ProsGreat management, great co-workers, excellent benefits and incentives
The job itself isn't too bad, but management and customers will drive you nuts
I worked at Gap for 2 years before my store eventually shut down a few months ago, and I really liked the job itself! The majority of your shift will likely be fixing clothing displays or putting out new clothes, but the monotony of it is kind of satisfying. Time flies by super fast too since you will always be occupied, so you will work for what feels like 30 minutes then look at the clock and suddenly 2 hours have passed. You get to design your shift availability and managers will try their best to accommodate you into the schedule no matter how flexible it is, with shifts varying from 4 hours to 8, whichever works for you and perfect for students or parents who need a bit of extra change. Overall, the place was great and felt like a big family with coworkers occasionally bringing in food and gifts for us.
Now for the downsides. The absolute biggest downfall of working at Gap is you are hugely pushed to sell credit cards. Thankfully there doesn't seem to be a personal quota you need to meet, but managers will lecture you everyday about how to sell the card and it gets a bit irritating. You could pitch the card perfectly every time, and a customer just won't want one, especially nowadays, but the managers sometimes don't seem to understand that.
The next problem is a pretty big one with the pandemic. A lot of customers will come into the store without masks on, but there is nothing you are allowed to do about it other than offer them a mask, you can't deny them service or
ProsExtremely flexible schedules, satisfying job, excellent PTO, good cohesion among coworkers
ConsPushing credit cards, dealing with bad customers, anti-maskers
Don't work here if you want to have any semblance of a life outside of work. First things first, Gap is NEVER upfront with you about anything! They neglected to mention a lot of key things in the orientation that definitely would've made me change my mind about working here. The first one is that overtime is mandatory and they fully expect you to work all of that overtime. Which wouldn't be such a bad thing if they weren't allowed to force you to work 7+ days in a row, but they are allowed to do that so unless you enjoy working 70 hour work weeks, this job is not for you. Oh and if you think they'll let you know if you have to work on your days off, they won't, I had to find out through my coworkers. You're just a number at this place and nothing else and contrary to what they tell you, they don't care about you one bit, all they care about is how high your production is. Another thing to mention is this. Gap heavily suggests that you install the Shyft app, an app that let's you pick up additional shifts and is supposedly vital for people who want to work part time, because it's a good way to swap shifts with someone else or give your shifts to someone else. But when I decided I wanted to switch from working those 40-70 hour weeks to working actual part time hours and asked them what that would entail, I got 2 completely different answers. One was that I'd be able to pick schedules out on the Shyft app while the other answer was that I'd be picking up the shifts that people c
Gap is Ok. You have to push to be able to get the full time position.
This was my second year working here. They are the same as always, only this year they didn't drug test. Also, they were pretty desperate because some people quit before the season was up, and they received calls and texts asking for them to come back.
Half the time they are never sure about anything. You have to find the right people, full-timers, who know what they are doing.
Full timers are sometimes rude to Seasonals, they never teach you anything and do more yelling and trying to get you fired than helping you go over the basics of different departments. Trainers train people different to the way they feel fit if anything my trainer had a one track mind and excluded the other stuff that he felt weren't important because of the department he worked in frequently which was shipping.
The worst thing about the Gap is the face they put on to make you feel like you're needed. They are really greedy, the way they let people go is horrible. Obviously, it's a seasonal position, but when you're there for so long and you see the things that take place and what you get in trouble for, the smallest things I may add, it's just ridiculous and even a wonder if you manage to have HR speak to you.
Now that I mention it, the only time you'll ever speak to HR is when they're firing you when you try to get in contact with them they are nowhere around. Ever. If you're in school, and you get hired in peak season they aren't forgiving. This is a job that wants an arm and a leg e
Prosa check
Consspaced breaks 30 minutes each, no free food when there is free food you have to fight for it like a dog
1.0
Customer Service Representative | Rocklin, CA | Jun 24, 2020
VERY Sad and OUTDATED company not in touch with reality 😔
Inflexible work hours, recruiter was much more misleading than usual. They were not even remotely honest or knowledgeable about the position. Only big plus was the HR Manager (who was @ Rocklin in 2017), she was actually upfront and honest. She told it the way it really was. I respect her, but the management there was an absolute joke along with their Salesforce database. They trained us the '"old" way beginning 9/25/17 with the expressed intent that come the Xmas season, 6 weeks hence, they were going to roll out Salesforce and new telephony software and none of what we were being taught would be applicable by the time we went live on the floor. What was the point of all that duplicative and wasted effort? The management actually rolled out new software right on the precipise of the holiday season. It took 3x longer because nobody there understood you can use a sales lead tracking system as a Customer service resolution system. Plus their build out was cheap and arcane. Finally, by the time those incompetents realized their mistake, they switched course again and had us go back to the old way which none of us sufficiently mastered. It was a complete clusterf@#$.
Moreover, the so called "escalation/assistance" team didn't want to be bothered with the simplist of questions, let alone deal with an irate customer. Beyond that, their outdated online, shipping and distribution setups were pure 1997. Don't even get me started on the God awful contracts they had with UPS and FedEx
ProsThe checks didn't bounce if you ACTUALLY received it on time. NO JOKE.
Good work environment, fun coworkers, decent managers, iffy standards
Fun and easy job, depending on your view of retail. Customers can be a little much at times, which is mostly due to the signage in store. My coworkers are lovely to work with and a lot of us are friends outside of work as well.
My only issues are with company standards regarding some of the time management spent for shipment times. To open a standard box (the physical dimension remains the same, but the amount of units per box often varies) and place the units on racks sorted and organized is supposed to take us 2 minutes. Even the fasted associates and managers could not meet that goal; yet, it is stressed to us and reflects badly when we cannot make that goal.
Likewise, that same 2-minute goal is applied to cash wrap transactions, which is difficult to accomplish when worrying about scanning all product, adhering to the customer's questions regarding the product and sales that may or may not be attached to them, removing hard tags to avoid customer discomfort and faulty store sales conversions, asking additional questions regarding coupons (i.e. rewards, in-store, or emailed coupons), asking about the Old Navy Card (i.e. Do you have an ONC? Did you want to apply for an ONC?), the transaction itself, and everything that follows.
Depending on the store (I've worked for more than one store in the Gap Inc. realm), management can be iffy. Some managers go above and beyond to work with your strengths and improve you weaknesses; but other managers will fail to do either
Questions And Answers about Gap Inc.
Were you drug tested
Asked Jun 14, 2017
Nope. They don’t drug test or bring it up.
Answered Jul 7, 2020
No drug testing
Answered Aug 17, 2019
Do they pay weekly
Asked Dec 11, 2016
Weekly on Wednesday in the call center
Answered Jul 7, 2020
Every two weeks
Answered Aug 17, 2019
Why did you leave your job at GAP Inc.?
Asked Mar 16, 2017
Because It was to hard
Answered Jul 20, 2019
I didn't, they have a rule system on ER days they call write ups, I had a car wreck after a month or two of working there and had no way of getting to work and I ended up missing a lot of days and got a write up which limited my ER days for an entire year and this year I had a medical emergency from an abscess tooth and had just applied for benefits and didn't have a doctor. I had to thru Aetna for medical leave and later learned the ER don't do workman's comp forms, so my medical leave was declined and those days turned into ER days and got me fired.
Answered Jul 14, 2019
What is the interview process like at Gap Inc.?
Asked Jun 15, 2016
Phone then group panel
Answered Jul 27, 2020
On my experience with interviews is overall the fastest, really honest, better pay than most and they don’t make you waste your time and theirs, everything depends on your background check results, according to all the employers/hiring agencies it’s the only thing that will take around 10-15 days for them to get it... I’m a rehired for this company and both times took about 2-3 days to get hired, from start to end
Answered Apr 29, 2020
What is the uniform and color?
Asked Mar 27, 2017
Well u can’t wear anything I just got hired and they said BUSINESS casual so u can’t be wearing a Nike or polo shirt or shoes lol cause obviously ur representing gap not Nike
