Pros
-50% Employee Discount -Upper Level Management can give"Fave Five" Cards to 5 of their friends/family, which gives them 30% discount for one year. -Clothing Allotment: free clothes, free shoes, free handbags(only in retail development, not for retail store employees) -Great Benefits: Medical, Vision, Dental, Life Insurance, Disability Insurance, 401k that the company matches 50% -Everyone that works in the retail development division of MK is extremely nice, welcoming, and helpful, but I can't say the same thing for employees who work in the retail stores. -I was lucky to have a great boss who went above and beyond to make sure I always got what I deserved.
Cons
-When I first started the balance between work and personal life was great. They put great emphasis on setting time aside for yourself and my superiors would make sure that I wasn't working on my day off. But the last two years of my time with the company, I was spending every waking minute working. There was too much to do with very little time. I lost contact with friends and family because I always had a deadline for something. -The retail development division(wholesale) can be very stressful working in the field as most of our retail partners don't agree with MK's ways of running a business. You have corporate telling you that you need to do one thing, but the Retail Partners telling you no. It can be stressful as some retail partners refuse to compromise. -As the company grows more, it starts to become more and more like other big corporate companies. -You used to be able to pick your clothing allotment, now they pick it for you and you have to wear it exactly as they tell you. -If you work in retail development you can't wear things that you buy in the retail stores. -You have to have your nails with either no nail polish or painted in beige, light pink, or light grey. -Your hair has to be it's natural color, can't wear, lipstick can only be natural colors. -They used to fly shop managers to regional summits to meet other shop managers and gather tips and tricks, but they stopped because there's too many shop managers. -They used to give blackberries, but now they just give you money for your bill. -They give you absolutely no options to be yourself. Most of the clothing allotment they gave me was uncomfortable. One quarter all the shoes I received were 4 inch heels! Working in retail department stores where the stockroom is usually on the other side of the department....4 inch heels were a death sentence. -Being a Shop Manager can be lonely since you're usually the only one in your company that works at that location. You communicate with everyone at MK mostly through email and rarely see them, which makes it difficult to get the help that you need. -Three years working with the company and although I got HUGE raises was praised by corporate quite a few times, and was used as an example for best practices many, many times....I never got promoted to a new position. I only got promoted to a higher volume store doing the same exact thing that I was doing before The days started to drag because I exhausted everything that I could get out of that position.
