This job was a joke. I called it my volunteer job that cost me money! - In Home Custom Decorator JCPenney Employee Review

Run, don't walk from this job opportunity. This is a commission based salary. It is extremely hard to make any money here. From my first day there everything was so unorganized. The offices were a mess and filthy. No one is helpful. They have no computer designated for custom decorators except the one the office coordinator uses. They expect you to just find one to use. So whenever I needed one in the beginning and during training I was left to find one not being used and then bounced from one persons computer to another depending on who was around. No one could ever get the programs to work since the computers they are using are ancient. The actual custom decorating office was small and had 2 desks for 3 people. I was consistently stuck sitting on a chair at a cocktail type of table (which was covered in books and paperwork) to do my training and any work I had to do once I was selling to customers. I had to bring my own supplies. Calculator, measuring tape, pencils, sharpener, post its etc. They don't seem to have anything to give you besides the spec sheets you fill out. It was bizarre. So right off the bat you are spending your own money for something a company should be providing. You share a printer and a fax machine with everyone in the corporate offices. They never have paper, or toner and no one helps you find these items. The fax machine was broken for weeks and I had to go to my mothers store in a different town to send all my faxes. Crazy. The training is not enough and then they just send you out there to sell feeling very uncomfortable with their products. You need to be able to wing it and have some knowledge of window treatments. We were stuck overcharging customers on the spot because once the orders were entered in the prices were always different. That made it very difficult to know if you were charging enough or charging too much. They offer a free in home consultation. Well that was very frustrating. When you work on straight commission you want real qualified customers who are serious about buying before you drive all over the place for nothing. Most people just wanted your ideas and to get the free consult. They would have us "qualify" them over the phone before going but most people would get very annoyed because they felt we owed them a free consult. You went into many appts knowing it was going to be a complete waste of time. Most of the appts were made through a 1-800 number service. They are based in Ohio. They have no knowledge of where different towns are located and what NY traffic is like. So it was very possible you could be scheduled in eastern Nassau County, on the south shore at 10am (appts typically last a few hours) and then they would have you going to the Bronx at 1pm. Impossible. So you had to spend your time rearranging your appts so you weren't driving all over the place. They also never bothered to qualify anyone. So they would make appts for anything someone wanted. The window covering department items that are in the store and on the website were not sold in our department. They would tell the customers that we did in fact sell those. So when you called them they would yell at you and get annoyed that we couldn't sell them those products. The price points were also very different. Custom would start out about 3 times the prices of the products in the store. That would also anger people that didn't understand the difference between custom and store bought. I had appointments made for me to fix broken blinds they bought from the store, re-hang treatments that fell, replace brackets on treatments they didn't even purchase through JCP, etc. None of these are things that we as custom decorators would do. It became comical after a while. The territory was too big. It was a 60 mile radius from the store. I would constantly get appointments upstate New York when our store is on Long Island. I was also scheduled appointments in Connecticut and once in Michigan. Yet when I tried to send out mailings to people about 15-20 miles away here on Long Island they were given back to me and I was told that it wasn't in my territory. What??! It was like they didn't want to spend the money on mailings. You had to have a sense of humor about it or you would go nuts. They didn't care where they sent you and there were several times I was sent to places I didn't feel safe going to. I once had a customer whose house was like a garbage dump inside. I could barely walk to get to the windows to measure them. I was literally stepping on garbage, silverware, clothes and god knows what else. There were bugs everywhere. It was beyond disgusting. I am pretty sure she was selling drugs out of her bedroom with all the young people who were stopping by and going back there for a few minutes with her and then leaving. She was constantly on the phone threatening someone for money they owed her. She disappeared for a while to dye her hair white while I was trying to sell her drapes. She came back with it on her hands and got it all over my books and ipad. Then if all that wasn't enough she used the bathroom and she left the door open. I turned around in disgust and was horrified. She didn't end up buying anything because her check bounced. It was a waste of about 5 hours there and I didn't feel safe the entire time. She was the worst of the customers I had been to but there were very few good ones. You day off is never really a day off. They email and call you constantly all day demanding answers to questions that can wait until you return to work. When you don't have appointments (which was a lot of the time) they want you sitting in the small, disgusting office waiting to answer the phone or soliciting past customers to buy more. So basically you are sitting there, not getting paid and acting like a receptionist. The best part is that no one in the actual store ever answers their phones. So somehow they always ended up calling us and we would have to deal with angry customers because no one in the department they need is answering. If I wanted to be a receptionist, I could go get a job that actually pays you to answer the phones. Your car will become a storage unit for sample books. There are more sample books then can possibly fit in anyone's car. My trunk, backseat and even passenger seat was so filled with books I could barely fit in my groceries when I needed. God forbid I wanted to drive a person somewhere. Since the majority of the appts were not really serious custom decorating customers, it was so difficult to make any money there. I was horrified when I got my W-2. I knew I wasn't making good money but had no idea how bad it really was. I made more money working part time in a liquor store back when I was in college. When I was hired I was told decorators made around $70,000.00 a year. That is not the case. I don't know if possibly that happens in other parts of the country, but definitely not here. After almost a year there I heard from a co worker that another decorator who had been there for many years never made more the $35,000 on her best year. As if this wasn't all enough reason to get out of there, once the new year came around they let my manager go, out of the blue, after working there about 18 years. Heartless. They pawned us off on a manager in New Jersey and then to one in Massachusetts. How would that work? When there would be a problem with a product, customers want to see a manager immediately. You can't blame them. To have a manager so far away is insanity. They also let go most of the office coordinators which meant more work for the decorators. After that the people who were left were just leaving almost weekly. They just don't care about the employees at all. The store itself seemed to be the same way. People were always complaining about hours being cut yet they were always hiring new people. They only cared about how many credit cards you could open. They lied after I left about my end date, probably so they wouldn't have to contribute to my health insurance. I still haven't received a call back about why they did that. We didn't get to see most of what we sold when it came in because they don't have you go on the install appts. The only time I saw anything was when there was a problem. The quality of the drapery they made was nothing special for the prices they charged. I have sold custom draperies for many years and I have never seen such crappy work. The only way you are safe is ordering the Hunter Douglas shade products. I had a customer return 3 rooms worth of drapes which was around $12,000.00. I spent over a month going back and forth and working my butt off to make the sale and in the end, because the quality was garbage and was returned, I made no money off of that. Nothing. Complete waste of time. I couldn't even blame the customer. The second I saw the treatments I agreed with her complaints. Overall this was not a good job experience.