Bad company...Good learning and growing experience - "Stylist" The RealReal Employee Review

1.0
3 Mar 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Free (bad) sandwiches on Mondays. Free (sometimes good) food on Tuesdays. Free snacks on Wednesdays. (I looked fwd to Wednesdays) Free (horrible but manageable) pizzas on Thursdays. Free stale bagels on Fridays. Free (bad) sandwiches on Saturdays. I think offering free food is what makes them think employees will last longer and they're right!

Cons

Management acts as if what they say and what they want is the only thing that matters. All they seem to care about is getting more and more orders out of the door and if that means long hours for you, then that's what it is even if there's a blizzard outside! The company is very gossipy. It's almost as if you're in High School all over again. Sadly, this (mostly) includes management- some of whom are unqualified and cannot perform their jobs well. Management will constantly talk down to employees-wether you're their employee or not. Management is infamous for pulling people aside to have meetings about everything and anything like someone taking an extra banana from the snacks table. Really? I was hired to be a stylist but my job consisted more-so of the duties of a photo/production assistant. A huge part of my job was constantly shipping items from one warehouse to another. Very stylist-like, right? The biggest sign that this job wasn't going to be a good match for me should have been when my interviewer (a former manager) informed me that "stylists don't last here" during the interview. Unfortunately for me, someone who has worked with reputable professionals in the fashion industry, at The RealReal I ended up working with a bunch of amateurs who just click buttons all day and call themselves photographers. Although they may tell you there's room for creativity, that's a lie. There's no room at all for creativity at The RealReal. Within the past month 6 people have quit their jobs at TRR because the environment just sucks. People are expected to work very long hours because their team is small but the workload is far bigger. People have even been expected to work until 10pm or later even during dangerous snow storms because orders have to go out. Apparently, there isn't much of a budget to hire more workers because all of the higher ups are getting the big bucks. Really smart TRR! All those people clicking away in the photo studio- how amazing of a 'career' you have. The only thing I will miss about this company is the free food! Suggestion: If you are thinking about a job at TRR- especially a stylist position, I would strongly advice against it. There are other companies who will offer you more. From TRR- there's no where else to go as you aren't growing- especially within the company as most of the "senior" people in the department where I worked had been doing the same thing since the beginning of the company. Also- read all of the reviews. here There's a reason why 98% of them are negative.

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The RealReal Response
11y
Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. I’m sorry that your experience at The RealReal didn’t meet the expectations you had when you accepted our offer of employment. We take feedback seriously and are taking actions to address the concerns you raised. We have already begun the process of finding alternative vendors to improve the quality and increase of the diversity of our free meals. We have undertaken a study to address finding a balance in our staffing levels, amount of overtime and our ability to satisfy our customer’s orders in a timely fashion. As a rapidly growing start-up, this can be a constantly moving target. We are currently going through our company-wide annual performance review process. And as a part of that process, we will be identifying our strengths and areas for improvement. Then we will address our areas for improvement with additional training and coaching. You used the phrase “get better management” – I’d shorten it to just “get better” which is our goal – to get better for our employees & our customers. There are a couple of additional comments I’d like to make. One, I must take exception with describing our photographers as “a bunch of amateurs” – I think our photographers do excellent work, especially considering this team took nearly 3 million product images last year alone! Secondly, I have instructed our East Coast leadership team to stop operations and to send everyone home before any storms make it unsafe to travel – and to make sure that none of our employees suffer any financial hardship due to any reduction in hours. Once again, thanks for your feedback and best of luck in your future endeavors

Explore other reviews about The RealReal

5.0
8 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Overall, the receiving team is very sweet and engaging. They try to help you when you need it or ask for it.

Cons

When you don't reach your goal, they do get on you/

2.0
13 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Pay and commission can be good, but the structure is unnecessarily convoluted and not as generous as it seems, and you will have no work/life balance if you want to actually make consistently high commission. If you have a true passion for luxury and fashion, you do get a lot of opportunities to handle and interact with special/rare items, and depending on store location you can meet a lot of interesting industry people and celebrities, especially during Fashion Weeks

Cons

Poor and unsupportive management with extremely unrealistic demands and expectations; you will get virtually no training, but are immediately expected to know how to do everything. The overall company culture is just unpleasant and very cliquey, and there's constant employee turnover. The online customer service system is terrible, so you will frequently have to handle customer issues that have nothing to do with you/your sales.

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