The Kooples reviews about "people"

Everything else. Upper management is highly incompetent, they love to gossip about staff members and decide whose the next person to be fired in the company. They have absolutely zero respect for employees. Area managers expects people to worship him, if you don't do that, he'll find a way to eradicate you using bullying methods. Work life balance is 0. You are expected to work even during your holidays.

Including the old ones because nothing has changed! At best, it is a fast and loose workplace with high turnover and is classically exploitative. The products are subpar with high mark up and illusion of quality (that they "train" you to hound even the most unwilling and uncomfortable of customers with). If you don't, you're judged and criticised for not doing your job properly. Targets are unrealistic. In fact, it is utterly archaic. This company is struggling and redundant, and it shows-Staff are underpaid with pitiful contracts, and they are overworked, used, abused, patronised and taken for fools. Upper management and staff that stay are complacent and lazy when it comes to people management. Manipulative, gaslighters, outright liars, hypocritical, controlling, self-preservative. The very example of a toxic workplace headed by toxic people, full of grim clichés. I can't believe they continuously operate in this way and get away with it. The negative trickle down effect is very much present. This is by far the worst job that I've ever had, and I've had some bad jobs. I've witnessed some of the most unprofessional behaviour, and an entire team of people (including multiple people who moved on in a short space of time) completely crippled by the pressure and bullying. It is absolutely not worth getting involved with. HR do nothing about serious issues; they may as well not have a HR department! I could go on and on. I tried to remain positive and professional during my time here but this job will mentally cripple anyone who has morals and pride in themselves-unless you leave, like I did. I'd rather be unemployed or go through the hassle of finding a new job in the midst of an economic crisis than continue working here alongside the worst behaviour I've witnessed in a workplace. If you have an IQ above room temperature, save yourself the mental strain.

- The UK head office for The Kooples is severely inept at their jobs, no professionalism or appreciation for workers who put a lot of effort into their job. Once they have decided they no longer like you for little to no reason whatsoever, you are on borrowed time while they try to come up with a way to get rid of you or push you out. This isn’t just from personal experience but also various colleagues i worked with in different stores had the same negative experiences with head office and knew they had little time left. - I am still yet to meet a single colleague at this company who had a single positive thing to say, everyone is desperately searching for another job to get away from the power hungry management and HR that plagues this company like a disease. - There is no solid hierarchy of communication between levels of employees and head office, meaning they will never directly speak to you face to face about issues but rather through several people first and this can be other employees. I have had the London area manager speak to me negatively about other employees’ personalities as well as trying to get me to say negative things about others as an excuse to get rid of them . This behaviour is extremely unprofessional.

The lack of processes can be difficult to deal with

Minimum wage pay while expected to make constant excellent effort. The treatment of employees was so poor that all the full-time floor staff, the regional manager and store managers all left the company; no one was hired to replace them, leaving me to complete the roles of multiple people at the same time. I was expected to meet the quota set for sales, take in deliveries/sort them/style them for the floor, send all start of day and end of day emails, make sure the clothes on the floor were all hung in the exact way expected, clean the entire shop area and plan weekly showcases for new pieces. They also failed to make sure they had someone to close for me which meant I would regularly be left to work from 8:30am to 8:00pm with no help and having to ask employees of other brands to watch my shop area just so I could spend ten minutes per day eating lunch. On top of all this, I was denied any holiday request I put in, despite making sure to make the request months in advance. On one occasion, they finally approved my holiday request only to reveal they had approved the entirely wrong week, leading me to lose out of money spent on flights and hotels. They then insisted I take every holiday day I had in one go leaving me with three weeks off doing nothing. I made huge efforts in this job and was not thanked once. If anything I would say I fell under the criteria of workplace bullying given the horrific environment I had to work in, leading to massive weight loss and stress.

Working here was nothing short of hellish, others I had worked with say the same. As a whole this company is poorly coordinated, from regional managers to HR who honestly will think more about sleeping with each other than focusing on improving their already laughable track record. I recently found these reviews and was somehow not shocked to find that other people experienced these same unacceptable circumstances. In my case, I commuted daily working full time for 7 weeks before being paid anything by The Kooples, despite requesting an immediate advance from HR who are utterly useless. This had resulted in skipping meals every day, at one point going nearly 3 days without anything - all whilst my colleagues, managers and HR knew about this. On top of the ongoing drama amongst staff and lack of communication across managers, unrealistic targets was common practice. Previous colleagues have also mentioned unreachable requests in order to provide a power-trip to HR, even if they are performing beyond what is expected of them. Whilst these targets were high, the product rarely delivered. Unsustainable collections replicating the same cookie-cutter pieces destined for landfill in a few years, often products were being sold with loose seams and broken haberdashery - expecting a customer to pay anything towards it. It's also necessary to mention an out-of-touch creative director who thinks its acceptable to sell exploitive prints, the Hawaiian motif print. I was so glad to leave shortly after seeing that arrive in the stockroom.

The quality of the clothing is subpar, resulting in frequent customer complaints and returns. The head office staff lacks the necessary qualifications for their roles, leading to numerous issues each week due to poor communication. It takes a month to get holiday approval, and when you finally take your leave, they act as if nothing was approved and threaten you with dismissal. A male trainer, who has been the subject of multiple complaints for his anger issues and for making female staff members cry, remains protected by HR, which consistently sides with the head office. Also, the lack of stock will make you constantly phone stores around to make a transfer for customers. Since very few people like/buy these products, it is extremely hard to sell them, so the pressure on you and a team is huge.