This is going to be a long rand on Ulta… Here at Ulta it feels like the company and the management do not trust employees or treats employees with trust and respect. For example, our bags must be clear – I’ve worked at many retailers and this was not the case at any place I worked at before.
At Ulta we have an incredible emphasis on stict loss prevention – for example, that if any item is returned, but could be cleaned and made to look like new, we’d put it back on the shelves. Granted, we do not do this with eye products due to health issues – this is encouraged by our district loss prevention manager. To be fair to Ulta, it seems like we have a lot of theft here at the store – but why not tackle it with good security - we were supposed to be given security guards, but half the time they didn't show up.
In general, I was given very little training (about four hours of videos, and then my register training was watching a coworker ring for ten minutes – that was it I had to take over after that), partially because they did not want to spend the hours to train me and partially because I had previous retail experience… OK, since I had experience, they expected me to know it all, and if I did not do things the Ulta way – I’d get reprimanded – not cool at all…
Also, Ulta will not be able to give you a good number of yours – they will not lie to you too about this… As I was interviewing, the manager said said she could only promise about 10 hours a week; this is how things did pan out as one week I only had six hours.
Moving on – there is a lot of pressure on us to have folks sign up for the loyalty program and to give us their info – that’s very valuable for Ulta, they are pushing for this big time… They know that if they have that info they can know more about customer and they can customize the marketing approach – given the pressure, people will sign up people even if they do not want it which is not very ethical.
It’s similar with credit cards but there is less pressure on this – we need to do one per store, but the Ulta POS system will prompt you to ask customers about credit very frequently, - customers hate this and I hate it and every other person hates it.
Finally, I love my co-workers, everyone is very nice and all managers are cool and understanding – they will not help you with everything you need help with as they have their limitations that are imposed by the executive corporate leadership.