Pros
- Great place to interact with cats and dogs on a daily basis. - Decent online training program but needs some work and needs to be both hands on and online to be an effective way of retaining information. - Freedom to merchandise store and have some creative input. - Up to 40% employee discount - Ability to sample many products
Cons
- Lack of management! - Disorganization of staff and managers on store level. - I felt like popularity had a big role in promotions and getting hours rather than hard work. - Managers spending lots of time off of the floor while store staff are left to do whatever without much structure or training. - Online training was provided but you are basically put in a room alone watching videos with no hands on follow up, at least in the store I was in. - Customers who felt entitled to acting rudely because they were frequent shoppers. Overall this was just not the right fit for me. I really enjoyed shopping at Mud Bay and I loved the experience as a customer but it was a very different experience as an employee. I felt like popularity and being "friends" with management would get you a long way but hard work and new ideas didn't mean too much. The management restructuring that happened in the short time that I was with Mud Bay was pretty alarming. 5 or 6 managers either quit, laid off or reassigned to other stores. So many changes it is difficult to get adequate training as a new hire. This company did have pretty high employee retention rate but that will change if they cannot improve training and popularity issues in the stores.