RH is not what you think, unless you think that it's a terrible place to develop a career.
There are many issues with the way the company works. Google it. I'm not some disgruntled design school grad who didn't get to make them buy my lamp, and now I want to get even. This is simple common knowledge. Now these issues are not necessarily a problem for some of the people working there, because what I saw in my brief time there was a simple and frequently repeated theme: "If you're friends with so and so, you'll do great!" - but woe be to you if you are not!
There are many opportunities to move around in the company. For example, they often hire outside third party companies to manage their staffing. (Really helps with the taxes and federal employment compliance, things like that!)
It's easy to find entry level work in maintenance, working the grounds, painting things, cleaning the chandeliers, setting up events for executives and things like that. And if you're good at it, you will be moving all around, and people will see you, and possibly hire you on to their (more prestigious) teams. You can be a janitor one day, and working in the big rooms with the executives the next. It's possible to go from a $12 per hour temporary employee to $40 an hour in a matter of days - IF you know the right people. I've even heard of people transitioning from $40 an hour to as much as $100 or more per hour, just for being in the right circle of people. (is that more of a "Pro" than a "Con"?) -
Another thing that is difficult with really finding a happy place when working there is, there is no work/life balance. (Assuming that you aren't actually looking to start in the entry level carpet vacuuming position and quickly transition to PR Leader.)
Nobody gets those kind of perks except the big big executives. Vacation and PTO and Holiday pay do exist, that's true - but there are maybe three or four tiers of people who work on the big campus. If you are 'an executive' you can absolutely take two or three weeks off for vacations and things like that. Here's the rub. Even if you took the company plane to say, Paris, just for a few days to relax and eat cheese or shop for vintage wines, your phone is ringing and pinging and dinging TWENTYFOUR/SEVEN with giant career busting emergencies back at the office, because of several reasons.
1. The executives who make all of the important decisions above you made a major game-changing decision about how your department will deliver their latest widget the moment you got on the plane, and they're asking where you are.
2. The people that are calling you and texting you and emailing you are probably gunning for your job. They know that they don't really want to do the things you do, but they think that if they had YOUR job, at least they could be on vacation buying cheese and wine while the big boss is pulling his or her hair out over something like a type of finish used on a brass lamp or a couch or something really pressing like, "Why do we make snacks available in the morning?! Do you have any idea how EXPENSIVE that is?! WHO AUTHORIZES THIS?"
3. If you have a relationship. A husband, or a boyfriend, a wife or a girlfriend, or if you have kids, or if you have pets, or if you have friends. Forget about them. Unless they work in the building you work in, you will never see them again. Exaggeration? Yes. Ok. You'll see them, but you will become the parent or partner who spends an awful lot of time trying to explain something to your people that they simply cannot understand. To them, you make couches and chandeliers or sell them, or you polish them, or you show people how couches and chandeliers look or who knows what they think?
(What they think is you go to this cushy job at this beautiful and mysteriously dark gray building that they can see from the freeway, where they sometimes bring you lunch. You work where they want you to go to Soul Cycle, and drink fancy juices from the juice places, and there's a great grocery store with sushi and a salad bar to DIE for that you get to walk past ducks and deer and bunnies nibbling the grass to get to on the days you have to buy your own lunch. They have showers and lockers and pretty bathrooms and everyone's pretty and everyone's handsome, and there are so many nice cars in the parking lot, and they bought a new airplane, and they built a new store in Texas or Canada or Palm Beach or somewhere and there's obviously money falling out of wheelbarrows around every corner, because you got to buy a $5,000 couch for $200 dollars at the employee's sample-sale, and didn't you say that they brought in champagne and donuts from that bakery in the city for some girl that was leaving? How could it not just be the most amazing place in the world?)
And your wife, your husband, your kids, your cute little tubby corgi that you used to fill your instagram feed with, will look at you and not understand why your hair is turning gray (like the walls you are surrounded by all day long). They will wonder why your patience seems shorter, and your brows are more furrowed, and you don't smile like you used to, and you keep saying things to yourself, (but actually you are saying them out loud)
"I don't understand. How could it be any more:
Crazy
Ridiculous
Thoughtless
Careless
Harebrained
Cruel
Stupid
Asinine ? (Can I say that here?)
Senseless
Foolish
CRAZY?!" You will always come back to crazy. "How can it be any more crazy!" And you will spend the next several hours trying to think of how to fix it or to change it or undo it, and your family just won't understand.
And you will lay down to sleep, and you will check your laptop one more time, or your phone, or your iPad, and surprise! but not really a surprise. It just got more crazy. You will have emails at 2 in the morning from big executives. You will have emails and text messages from executives that are demanding answers to questions you already addressed earlier that week in your report - but they never read them, and they want them immediately. And you won't get to sleep until the sun is already coming, but that's nothing new. Time for Soul Cycle! Get excited! Pull yourself up and get back out there. Every day is a new day! Carpe Diem! You ARE the right people! You ARE part of the solution!
And you realize that your report isn't really that important. Your report was about something like, which cheaper brand of peanuts should we swap out with the ones we give out every day, so that we can save more money and make everything look really nice for the share holders that are going to wonder why we/you/they spend so much money on peanuts. It's really not important.
But guess what?
They'll wonder why you're buying peanuts in the first place. Who needs peanuts?!
They will ponder this for a moment, while their shiny black Cadillac idles outside the lobby waiting to whisk them away to some other important meeting or another.
Their decision? Nobody needs them.
And it turns out that not only do they not need peanuts, they probably don't need you. And that's like another $50,000 right there.
So, the next day they'll call you in to talk about your report. The one you stayed up thinking about.
You'll bring all of your paperwork, you'll adjust your skirt or your snappy new bowtie, and you'll take one last look in the myriad array of mirrors lining the long corridor as you make your way to the big room with the big table, and you'll go in prepared to explain that you're just tired because (the dog, the wife, the kid, the...) is having a hard time right now. And you'll open your laptop, you'll smile at the desktop picture of your family, and you'll begin to show them how you can save money on the peanuts.
And they'll stop you right there.
They have to tell you.
"Don't worry about the peanuts. We're not doing peanuts anymore. And we need your key. And we need your laptop. And we need you to walk with this person to your car, and we need you to go work somewhere else."
And everyone that knows you or knew you will be weird, and tell you that that's crazy, and that you should meet up for a drink, a bike ride, a hike, a salad at rustic.
And you will nod. And they will tell you that it's probably the best thing that could have happened to you. That you are finally free. No more crazy. No more ridiculous. No more harebrain.
And you will nod, and you will drive away from there, and you will call your wife,husband,girlfriend,boyfriend,cute little tubby corgi and tell them you are coming home early today.
And meanwhile, all the people that knew you are planning to meet for drinks, for soul cycle, for a salad from Rustic? They're asking for your laptop. Your phone. Your job.
It's like that. It's one big con.
