The past three years of my make up artistry career, I have freelanced for several cosmetic companies including a very popular brand, and witnessed tenured artists jump ship from the company like it was the Titanic. There are many reasons why it was and is happening. I plan to explore many of those reasons in other posts, but one is upper management.
Prior to the most recent district manager there was one who had an industry wide reputation for being an aggressive unrelenting tyrant. Apparently people feared her so much they would lose their appetite, feel nauseous around her, and try to avoid her like the plague. My first encounter with her was interesting. I was on my third or fourth interview (which was a surprise to me because I thought I was hired after my second) and I had to complete one more with the store manager at the location where I would start if I were to get the job. I go in for my interview, and to my surprise there are two people instead of one. This second person is tiny in stature, and has a very monochromatic look with a very angular haircut. She looks a bit androgynous and very severe. At any rate I greet her and the store manager and anticipate doing well on what I hope to be my last and final interview.
The questions start, and one of them was in regards to customer service. I used the company where I was currently working as a reference, described my approach to customer service using my current companies guidelines, and before I could finish my thoughts, the “Tyrant” interrupted. She said, “Well I have visited that store several times, and I have never experienced that customer service that you speak of.” True to her nickname she was nasty and inappropriate. Here I was trying to do well on an interview and answer a question properly and truthfully, I mean I had gotten promoted from a part time seasonal employee to full time assistant store manager, so I must have been doing something right, and here she was trying to throw a curve ball in my interview! Luckily I ignored her rude outburst, and kept answering questions like a champ eventually landing the job. While I witnessed many other people cry, quit, get fired, lose their appetite, and curse her name, I never had another negative run in with “the Tyrant.” Unfortunately for her, her reputation finally made its way to corporate and before she could get the ax, she quit.
The ‘lesson’ in this story is that retail is hard enough on every one involved. You work long hours, deal with tons of different people and personalities, and have responsibilities and goals to reach that at times seem unachievable. Even with all of that to carry, you are expected to always be on your ‘a game’, leave your personal problems at the door, and deliver. In a perfect world cosmetic companies would recognize these things and would provide checks and balances for upper management to insure that they know how to properly and effectively communicate to their staff without using intimidation, profanity, discrimination, favoritism, and out right disrespect to meet their bottom lines.
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