Okay okay, I know everything I do and say outside of the work environment reflects the company I work for blah blah.

I don't care. I've never hated a job more. Actually I've never hated a job, period. Until now. And I'm quitting after the holidays. Mind is made up.

Not only is the actual job terrible, but I'm having problems with coworkers. Sure, not everyone gets along with everyone else, but when you work in a store the size of a dorm room, you should probably not blatantly be a bitch.

I'll start from the beginning. I needed a job, plain and simple. I'm a college student, already in a massive amount of debt, which is only half of what I'll owe in the end. So any job was better than none. So when I got the call-back, the interview, and even the offer, I was ecstatic. Until I read an ex-employee's account... and other accounts and reviews that all sounded exactly the same... But I still took the job.

This is only my second month working there. Did I mention I work at Teavana? Yep, I hate it. If you hate Teavana, too, I'd love to bond over the reasons its a terrible company.

Guess I need to start looking for a new job. :(

This topic speaks to me right now haha. I'm sorry you're having a crappy time at work :/ I can empathise because currently, I am seriously just fed up with my job and the way they treat people. I work for barely above minimum wage and I'm constantly being pulled in for shifts at short notice, being told i'm "required" to work shifts outside my contract, and basically used like a tool rather than a person. And then when I need some flexibility on their part, because I go to uni part time and obviously have commitments to my course, it's a huge deal and i'm treated like i'm basically bringing down the company single-handed. I'm seriously tempted to just start looking for a new job too, tbh.

First off, your HA is super cute...

... uhh... so yae my situation is a little bit different in the sense that they SEND ME HOME EARLY because they don't need me. I'm getting ripped off hours. Sorry I'm not a pushy saleswoman and rude to customers like everyone else. I'm honest and still make decent sales. Apparently that's not good enough. I put in my two weeks notice today. My last day is Christmas Eve. Yay, I'll be starting off my new year stress-free! I think I'm gonna apply at little thrift stores from now on. They don't care if the customers are "just looking around". Ha >_> We can look for jobs together! :) Where do you work now, if you don't mind me asking?

Aw, thanks! I love how Christmassy yours is haha, i'd been meaning to make a winter-themed one myself. Ugh that's ridiculous, i hate it when these places basically act like it's acceptable to do that. I've had that same sort of problem, where i'm not getting enough hours... it seems to be either barely any hours or way too much, never a decent balance x_x I just had my first performance review, too, which I was fairly confident about because I actually work hard unlike a lot of my colleagues, but I was basically torn to shreds for not having a constant smile on my face or some crap. So i can definitely empathise there as well :/ Service jobs are just the worst. Awesome that you can have a stress free Christmas though! So jealous haha :) Yeah, i'm currently hoping that a vacancy will open up in one of the libraries near me, since they seem to pay better and be more chilled since they're not trying to sell products lol. I currently work at a clothes shop called Next, which i'm pretty sure is just in the UK so depending where you are you might not know of it :p What about you?

I don't work for them, but I can related to the crappiness of the job. :( My current job sucks balls. Where I work you can end up working for more then 10 hours and never get a single break. :/ I usually get scheduled for less then 15 hours a week at $7.25 an hour (minimum wage in my state). I am desperately looking for another job, but being so close to the holidays they have already hired on their holiday help. They need help at our store, but every time they hire new people, my hours are the only to suffer so that the new employees can have hours. It is not just the company, but the customers are pretty bad as well. We had one that kept calling every 5 min (not an exaggeration) asking where his delivery was. Wouldn't listen to a thing we would say. It was so annoying because it was well within the time frame that we quoted the customer that his order would arrive. :/ I talked ot the delivery driver when he got back and he confirmed the customer was drunk.

I actually enjoy the job I have and the people I work with, except one of them is constantly setting off my misophonia, to the point where I went over and politely explained to him why I can't handle his whistling and tapping on the desk, and he stopped for a while, but now he's been doing it again. And tonight I forgot my earbuds, so I can't even block him out. But that's not the worst part. I found out that this year, my shitty little $25 Christmas bonus was direct-deposited into my account so they took taxes out of it and I only got $15.78. I've worked here over four years and I haven't once gotten a raise, let alone a decent bonus. This company treats us like crap. They expect more work out of less hours and less people. It's bullshit.

This totally reminds me of when I worked at a call center 4 years ago. I absolutely HATED my job, but the money was great. The staff were terrible people, including the boss who would belittle the employees who got sent to her office. I, was one of them. I seemed to have repressed my memories from I worked there, but I wasn't well liked. I always got sent home for poor performance. They didn't treat you like a person... they treated you like a number, like some piece of trash that is going to be run over by a car any second.

The raises were horrible too. They brought you in an office once a year and if you were really good at your job, you would get your full 50 cent raise!! I never got more than 10 cents and one year I didn't a raise.

They remodeled while I was there. It used to be two floors, but they couldn't afford the rent, so they rented out the first floor and we were all moved to the basement. NO windows. You were basically in a box.

I'll never go back. They can burn in hell C:

Try working for a shitty call center. You'll appreciate every job you have after! Everything else is so much better than a box without windows.

Okay so I've been working literally every day, so I haven't gotten a chance to respond to you all. So firstly, Happy Luminaire everyone :) I hope you got cool stuffs and gave cool stuffs and had a jolly time!

I'll give you all a little update on my work issue. I didn't even show up for my last two days. Because one of my coworkers started some crap. The rundown: One girl there always asks if I want any shifts covered. She said she would take my Sunday shift if she didn't work at her other job... which she did. But she still came in for my last two hours so I could go home early. So as I'm getting my tea and getting ready to leave, one of the older workers, who I actually liked until that point, came up to me, literally yelling. "Are you leaving because you WANT TO? You know she (the girl covering my two hours) has been in the hospital THREE TIMES because of her pregnancy!" And started flipping out. She wanted my two hours. She even asked if I wanted to give her any of my WHOPPING 10 hours from the last two days. Clearly, she wasn't really worried. But I was fuming. I told them all to go fuck themselves and that the whole place was bullshit and left. They didn't even call when I didn't show up my last two days. I hope Teavana burns to the ground. hides matches behind back I mean, just kidding.

But really, I will never buy anything from them again. Everyone at my store was rude and half of them ignored me. Y'all can go shove a cast iron pot up your ass.

Anyway! :) Yea, I've never heard of Next so it must not be in the U.S. But a library job would be awesome. Because it'd be quiet, and pleasant, and books on books on books! I applied for a library clerk job at my college, but to no avail. But good luck! You can recommend me good books :)

Customers are the worst sometimes. I had a drunk customer before, who actually came in the store, but she was pretty enjoyable. She just reeked of alcohol. >_> You could always wait until after the holiday season, when all the college kids start going back to school. Just start applying to a bunch of places now, even if they aren't hiring. When an opening becomes available, they'll have your application.

If you want, I'll come there and kick his butt for you. He'll never make another noise again. :p But that's honestly really crappy. I worked for a company for three years too, and I never got a raise. At some point, you kinda just need to reevaluate if that's really the thing you wanna be doing, otherwise the pay and the asshole coworkers aren't worth putting up with. And why the hell would they direct deposit a christmas bonus?

WTF in the basement? Why did you even stay there that long?! I hope you have a better job now. :) But I understand getting sent home for "poor performance".

How about we all just open a pet shelter? I think that would be fun. I'll pay you all in gum, and puppies!

I shopped here like twice before I read how awful they are to employees and decided I never would again. They have over priced crap anyway and I hate when people jack up the prices on things stamped with obvious references to Buddhism and/or anything that symbolizes enlightenment and stuff like that. LIKE WOW do you udnerstand how backwards you are being to spend 200 dollars on some decor with the buddha's face on it (you cant even boil water in it)

sorry about the position you are in :( if you live near a kohl's i'd suggest working there. I've only worked in a resaurant/cafe and a wholesale grocer before this... but this place has been the best.

Teavana sells overpriced crap anyway. You're well shot of them.

It sounds like the older woman who was being a bitch to you is just a miserable person because she has to share her hours with students because she isn't qualified to work anywhere else.

Yea, everything is way overpriced. And most of the tea wasn't very good anyway. -___- I'm glad I got out of there. Tea is supposed to be relaxing, and that place is the complete opposite of that. Never again. I'm going back to drinking tea in my bathtub with cookies. :)

But yea, that lady was always in a bad mood. She always complained about how she couldn't get her transcript to go back to school and she wanted to go for another degree. Like, lady you have five degrees. Go do something with them. Wow you owe $700, and you already have your schooling. She acted like it was ridiculous and her life was so bad, and I just wanted to punch her in the face. They all just cared about themselves, it was disgusting.

5 degrees huh.

Just goes to show, she could pay for school but she couldn't buy class. :D

Tea and cookies in the bath sounds fabulous right now!

Is Teavana really this bad...? I had a wonderful sales lady when I went there my very first time. She came up and asked me if there was anything I needed and I told her I was only looking. She didn't loom over me, push products at me, or anything... She was very nice and helpful when I found a tea set I wanted, offered me things in a lower price range when I mentioned I wasn't looking for something terribly expensive.

I had no idea there were actually so many problems with Teavana. D :

OMG I USED TO WORK AT TEAVANA AND I QUIT IN AUGUST

tbh I loved it. It was my favorite job ever, until it wasnt, and then I hated it, and my problems are 100% with the company and the sales process and the way hours function, it has nothing to do with the job itself. PLUS they started blatantly lying this year on their labels, not just in the sales process. They never used to use artificial flavors in the teas. When we saw that turn up on the labels, we were all heartbroken. (I was like bffs with most of my coworkers and most of us have stayed in touch because we were all on the same page about how bad it got.)

Anyway, my GM told me the "artificial flavor" in Berry Kiwi Colada, for example, is not fake flavoring but bananas and strawberries, because the banana/strawberry combo tastes like kiwi to some people. That was a straight up lie, the artificial flavors are exactly what they sound like - artificial.

The hours thing was my problem. I worked in a very low volume store, our regional manager really pushed for our location to be where it is, and it's not the best for our clientele. At first, I didnt have to be super pushy, and that was when I loved my job. I WAS SO EXCITED to be working there and I threw myself into it. And then they started changing the sales process on us every few months. (This was right after the sbux acquisition and things were weird.)

So it got to a point where the sales process was SO incredibly pushy and convoluted I just wouldnt even stick with it unless my GM and DM were standing right there. In a low-volume store, if you got scheduled for a night shift or something and your sales bombed, you would be fucked for hours for the rest of forever. I had a bad week once and got cut to 5 hours a week for months after that, and I was working two jobs with like 15 hours a week between the two, on food stamps, I could barely survive working there and I had to leave.

That wasn't even the worst problem, we had so much stupid drama because of our frickin neckless DM (he honestly actually doesnt have a neck, his face like comes out of his chest) and the way they treated our AGM and so many of my friends who worked there... like my friend who got fired for no reason, and how they REFUSED to give anyone benefits or promotions... god.

I still am a sucker for their tea, and I truly believe that most of it IS as high of quality as they say. I certainly am picky about my teas and I won't drink bagged tea, and loose leaf is so hard to find, let alone ones with such flavor. But the companies business practices are appalling.

You've just worked there this year? Cause I have a GREAT story for you about our "Christmas gifts" that we got last year, if you haven't heard it already....

She needs to go buy an attitude adjustment XD

Was that me? :P Just kidding. Kinda. I'm not saying every employee at Teavana is terrible, but they train their employees to be rude and intrusive and pushy and NO STOP TRYING TO TELL THE MOST EXPENSIVE TEA, IT'S NOT EVEN GOOD. More often than not you'll run into one of those kind.

I loved the JOB too. Being able to tell people about tea and stuff made me really happy! Or if I recommended something and they liked it! But yea, I got the same artificial flavoring bullshit. But I still like the Berry Kiwi Colada >_> BUT SAME WITH THE HOURS. The only reason I was scheduled so much was because it was the holidays, but since my sales weren't booming, I noticed the first week of January, I was only scheduled for one day. Come to Pittsburgh! There are little tea shops around here. :) You can get loose leaf tea there, for much cheaper. I still drink bagged tea, but that's because I found some chai tea I really liked about a year ago and I don't wanna give it up, ever. Plus, it's actually organic and not artificially flavored! What was the Christmas gift story? I may know it but I'm not sure...

[edit] here :) You can order online!

Haha, maybe? It's in West Virginia.... I see... in my opinion, liking a blend of tea, most or least expensive, depends on the palette of the person... but I guess that doesn't really matter to someone trying to make money. Tea is supposed to be a calming, soothing experience, not highly stressful. :c These people are running a farce of a tea shop.

I agree. But just because someone says they like green tea, doesn't mean you pull out the highest priced one from the shelf. -__- I always made a point to show the customers a tea I really liked in the category they were looking for, regardless of the price. The only high priced tea I ever recommended was Monkey Picked Oolong, because it's my favorite tea. If they said they didn't like it, I didn't push it "because of the health benefits". But no, I'm not in West Virginia! But I'm glad you had a nice experience at Teavana!

Pittsburg sounds cool but its pretty far from Wisconsin! Lol. Ive been trying to get out of this dumbass state for years with no luck but ugh. Theres like ONE local tea shop around here. I hear they have some cute ones in Madison and over in Minnesota but I wouldnt know.

Ooookkay soo, last year, starbucks purchased Teavana, and... to preface this, the absolute and utter lack of ANY communication about anything, whatsoever, was one of my pet peeves from the start. If the schedule changed, good luck hearing about it. New promos? New teas? Our GM would literally guard them with her actual body and would NOT let us see them until the DAY they came out or a reset. The whole thing where our company was being purchased by a coffee goliath and we would have new owners? THEY LITERALLY DIDNT TELL US. I found out because the day it was released in the press some guy at the sample cart asked me "Didnt starbucks just buy you?" and I was like "Umm I dont think so???" I confirmed it when I went into the back room, in the furthest corner, by the sink, below eye level, there was ONE printed page announcing the acquisition... nobody said anything.

So back to the Christmas thing. This is all information I have in hindsight, at the time I knew none of it. We were told that EVERY person in the comapny was getting a free pound of tea, ANY tea, ANY combination of ounces, and a free pound tin for Christmas. You worked there, so you know how HUGE this was. It was totally kosher to just pick a pound of MPO, like, $300 worth of tea, and just take it. It was totally up for grabs. We were flabbergasted, we were so excited. A lot of us waited to pick out teas because we were trying to choose so carefully. Teavana employees don't get gifts - retail workers don't get gifts, for that matter, so it was a big deal.

One of the things we didnt know was that Starbucks wanted to take a look at the junk they just purchased, and one day, we were told to take the teas off the wall and start putting them in trash bags. (The regular associates didnt see this part, but my friend who was a TL told me they were instructed to pour water into the trash bags and destroy the tea before they sent it out as well.) We were not told why except that it was getting sent to the co distribution centers so they could "look at what they bought." And just like that, over HALF of the tea wall was gone. We turned the tins upside down to show they were empty, and it was seriously more than 50 teas on the wall, just gone, for months.

We were devastated, because not only did that HURT OUR FUCKING SALES LIKE CRAZY, but we had no idea what was going on. We were told that Starbucks wouldn't change anything, and that if nothing else, things would get better, because we'd receive mutual discounts and "benefits." (That was another thing - the "benefits" were restricted to people who worked more than 20 hours a week, which was almost no one, and they scheduled us that way on purpose. Even our AGM was not allowed to work full time, although she did work over 20 hours, and never once got follow up on the mythical "benefits" she was supposed to get thru sbux.)

Now, you know who Andy and Nancy Mack are I'm sure, cause Teavana is pretty full of itself and I think those two really want their names everywhere because they're like dogs pissing on fire hydrants - this is mine thats mine do it my way etc. Ive never met them but I've heard theyre rude af. Anyway, its not like with any other company I've worked for, we knew those names, and I read online that Andy Mack acquired some $30 MILLION dollars in the Sbux acquisition, AND he got to keep his job and title as CEO of Teavana.

Sounds like a pretty comfy deal to me, idk, but I guess that WASNT ENOUGH, because right before I quit I learned the real reason for the "gift" we got. Andy Mack knew that his stock was going to get thrown in the trash after the Starbucks purchase, because Starbucks was always going to throw it away. That tea was a "loss" no matter what (if you can really say that, considering his profit margin and how much money Starbucks makes. Its barely anything for them. Plus, we're talking about Teavana here - they make such an insane ridiculous profit, they bought out a Canadian competitor IN CASH).

But, Andy Mack knew that if he "gifted" the tea to us he could write it off on his taxes as a donation, which means an ENORMOUS tax credit back, because seriously how expensive is that fucking tea.

I was FURIOUS when I found out about this. Like okay GUY, I'm sorry that being the CEO of a stupidly profitable company that bullies its customers, acquiring $30 million, AND keeping your job ISNT ENOUGH FOR YOU. I can totally sympathize, as one of your employees, who lives under the poverty level on food stamps and can barely pay any of her fucking bills because of your stupid starvation wages, you greedy piece of shit, enjoy your fucking tax credit you Smithers-level motherfucker, and I hope you fucking choke on it!!!

GOD IM STILL MAD ABOUT IT THAT IS SO MUCH HORSE SHIT LIKE I SWEAR TO GOD UGH Hands down one of the most skeevy goddamn things they ever did

and honestly I dont even care about "defamation" anymore or whatever. I dont know that I'm bound legally by anything I signed still, and if I am, fuck them, I don't care, I am already so broke and in so much debt and struggling so hard (no thanks to their goddamn shit company) that if they found out who I was and took me to court my life couldnt possibly get any worse anyway.

I do wanna stress though, to outsiders reading this - it is the PEOPLE and the PRACTICE I hate, not the tea itself. I love my cast iron teapot, I love my teavana teas (strawberry cream is my ALL TIME FAV FOR LIFE ITS SO GOOD and I did like Berry Kiwi Colada too its yum), but they are dirty, conniving, capitalistic and appropriative douchebags who treat their employees like dirt. I have so many stories about my DM, too. I stopped being scared of him after I met him and by the time I was ready to quit, I was openly sassing him back right to his face. I was NOT letting him walk all over me. One time, he actually formally scolded me for YAWNING on the sales floor. Only he told one of the TLs to do it for him, because he couldnt walk 12 feet to tell me to my face that yawning isn't allowed on the sales floor (just like how chatting with your coworkers is, technically, not allowed during zoning).

I met one of my fav tumblr followers through this incident as well, she had posted a picture on tumblr of the tea wall with it's upside down tins and said how sad it made her, and she was found and contacted by the PR coordinator of Teavana and told she HAD to remove the photograph from her blog. Like, why??? I still dont understand because literally any customer could walk into ANY TEAVANA and see that the teas were gone, but no, don't post about it online, that's naughty.

But whatever, I found that post and now we're buds but its like, I dont know a single person who worked at Teavana that doesnt have horror stories. It's like we've all been through this terrible shared experience and frankly, with Starbucks putting them on the map a bit more, I think people ought to know what shitbags they are. I really wish we could all band together and make a comprehensive list of all the utter horse shit they made us walk through just to survive at our jobs. I havent taken the initiative to do that yet because I'm afraid they would sue, like that is 100% NOT beyond them in the least bit.

I think a testament to their fuckery is this post at the Adagio TeaChat forum. I found this post in 2011 when I was first thinking about working for this company. I realized earlier this year that although that post was made in 2008, the thread is still open and active, because people are STILL coming there to say "this happened to me, too."

Did you see the link I posted? Go look at it :) Okay, so I heard about the one pound tea gift, but I didn't hear the entire story. WTF. I didn't even know they threw out all the tea! That's fucking ridiculous. I despise the company even more. BOTH COMPANIES. Atleast you worked there before the company was bought. I didn't even get actual training! All I learned was how to upsell the tea. "Here, you need this tin. Let me fill it for you. Oh, you don't want a pound of Gyokuro? Too fucking bad." BUT I READ THAT SAME POST BEFORE I STARTED WORKING THERE. I had a bad feeling about it, but I still took the job because I needed the money. Bad decision. -__-

Oh cool! Yeah theres a lot of good places to order tea from online for sure.

Yeah I read that post and I kinda brushed it off. I was like this was in 2008 it cant possibly have STAYED that bad. I was wrong. lmao. And yeah Starbucks is just as shady, you'll hear rumors that it's an amazing place to work, but ask actual baristas. I know exactly ONE who likes his job there, and he came there from Teavana, so who can blame him.

One thing that seems to get consumers when I open up about this, is that they hate how hours are based on sales. I wanna point out that yes, the highest sales receive more hours. It makes sense even in it's unfairness. However? MOST RETAIL PLACES DO THIS. That's not the revelation here. Just throwing that out there for any outsiders who might be reading this. I work at Hot Topic now and although this is a company I love and that I love working for, they do the exact. same. thing. This is why HT employees will ask if they can order things for you, because if we go a week without online sales we get in trouble and our hours get cut, same with our units per transaction and any sales that total under $20 or so.

Teavana was like, everything that's wrong with retail, but on steroids. Like seriously take ANY complaint that people are making about Wal-Mart, ask yourself "how could this be worse?" and Teavana is doing it. I am SO ANNOYED that Wal-Mart is getting all the attention for being a bad place to work, because it's not just them, ALL of retail and the federal minimum wage is the problem. I have had 15 jobs in the last 4 years; most were retail, and of those, NONE of them rose above the Wal-Mart standard - no, not even the ones I liked. I get that they are supposed to be like the poster child for talking about these issues in general, but the fact of the matter is that people are just looking and going "oh wal mart is the problem, dont shop there." No, capitalism and poverty wages are the problem, and they are ubiquitous and systemic. No one gets anything but the short end of the stick in retail. Or food service.