store manager

recruiter

human resources advisor

assistant manager

Clintons

I have nothing positive to say about this company. Nothing. I hate them so much, in fact, that I'm going to sit here and list every terrible thing I can think of until either I get bored or my fingers go numb. They are so evil that I wouldn't be surprised, quite frankly, if they contacted my old store and tried to find out who I was.

- Regional management are bullies. They made me cry, they made five of my coworkers cry (including my manager!!), and look at and talk to you like you're dirt off their shoe. They don't care about you, they care about targets, they care about money. Absolutely horrible people. Cruel.
- My manager was in pieces from stress. The amount of weight she lost and the number of times I saw her cry was shocking - more than once she told me she was there so late she told me she was considering sleeping in the stockroom because going home and coming back in would be almost pointless at that point.
- In my first week my first manager scolded me in front of a customer and made me cry on the shop floor, then pulled me out the back and yelled at me for......... crying in front of customers.
- Yes, we went through four managers in three years. Five if you include the 6-month gap where we didn't have one at all and our deputy manager had to fill the role.
- I was also told to leave my chronic health problems 'at the door.' By a member of management.
- Management in general getting in fights. There was a bit of a rift between two members of management at the time and they often had screaming matches so loud you could hear them from the shop floor - and this was not a small store. The working environment was toxic. Brought out the absolute worst in everyone.
- There was a terrible management understaffing problem, at least in our area - most of the time we didn't even have a manager because they were being sent all over the place to cover. On one occasion myself and my coworker - both of us sales assistants, NOT management - were sent to another shop an hour away to cover, as that shop had NO management employed at all and no sales assistants had been due in that day (?!). 
- Even at my home store I was very often left to close the shop, cash up, and do returns/exchanges. All of these are management duties. I was not management and was on a sales assistant's salary.
- Overnight shifts for big moves and stock takes. On more than one occasion we took far longer than we had planned because of a lack of staff (I'll get to that in a minute) and didn't finish until around 3am. All had to be straight back in at 9am though!
- A lack of staff. This is partly due to very high staff turnover, but also due to the fact the higher ups allocate far too few staff hours per store to try and save money. 
- Leading on from the above, sure we won't give you the staff you need but what do you MEAN you didn't get all that merchandising done? What do you MEAN you didn't manage to rearrange half the shop during opening hours?? Tough! You'll have to stay back and do it in your own time, unpaid!! The fact we haven't given your store enough hours is irrelevant!!! Just work harder!!!!!!!
- You're expected to do about 800 things at once. You might have a large shop, for instance, and three members of staff, and between you you are expected to serve customers, approach customers, restock, remerchandise, answer the phone, make up balloon orders, accept and sort deliveries, upsell, sign people up to the rewards programme, and respond to emails. All while keeping the place looking presentable and trying to schedule lunch/tea breaks. It was also not uncommon to be the only person on the floor.
- Regional management making you take photos of the shop at the end of the day and send it to them so they can check it's 'satisfactory.' Total lack of trust.
- Not allowed to take holiday at any point between Halloween and Valentine's Day, the week surrounding Father's Day, or the week surrounding Mother's Day. Yes, you read that right. None. You want to spend time with your family? You'd like both Christmas Eve AND Boxing Day off? Tough. Clinton's is more important.
- Targets are literally impossible to hit, and you bet they come down on you like a tonne of bricks when you inevitably fail.
- Terrible pay (minimum wage, or a few pence above it) considering the amount of work you're doing - and no extra pay for those night shifts I mentioned.
- No praise, no 'thanks for your hard work!', no incentives, nothing. Upper management don't care. The environment very much felt like it was us (shop staff) vs them (regional managers and above). Dance, monkey, dance.
- There were times I'd wake up in the morning and just cry with anxiety. That's how much I hated it.

The good parts:
- The shop-level staff I worked with were genuinely some of the nicest people I'd ever met, and among the most hardworking. I am still in contact with several of them. We got each other through the nightmare that was Clinton's and I'd have quit far, far earlier if it hadn't been for them.
- 40% off Yankee Candles. I believe this has dropped now though.

My self esteem took such a hit while I worked for Clinton's that I left nearly five years ago and it's still not where it was, and I go out of my way to avoid my local branch because just looking at it gives me nervous butterflies sometimes. Except the butterflies are rabid. And evil.

Basically - unless you're literally going to be homeless otherwise, don't do it. It's not worth it.

I have worked at clintons for a year and a half and it is definitely the best job I've had. There is never nothing to do other than stand by the till if you use your initiative - go and tidy cards, improve displays, wipe areas that need it, check card displays are full and in the right pockets. 

Work can be quiet when it is not an occasion that people need cards for - Christmas etc, but it is easy to keep yourself busy. any occasion periods are great if you love customer service, you will be kept busy from the start until the end of your shift. I have found that there gets to be a regular clientele at Clintons, which for me is lovely as you are able to talk to the customers and build a good rapport with them, inevitably leading to increased sales. 

Management in my experience have been amazing, always supported me when I needed help at the start trained me as much as I needed until I felt I could do things alone. Very understanding of other commitments and accepting of holiday requests. Hours are always stuck to other than the busiest periods which understandably they increase at, and more are only given if I request them so it isn't too much.

The largest drawback of this job for me is the pay. Absolute minimum wage which has meant family and friends have had to support me at times and have found that I earn the least out of all friends and family I have - if you live alone or have responsibilities then pay is definitely something to consider before applying for a job here.

Another is that you will have to stand on your feet all day behind the till which can be painful on the feet if you're not used to it, and also if you have bad balance or dizziness this could be difficult. 

Daily sales targets are often very high, this means that when serving customers, you will be required to upsell - offering the customer another product at payment. if you are shy this can be difficult to do as customers can get annoyed if they think you want them to spend more. Despite this, you have to be confident enough to continue to ask every single customer and try to find the right way to interact with different personalities in order to make an additional sale. 

With those being the only drawbacks, they are definitely outweighed by all the positives. I would definitely recommend this job especially for people who have other commitments or students as smaller contracts are frequently available.

I worked there for one month over the Christmas period. It was a really nice environment to work, with all the festive themed merchandise. Most customers were in good spirits, as they were shopping for Christmas presents. The worst part of this job was that they monitor sales targets. Our names were written in a notebook, and left at the till for all staff members to see, and you had to put a tally next to your name when you managed to talk a customer into buying extra items. I found this very uncomfortable, as not everyone can afford extra things, and some people don't like to say no, and feel pressured to buy things that they didn't need. Some customers would be a bit annoyed that you tried to sell them an extra pen or teddy bear etc. I found some of the girls I worked with (the permanent staff) to be icy and unsupportive, but the male staff were cheerful and helpful. I found the boss to be approachable and generally good natured, but he did complain about having to work Christmas hours, which is understandable really. The pay is minimum wage, which is always poor, let's face it. Staff discount was 40%, so brilliant! Very faced pace work on the tills, and could be a bit stressful, particularly as you had to gift wrap some purchases, when you had a long queue. Other downside was that Clintons promotions were deliberately misleading, which would annoy A LOT of customers, as discounts were not as big as the promotional signs made them appear (ie. putting "HALF PRICE" in huge writing, and then putting "when you buy 3 packs of cards" in small writing.) The manager did invite me back as a permanent staff member the following year, which was nice that they remember you like that, and offer you opportunities. The Christmas temps were also given a Christmas present from the boss, which was lovely and thoughtful. I would consider working for Clintons again, as the merchandise is nice, and the customers are generally in good spirits, but the pay is poor, and the requirement to up-sell is unpleasant.

Can be an enjoyable place to work with the correct people around you. Having a good relationship with team makes for easy work life, as well as good communication with other stores to create a good working local network. The day to day working is very much repetitive replenish and slowly sell through, while receiving sporadic weekly job objectives in store to complete that are rarely ‘Right First Time’. 
You can create a sense of pride within your own store and team while working with what product you have to create a clean tidy store, the company does mainly pick merchandise priority and what area's they should go in to create a default store appearance.
Seasonal periods are the only real motivating /exciting periods to work, other than these brief periods the company seems very lost in a copy and paste of previous years and is in need of major some changes. Progression/development has been near non existent since post lockdown times mainly due to the company progressively getting smaller and having less opportunities within store or management roles. The only real opportunity is to be a figure collector for management or response form sheet ticker to area management. 

The store team is the main positive within the company and is what should be focused on more at times. Some upper management trying to give very positive motivation to stores also can make a nice environment and create encouraging feeling within the team. 

The job itself isn't too bad if you have a good team. But would I recommend working here ? Absolutely not. They are cutting hours and piling on work but expect people to work more for free it's a sorry state of affairs they ask why you can't take your lunch late into afternoon which is ridiculous as people will mess up eating habits they get very touchy should you bring up anything head office do even though I strongly believe they don't do much IT are clueless payroll make more mistakes than anywhere I have ever seen. And the company has just been taken over and the people taking over are rude condescending they care more about money than the teams you can see this is they increased all card prices straight away and slated everything the company had done before. I feel terrible for the good people that work there my area manager was a good person unlike some of the others in the buisness no need for names but when you leave your staff struggling and don't pick up the phone it's the signs of a poor leader. I wish all stores the best. But honestly new leaders couldn't run a bath let alone a company. Pay is horrendous for management and they will say it's not you can make more at a supervisor working for any food retailer. To end this for the higher ups fact you can't force people to work through lunch breaks, fact if the job can't be done and you think people should stay without pay thay is through no fault of managers but lack of leadership skills from head office 

I've been a supervisor for a few years now, moved up from sales assistant. Only 2% paid more that a sales assistant yet expected to know everything a manager does and run the place when they are unavailable, there are no assistant managers so you are essentially that. On a 16 hour contract yet expected to be able to double your hours, although I have no idea where these hours come from as you are expected to run a shop of large size on very basic hours.  Targets are unrealistic, you dread the morning emails and conference calls from the DMs as it's all negative and no positive even when you do well. Work load is huge, you are expected to turn the shop around from everyday to seasonal in just a few days. When I first started discount was a good insentive, 40% off including Yankee and 20% off any sale item, it's now 40% excluding Yankee (20%) and 20% off but only if the sale item is less than 50%. The buyers for the company don't seem to know what they are doing, if you don't sell certain things you some how end up with three times as much in a delivery, but you can't put it in the stock room so it ends up been shoved into the shop floor. Customer service is pretty much none existent, they tell you to have a 2 hour no tasking zone to focus on the customers but this is laughable as you have no much to do you can't stop for 2 hours, you tell the DM your doing it because you'll get a verbal backlassing if not. Breaks for manager and supervisor, may as well not have one, only way to get things done is to sacrifice your lunch hour.

I worked at Clinton’s part time,  it is a very good place to work part time as its easy to learn everything, and the shops are usually quite small so it doesn’t take long to learn your way around. However, I couldn’t image working there full time as it must get very boring and repetitive. For most of the week the shop was fairly quiet, so there are times where you’re standing there not doing much, but a typical day at work consists of serving customers on the tills and trying to sell the CTPs, and when its more quiet, you can walk round the shop, give it a tidy up and neaten up the cards (you’d be surprised how quickly random cards are in the completely wrong place!) 

I learnt a lot, such as organisation of cards, handling customers and learning enough about the shop to be able to answer customers questions, multitasking and how to scan the cards. 

The management in my shop were extremely nice and very understanding, people were always happy to cover other peoples shifts, friendly and very welcoming and talkative. 

I don’t believe there was anything hard about the job, but id say the hardest thing is learning all the offers on products and trying to remember them, as sometimes id have to ask someone else who had worked there for longer for help. The most enjoyable part was being on the tills and talking to customers, especially when other colleagues were on tills too. 

Basically its an awful job where the management do as little as physically possible. The hour scheme is ridiculous, you find yourself plucking up the courage with management, begging them for hours and they normally say, there's no hours to hand out, although management are so clever, they then take on more staff and give them four hour contracts.. no hours my backside. Again the focus is working all seasons for the same wage, don't get paid extra. Forget getting lucky on Valentine's because you'll be shifting card racks, filling card racks and wanting to throw boxes at management as they'll do all the demanding, while you do all the work. Its overall just very time consuming, very big expectations for a very poor wage. If you can't sell pens as an 'upsell' then you will be warned by management of a possible meeting discussing why you can't sell upsells.. (its not a skill by the way, their just stupid). Whether this meeting of selling techniques will physically happen is another story. Area managers are geniuses as well, believing the theory that if you shove a basket into a customers hands, then the customer will spend loads of money on the products. Put it this way, I never got card trained and I was there 3 years.. its very poor.

all i can say here is once we had a team which would work together like clockwork..sadly that team began to wither..the hardest part of the job was constant and increasing changes..this would be daily and conflict as to which orders to go on would make life difficult,,,the best part of the job is you get to work with amazing people and meet amazing people...the job used to be about customer service ' the customer comes first ' and that is exactly what we did .. without them you have no job , no business , no money , clintons taught a great customer 1st ethic and it stuck for many years and it makes your day to make a customers day .. when they say thankyou so much .. even if you have been unsuccessful finding what they required they are grateful you did your best to find it for them.. its good to have praise and appreciation in the work place it builds up morale and happy staff keep the customers comming back again and again its good for business to see happy faces behind the till .. many times i was told how nice it was to see a happy smiley face , nice to see someone happy in their job and it does indeed make a huge difference i stayed for 12 years because i was happy with my job and enjoyed everyday

I’ve always loved Clinton’s and was very excited to get a job with them. I realised quickly that I made the wrong decision and started a new job hunt after 3 days. The only member of staff that was happy was the one who only worked on the managers day off. They were all lovely people but so unhappy in their jobs, I’ve never worked anywhere with such low morale. 
If you want to work in a store where the manager is narcissistic and makes you feel worthless then Clinton’s is definitely the place for you. You can do something ‘wrong’ one day and get told off for it but the next day the manager is doing exactly the same thing and it’s not incorrect anymore. It’s soul destroying.
Don’t get me wrong, I know they aren’t all like this but working here has made me realise that I NEVER want to work in retail ever again and I know a lot of past supervisors would totally agree with me.
On a positive note the district manager was incredible and listened to everything I had to say which was great. 
If you value your mental health I’d advise you to stay away unless they have employed a new manager. It’s genuinely awful. 

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Store manager 2 salaries reported	£22,500 per year
Recruiter 1 salary reported	£45,000 per year
Human resources advisor 1 salary reported	£29,000 per year
Assistant manager 1 salary reported	£16,380 per year

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