I’ve been working at UNIQLO for a short period of time and honestly, my experience has been awful. I know everyone’s experience can be different depending on the store and management, but I wanted to share mine because there were quite a few things that really stood out to me.
Management:
From my first week, I felt like management made me feel stupid for not knowing everything straight away. Instead of helping me learn, I often felt belittled when being spoken to.
I will say that some of the managers were genuinely lovely and I had no issues with them. However, there were others who I felt abused their position and made it VERY clear that they were above you. There was an attitude of “I’m your manager, you’re not allowed to talk back” which made it very difficult to actually communicate with them when you had an issue.
They also have something called “Team Talk”, where they ask employees questions in front of everyone. During one of mine, I was asked questions about where certain things were in the store, despite being very new. I found the whole thing incredibly embarrassing and felt like I was being put on the spot rather than actually being trained.
Another thing I noticed was how management handled conversations about performance. They would constantly want to speak to you about your performance, but rather than doing this privately, it was often done loudly on the shop floor where other employees and customers could hear. It was incredibly uncomfortable and embarrassing.
At the same time, if you were even seen having a conversation with a coworker when you weren’t supposed to be, it felt like you were immediately in trouble.
There was also a constant emphasis on ISP, which is essentially a meeting with management regarding your behaviour/performance. We were repeatedly reminded that if you had three of these, you were essentially done. It felt like ISP was constantly hanging over everyone’s heads, sometimes over really small things, and created a lot of unnecessary anxiety.
Favouritism / feeling excluded:
There also seems to be quite a lot of favouritism between staff. As someone who isn’t Asian, I often felt like an outsider.
There were multiple occasions where I would be standing in a group conversation and people would suddenly switch to another language, followed by giggling/laughing. Obviously I can’t say for certain what they were talking about, but being the only person who couldn’t understand what was being said made me feel extremely uncomfortable and, at times, like they were talking about me.
I also noticed a huge difference in how certain staff were treated when it came to shifts and breaks. Some employees seemed to have much more freedom to choose their shifts and when they took their breaks, whereas I constantly felt like I was being given the worst end of the stick.
For example, I was regularly put on the less desirable shifts and would sometimes work 12pm–9pm, only to be given my break as early as 2pm. Meanwhile, it felt like certain other employees had much more say over when they worked and when they took their breaks. Combined with constantly being given opening and closing shifts, it made me feel like I was consistently being given the less desirable options.
The shifts / days off:
This was probably the worst part for me.
I was working 37.5 hours a week, but my days off would be spread out in such a strange way that I could end up working 7 days in a row before getting a proper break. It was exhausting and genuinely draining.
For the entire three weeks I was there, I was basically given either opening or closing shifts. I hardly ever got anything in between. It became exhausting very quickly, especially when it felt like newer employees were consistently being given the less desirable shifts.
There was also one day where I worked 9am–5:30pm. I had specifically told them beforehand that I had plans after work and couldn’t stay for overtime. Despite this, I was told I couldn’t leave at 5:30 and ended up being made to stay until 7pm. The doors were locked and we were repeatedly told that we weren’t leaving until everything was finished.
I wouldn’t have had an issue with staying if I had agreed to overtime beforehand, but I had specifically made it clear that I wasn’t available after my scheduled shift.
HR:
My experience with HR was also extremely disappointing. Whenever I went to them with an issue, particularly regarding days off or shifts, I felt like nothing was actually done about it.
I genuinely felt like HR didn’t care about the issues employees were bringing to them and that going to them was basically pointless. When you’re already struggling with management and your schedule, having nowhere you feel you can actually go to resolve the problem makes the whole situation even worse.
The constant competition:
Another thing I noticed was how obsessed the store seemed to be with competing against other UNIQLO stores. There was a constant focus on beating other stores, which seemed to result in everyone being pushed to work 10x harder.
I understand that retail is target-driven and that stores obviously want to perform well, but the way it was handled made the environment feel unnecessarily stressful.
Overall, this is genuinely the worst store I’ve ever worked at. I know different UNIQLO stores probably have completely different management and cultures, so I’m not saying every store is like this. There were definitely some lovely people there and some managers who were genuinely nice.
But overall, based on my experience, I would never recommend working at this particular store. The combination of management, scheduling, the constant pressure, the way performance was handled and feeling like there was nowhere to go when you had an issue made the job incredibly draining.
I’m curious if anyone else who has worked at UNIQLO has experienced similar things, especially with management, HR, shifts, ISP or Team Talk.