WHSmith does not care about you.

I worked in the St Albans Rail branch for three and a half years from January 2012 to June 2015. For most of my time I was treated with disrespect by management and customers. My promised promotion to supervisor never happened. The pay was awful and conditions were poor. I shall explain everything in more detail.

Disrespect- Now rude customers are a unfortunate and unnecessary part of the job and while it would be good for me to get it off my chest, it has nothing to do with the company and therefore will not form part of my review. But management? Well. The current manager was overbearing to me and the rest of the staff. Any small thing we did wrong was routinely criticised by her. I received daily notes which served as complaints from her. Not once did she praise me for something I did right. I felt like I was unfairly targeted as I was the most senior sales assistant at the time. I was told that I was a distraction to staff when I said hello. I told her that I was suffering with severe depression, but she only made it worse. The company does not care about its sales assistants. You were often threatened with the sack if you didn't hit targets for selling chocolate.

The managing director of WHSmith travel. He frequently visited the store. He never says hello to staff except for the manager. He told me more than once that he was happy with the store presentation only to turn his back and call the regional manager to complain about the store presentation.


Lack of progression- On several occasions I was told by my first manager that a promotion to supervisor was mine and he told the current manager that I was to be promoted. I have proof that this promise was made. I never became supervisor. I was told by the current manager that a supervisor was not needed. This company likes to say how they often train people up. This is simply not the case. They have no training structure. New staff are given terrible training, it was more about hitting targets than customer service.

Pay- Pay was hardly above minimum wage. For the work we put in I would expect a competitive wage. This company works its employees to the ground, they expect them to be ready for work at any time, so good pay would be our reward, right? No. Not at all. It's no wonder staff at my store rarely lasted a year.

Conditions- The store is small as it is in St Albans station. The floors are disgusting. The cleaning schedule was hardly enforced and the stock room is a health and safety nightmare. Dusty, old stock on the floor, overflowing with stock that can't go out and absolutely no room to move. We were expected to deal with it. Stock fell on top of me on more than one occasion. I returned to the store recently and found it in a horrific state. Stock on the floor, rubbish not cleaned up. One of the drinks fridges hadn't worked for the last three months of my time there despite my telling the manager that it needed to be sorted.


A truly terrible company that does not deserve your custom. Overpriced, disrespectful management from manager to managing director, boring work, poor pay and hell on earth. Do not work for WHSmith. They won't treat you right.