I’ve been a part-time beauty advisor at Sephora @ Kohl’s for months now, and I used to really enjoy this job. Recently, one of our beauty leads left and was replaced by a new person. We’ll call her Rachel.
Rachel has been nothing but a control freak since her first day a few weeks ago. She talks a lot about how she worked at a different location years before, and left her job at another beauty store to take on this role.
Let me be clear: Rachel is a beauty lead advisor, NOT our Beauty Team Leader (ours is on a long vacation at the moment) but for some reason she makes comments such as “there’s gonna be some changes around here” and tells us BA’s that we need her permission to do things like replenishment in the stockrooms (SB1 & SB2), mainly because she’s “unaware of our experience and knowledge” even though some of us have worked here for years. She genuinely said that it doesn’t matter if she’s on her lunch and there’s a high number of replenishment in the stockrooms, we need to WAIT for her to come back from lunch to ASK her if it’s okay that we complete that task. It’s never been this way before.
I was recently given permission from Kohl’s leads to start closing registers because I work closing shifts so much, but the next day Rachel told me that I’m not allowed to if she’s here, and that it’s her job. I’m gonna be so honest with you when I say I watched her try to count one drawer for over 20 minutes.
Rachel claims that she’s just following the rules from the Kohl’s store manager, but the store manager has been around for like a decade and not a single beauty lead has ever treated us like this and acted so entitled and controlling. She constantly questions everyone’s abilities, even if we’ve proven ourselves to her 10 times over.
Other Leads focus more on LEADING us as a team, not telling us what to do, and Rachel’s attitude is so unexpected and unnecessary.
Another lead that I’ve talked to about Rachel’s behavior keeps telling me to stop trying to speak up towards her and instead just say “okay” and listen to her, but i genuinely don’t feel comfortable just bowing down to her every request, letting her walk all over me and treat me with complete disrespect. I’ve already reported Rachel’s behavior to the store manager, but nothing seems to change her attitude.
Is this behavior normal in other Sephora @ Kohl’s locations? And what CAN I do about it?