Above Beijing Mist
9 hours ago
Friday, December 19, 2008
Teavana: An ex-employee's account
Just a quick note; if you shop at Teavana (or are considering it), please read this. I have never been a fan of Teavana, but the prescribed sales methods described in this account (not to mention the behavior of Teavana owners) are revolting. I will never give them another dime.
7 comments:
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Interesting story, particularly about their sales tactics. Sounds like the owners of Teavana aren't coping with the down turn too well.
although not a tea expert, but occasional tea drinker, I never really liked their tea anyway. it always tasted like some sort of artificial flavored brew to me; not worth the money they charge for it!
thanks for the post! very interesting!
I work at Teavana and i couldnt disagree with your dislike of Teavana more than i do right now. I love working there, i think its a great company and much better than any other Job i have had thus far. They treat me quite well, the discount is great, the quality of the product is great. Im not quite sure what more you can want from them, as long as you do your job (well) its a great place to work.
To the previous "Anonymous:"
You must be a corporate geek for Teavana. Working for Teavana is in fact crappy. The hours are poor (few), the managers arbitrary and the products vastly overpriced.
After never having been late, after meeting all training goals, after exceeding sales objectives and after receiving praise in meetings for my performance, I was terminated for cause over the phone. The cause: "not working out." What? The manager told me they can terminate in California for "any reason we want." I'd check the employee handbook, but was never given one. As for following California's laws Teavana is headed for big trouble. Even if they can terminate "for any reason we want" the final check is due immediately at the time and place of termination. Not a day later. Not a week later. California's law is specific on this.
And it matters. There's a big difference between being laid off (ok, fine, I understand...) and getting fired (WTF?). Getting fired doesn't look great on a resume and makes getting unemployment benefits near impossible.
Scumbags.
I agree with the first anon. I love working at Teavana, it is an amazing job with vast opertunities to move up. In my experience the only people who do not like working for Teavana are those who are incompetent. The tea is amazing and the job is as well. The story of this guy was something that happened to him, but does not mean it happens all the time. Some trainers are just bad at any company and sometimes shit just happens.
Incompetent? I am an ex-employee, and from the year of heel that manager put me and my fellow employees through not only brought their numbers down, but also forced a complete store employee reset. Most of the people who love working for teavana are ignorant to how real tea tastes and what a true sales strategy is. I now work a real tea store and it is nothing like teavana where I had to convince people to buy over-priced tea of a low quality, lie to them about false health benefits, help cover up the peppermint incident where teavana didn't release the fact that their organic peppermint had pesticides in it (so much for organic eh?)in a public statement but instead had us call customers who had bought peppermint and lie telling them that it was a poor quality and offering up a trade. The tea from teavana sits in warehouses waiting to be distributed for god knows how long, they train you to be rude and pushy and swindle and you want to insult others? little one you are ignorant to how the company truly is, and until you open your eyes and start looking at the truth then you sit there with your little scooper swindling people out of money and giving them a crap quality of tea. I see your customers in my shop pissed off and unhappy all the time.
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