Name: Working at American Eagle | Pay, Discount & My Experience
Uploaded: 2020-03-18T07:21:16.000Z
Duration: 9 min 51 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Present continuous

So today I'm gonna be talking about my experience.

Gerund

Working at American Eagle Eye was the sales associate there from August 2014 to August 2015.

I don't actually work there anymore, but I've worked there pretty recently, and I did work there for a full year.

So what I have to say is pretty up today because they're interested in finding out more about how I got my job in American Eagle and like the hiring an interview process, I'm going to link a video right here and in the description that I made earlier talking about all of that jazz.

So I started working American Eagle in August 2014 and when I started working, there was my first job and I was 16.

I remember the first day I came into work.

I was so terrified that me up in the front, folding clothes and greeting customers and telling them about the sales and promotions and stuff.

I was so scared to talk to all re strangers.

My heart was like literally beating out of my chest and also my first day I actually forgot to clock in.

I didn't know how to use the computer system to clock.

And only an American eagle you clock in on the computer is that they used to check people out.

I thought I was being clocked in automatically or something, which was dumb.

So I worked in the front for a full hour before I realized that I haven't clocked in.

And then when somebody told me that I needed to be clocked in, I ran over to the registers and tried to clock in, leaving the front unattended, which apparently is like a big no no in retail, which I also didn't know.

So my manager started yelling at me, and basically it was like, not the hot first day.

But I'm just telling you guys this story.

So if you're at your first day at a job or at your first day in American Eagle, know that it's probably known as bad as mine, and it's definitely okay, the mess up.

With that story out of the way, I guess I will move on to my duties as a sales associate when you start out they have you do more basic tests that take less training.

So, like greeting customers folding clothes.

When I first started out, they actually put me in the back, sorting out clearance a lot, probably because they realized after my first day that I was really, really scared of greeting customers.

Eventually, after, like a month of working there, they put me on my first closing shift.

Posing for those of you who don't know is basically just having a shift at the end of the day, where you have to fold the clothes and stay after the customer, they're gone and kind of make sure this store is all in order.

It kind of sucks that you have to stay really late at the store, but it's really nice because you don't have to talk to customers and my store.

They let me get out my phone and my ear buds and listen to music, so that was really nice.

You could just kind of jam out while you fold the clothes for a couple hours, and then after working there for a couple months, they started putting me on the fitting rooms, which is definitely a task for, like, Mawr experienced workers.

Basically, I would take the clothes from the customers who would line up in the fitting rooms and escort them over to a fitting room, write their name on the door and whiteboard marker.

I would also have to let them know that they could press the button on the inside of a fitting room if they needed help.

Grab people sizes and most of all, do all of the go backs basically put back all of the clothes that people had tried on in the fitting rooms.

A lot of people actually kind of heat doing go backs because the clothes can pile up and it could be kind of stressful to pull all of these clothes run out, put them back in the right places in the right size order in the store before any customers get to the fitting rooms and need to attend to them.

But it turns out I was actually pretty good at it, and after that they kept putting me on.

Fitting rooms actually really liked the fitting rooms because I didn't have to go up to customers and bother them about sales and tell them things that they didn't really want to hear.

They were coming to me and I could help them out if they needed any.

And I could also help keep the store and order.

Also, it was really nice because when it wasn't busy or I was really tired, I could kind of just sit on the fitting room stools and text discreetly about nine months into working American Eagle, which is pretty late for most people.

Earlier, they trained me how to check people out on the register.

They just scheduled me for a shift in the warning with a bunch of other associates and kind of went through all of the things that you needed to know about checking people out.

But it turns out I was actually really bad at checking people out, so they took me off register within like a week.

That's because kind of the main duty of the cashier's, other than, like, obviously checking people out.

It's to convince people to sign up for American Eagle credit cards, and some people are really good at it.

And if you're good at convincing people and comfortable convincing people to sign up for a credit card, then you can really use the job to your advantage, and you'll probably be really good at the job.

But I was super uncomfortable trying to persuade people to get credit cards because I knew that none of the wanted it.

And probably for some people, it wasn't a good financial decision.

So luckily, my manager has kind of figured that out there, like a little bit salty on me that they had bothered training me and I didn't like working on register, but then after that, they put me back on fitting rooms.

How much American Eagle pays obviously depends on your state in your city.

When I started out, they paid me $8 an hour, which was 50 cents above my state's minimum wage.

Probably if you live in a city or state with higher minimum wage like above, 8 50 will probably just pay you minimum wage, though every February for sales associates who have been working at the store for around six months.

I think I was only working there for four or five months.

They don't give you a raise, but don't get too excited.

I got raised 2% from $8 an hour to 8 16 an hour, which I suppose is better than no.

Raise it all but 2% doesn't even account for inflation every August in the back to school season, American Eagle does Jean expert and stylist promotions.

Basically, If you've worked there for at least a couple months and you're pretty dedicated sales associate, you have a good chance of being promoted to Jean Expert.

Unfortunately, you don't actually get any raises being promoted to Jean expert stylist.

You go to some meeting where they tell you about all the gene styles.

The main advantage, though, is that you get a better discount, which I will talk about now.

So basically, the baseline employee discount is 40% off everything regular price and 25% off everything that's already marked down.

However, every time they do a floor set so that every time they get new margin dice.

Normally, it happens every month or two months, but sometimes there's like weirdly long periods of time in between floors.

Set all sales associates get 12 regular price items in the store for 60%.

In addition, if you're a gene expert or a stylist, every floor set you'll get 80% off three items.

And let me tell you, getting 80% off he's the shit it makes $50 jeans $10 which is just amazing.

And probably getting 80% off is like the biggest pro working at American Eagle now on to scheduling.

Like most big retailers, American Eagle does their scheduling every single week, which can be really annoying if you're trying to plan ahead.

Basically, you give them your set availability per week, and then every week on Thursday, it will come out with the new schedule for the next week, starting that Sunday.

So it's really annoying because sometimes you'll only get three days notice like if you're picking up your schedule on Thursday and then you're scheduled that Sunday of what Tiger working.

Another really annoying thing about it is that their schedules are on Lee in paper form they don't email them to you or text them to you or anything.

And my manager's would get really annoyed if you tried to call and ask for your schedule.

So most of the time you had to partner up with another sales associate or just drive all the way to the store and pick up your schedule.

The worst thing of all about scheduling an American Eagle, though, is Collins.

And let me tell you, Collins are basically the worst thing that's happened to Sales Associates since they started opening scores on Thanksgiving.

Basically, it's this half ass shift where you're given a lot of time and you have to call the store an hour before that.

A lot of time and they'll tell you whether they need or not, and like 80 to 90% of the time, they never you.

But you still need to be available for them, just in case they decide in an hour that thing you do at the store.

That being said, American Eagle, is pretty flexible with scheduling.

Most of their employees are students in high school or college.

They generally are really understanding if you need to take a couple of weeks off to work on your college applications or work on your finals in mid terms.

Another really nice thing is that if you're working there in the summer, for example, and that you have to go off to college.

But you liketo keep working with them during the breaks.

They can take you on as a seasonal associate again whenever you have brakes.

So, for example, if you're coming back for winter break or spring break for summer, you can just call them two weeks in advance.

And we'll put you on schedule again and you can get a couple weeks pay and start up at your job again at your hometown really easily.

Besides the discount, probably the best thing about working at American Eagle was just my coworkers.

They were always really, really nice people and really energetic, Um, not a little like cut the kind of bitchy sales associates that you get.

Sometimes, once you get to know, everyone makes working a lot more fun and you come like, joke around over the headsets and kind of mess around and stuff like that.

So, yeah, I've made some really good friends from Michael workers.

There and it's really good place to meet people in terms of management.

Or at least I thought they were when I first met them, they always made really, really strong eye contact with me, which is probably the scariest thing but a shot on 16 year old could ever encounter.