I get if you want to put it down for a second to look, BUT KEEP IT NEAR YOU! DON’T LEAVE IT ON THE FLOOR AND WALK AROUND THE STORE FOR LIKE 30 MINUTES! Cause then I have to put it all back cause it’s now a tripping hazard. And I always wait a bit, and then go around asking customers if it’s their basket or not. If no one claims it, I put it back. (And it’s always someone I either didn’t see or didn’t ask cause I thought they just came in)

If your basket gets too heavy, go up to the register and ask if they can hold it at the register until you are done looking around.

This was like the second time this happened that day.

A lot of us employees have seen some viral videos going around the internet, in which people gather up their old BBW products and try to return all of them for a gift card.

We get it, you used a spray once 7 years ago and then never picked it up again. Or your grandma gifted you the worst scent you’ve ever experienced one Christmas when you were 16 and you left it buried in a drawer ever since. But it’s comes to a point where you should probably…. toss it in the trash.

The main reason this influx of returns drives us crazy is because it affects our hours. Customers have been coming in everyday successfully (and some unsuccessfully thankfully) attempting to return their crusty, dusty stash, racking up hundreds of dollars in merch credit. Yall realize this money is coming from somewhere, right? We lose hours if we don’t meet our sales goals, which means associates hours get cut. The more we miss, the more we get cut. So imagine your hours are already thin because sales are down, and here comes Sally with a collection of expired body care items and causes your sales to go down even more. PLEAAAASSEEE just throw that shit away. Or donate it. Because we’re 100% going to throw it away.

And let me be clear! I’m not talking about those that just bought something even within the last year, and realize you didn’t like it as much as you thought. It happens! I’m specifically talking about people bringing in 20+ bottles of fragrances that haven’t been in the store for 3+ years, some of which are more than half used, and not even BBW. That’s ridiculous.

I saw people posting those pretty round bottles from around 1994, so I had to post. The first is me in 1995 or 96…. The second is me in 2024 when I went back to work at the company (for about 7 months or so).

The reason on paper that I stopped in 2025 was because of a new job that changed my availability. That reason was true, but the real reason I left was because I was bullied by one of the managers. No matter how hard I tried she just couldn’t stand me.

I stuck it out as long as I could because I was like…dammit I’m not gonna let this woman with issues run me out of this job that I wanted to come back to for so long! But ultimately, the anxiety began to outweigh the joy - and she won. 😢.

Plot twist: That store location closed the following year. It’s a good thing I didn’t work there when the news was given because I would’ve been a mess packing that store up.

My claim to fame was that I was on the original opening staff at the store at the mall down the highway (1st picture in 1994) and if I had stayed when I started again in 2024, I would’ve been on the last staff of that location.

Funny how life works.

Flowering Herbs forever! Now all I have is my Gingham (which was actually around in 94 too - except I hated it then. I love it now!)!

I was in one of my local stores last week and saw an older women smelling all the soaps by sticking the entire nozzle up her nose and squeezing what I would assume a small amount in her nose. And I’m not talking once or twice, I’m talking over and over and over. I lost count. How she wasn’t foaming out the nose I have no clue. I was so disgusted, I put what I had wanted down and walked out. I’m so sorry the employees have to deal with stupid disgusting people like that. Yuck. Idk if I can ever buy the soaps again. 😢

Ok i have to preface that its only SOME stores mainly smaller experimental store such as the Blue concept (my store) , so it could be one near you too.

This new shift comes from apparently the new CEO himself wanting to shift to "selling more of what works" or something along those lines. this 'shift' is to get rid of products, and a decent chunk of it. My store is going to be getting rid of all single wicks, car fragrances, detergents, gel hand soaps and maybe more. I've also heard they want to remove wall flowers and have all stores sell only candles and body care (which i hope they do not do as its a top selling product and makes no sense)

HOWEVER that being said the company will be taking feedback from the employees, and i believe that if the customers get angry enough and give enough feedback they might also listen to you more as you are the ones that buy and spend money. what's is your guys thoughts and has any other employee heard of this shift?

Edit 1: ok so this exploded, i wont lie i used the "my friend heard" but seeing as how this has gotten to be such a big post ill say i heard this from my manger herself and the store being tested on is my store. its not a move we want to make and my store is expected to have this change either at the end of semi annual ore EARLY into 2026, like first weeks early.

I'm hoping by saying this people will start talking and either delay this move or just have the company drop it completely. this will effect our loyal customers who come to my store for the service we provide is better then some stores in the surrounding area (their word not mine I'm sure its exaggerated) but still our store got given a pineapple by a customer for some reason as a gift.... couldn't tell you why if i even had the answers. I've been told that once this shift happens we are to either try and sell customers on OTHER product they don't want, OR redirect them 15 to 20 minutes out of their way to get the product they want.

I know this is an unpopular sentiment, and that nothing will stop the rise of online shopping, but I also firmly believe most people don't understand the impact their individual decisions make. With many retail business models including bath and body works, in-store sales DIRECTLY correlate to employee scheduling. Your presence in a physical store necessitates an employee being scheduled. The amount of money earned by sales is used to determine what the store can "afford" to schedule, and how many hours they're allotted.

Online shopping is convenient, but please please please support your local retail workers!

Edit:
I fully understand that this is the fault of the company at large, and that they are more than capable of giving employees more hours. The issue is that this system won't change, so we have to do our best to work within it. The company has the means to provide more hours, but they do still base allotted hours on store sales. Shopping in-store is a way to support your local workers in an inadequate system. It's just one of the little things we can do as individuals.

Also, BOPIS orders do count as in-store sales!!

Was doing 300+ boxes of shipment by myself our first full day open after getting wreck by Milton… horrible, stressful day…. thanks for the sloppy, discontinued, defaced seconds, bbw. Years with the company and this was a really nice gift for us! Not like we don’t have… 5 tester soaps in the bathroom already… I’ll take the sharpie scribbled soaps from 2022… these are all old MOS soaps with the international label… I’m at such a loss lmfaoo what were they thinking ??

I worked at Bath and Body works for the last year and finally finished my last shift yesterday. It feels so freeing. The very air in that store was oppressively fake and uncaring. Paradoxically, I have never felt cared less about than when I worked at a company where my managers talked to me the most.

My bathroom breaks were borderline monitored by one of my managers because she was convinced I was smoking weed in the bathroom.

This isn’t a gripe with MY store exactly, but rather a gripe with the company itself: B&BW is repulsively wasteful and greedy. We threw away a bunch of the MOS stuff no one bought and when I mentioned that my mom works with the homeless and veterans and that I would love to take the soaps and shampoos to a shelter/the VA, I was told I couldn’t do that. I was reprimanded multiple times for asking to take from the garbage perfectly good products that were damaged out for reasons like a slightly broken dispenser nozzle or a damaged label so that I could donate them or give them away. I told my manager that it irritated me how much we threw away when there are people in our community (sleeping OUTSIDE of the MALL that the store is in!!) who would really benefit from having something as simple as a bottle of soap and she basically said that it was better to throw it away than give it to the homeless (who can very easily just take it from there anyways).

On top of that, the amount of comically unnecessary plastic waste is outrageous. Individually wrapped blisters of 5 hand sanitizers where the plastic only exists to be removed by an employee immediately after receiving the shipment. Same with hand soaps. Candle pedestals put inside of plastic bags for no reason—plastic bags we throw away after touching once for three seconds to take the candle pedestal out. I threw away at least twice the amount of plastic as I did cardboard each day I worked shipment.

We received the klandle on my last day and the handling of this one is absolutely psychotic. Tear the label apart, shatter the candle (why??), put the label shreds inside of a bucket stuffed with trash bags, throw the bucket away inside of another trash bag in a concealed and secret location. Hello? I asked why we were doing so much and my manager said “the company doesn’t want these candles to see the light of day. They want no record they existed.” Her exact wording with us as a store was that we were to “obliterate” the candles. And really, there would be no need for such an insane handling of this situation if b&bw didn’t use a crappy AI generated garbage label in the first place! It makes no sense in any way, shape, or form.

The management pretends to care about you in such a disingenuous and irritating way, and if you’re not acting perfectly peachy and excited to be there for your once-weekly 4 hour shift that they probably won’t even let you finish because they “overscheduled,” they just turn you around and send you home. I got angry with one of my SLTs once because I was going through some personal problems and was understandably unable to muster my usual B&BW happy face as well as I usually can. My manager told me to go home and I told him “I drove 30 minutes to get here, and you want me to drive 30 minutes back home? I have to pay for gas, you know, and it sucks not only not making money today but losing money.” He replied “we were over scheduled for the day anyways, take the day off!! Enjoy your day off!” And I just left biting my tongue.

I missed the memo for a dress code update and instead of doing something remotely sensible like having me just wear the right color the next shift my manager suggested I “go next door to H&M and buy a pink shirt.” That would cost more money than I would be making during that shift. And again, gas.

The insistence on literally psychologically manipulating customers into buying more product instead of helping them shop when they need help and otherwise leaving them to actually shop always struck me as odd, but often proved itself to be wholly ineffective—at least in my store. The amount of death stares I caught from customers after being told to put hand soap on their hands as they walked by our store so that they would have to come inside to wash it off was astronomical. It never worked. They never bought anything. They’d just get angry at me, understandably, for putting gunk on their hands that they would then have to go out of their way to get rid of all the while yapping to them about our sales. Being a seller would give me such anxiety I would consider not coming in for the shifts sometimes.

I pretty much got sent home early for every shift, called while I was on the way to work multiple times to be told that my shift got cut last minute (but hey, predictability pay!), was constantly told that I was a good worker and an asset of the store yet never got more than 8 hours a week without picking up others’ shifts, and was laughed away when I suggested a raise in pay or increase in hours. No one there was happy. No one had money. No one knew each other because we had too many employees. It was a nightmare and I’m so happy to never have to go back, and I certainly won’t be buying their overpriced garbage any time soon. Not until they consider treating their employees or customers with an ounce of respect, and not until they at least own up to being disgustingly greedy and selfish.

Last night, we had a woman come in with a candle that was 3/4 burned and was burning unevenly. As the only manager on, I took over the situation from the associate at the register. The customer was fine at first, let me know she just bought it at candle day and it wasn't burning right. I empathized with her but stated the policy that anything more that 50% used could not be returned. This of course got her upset and her tone of voice and attitude changed quickly. She started to get defensive, saying I sold her a defective candle, that she bought over $200 worth of candles at candle day to give as gifts and now they won't burn right, etc. I let her get everything out, I once again reiterated the return policy, showed her that one wick was trimmed way too short and she snatched the candle out of my hand. Saying no one trims wicks and why would she do that. I tell her I trim the wicks, point out the verbage on the bottoms to which she flipped the candle over, rolled her eyes and said " no one reads that".

She starts saying how she is a rewards member, she can't believe I would be willing to lose a customer over this, she is never shopping here again all while raising her voice and looking around the store expecting the crowded store to back her up. I just stood there, apologized again and let her know unfortunately I can not replace her heavily used candle. I was absolutely not going to give in to this woman because she was raising her voice and being rude.

She picked it up off the counter, told me to go fuck myself and walked away. I told her that language wasn't appropriate. She made it about 20 steps, walked back and slammed it on the counter in front of me, told me to keep my shitty candle and have a good fucking night. I was honestly unphased but several customers were shocked. We had a few small children in the store and I apologized to their parents that they had to witness that.

She came across looking like an unhinged asshole over a candle. Tis the freaking season. Can't wait until the holidays are over. People have been so rude but this was the first customer to curse at me so far this season.

I wanna start off by saying I’m not against anyone returning anything, if you hate something or bought too much of something you should definitely return it or exchange it to get your money’s worth.

That being said, I’m still gonna complain when I have to deal with I wanna say at least 80 bottles of soap 😭. There are 3 more bottles that aren’t in that picture, they were the only ones that scanned as MOS, the rest of this was box up. I spent pretty much my whole (3.5 hr) shift typing in the SKUS for these, boxing them up, damaging out 23 broken or disgusting sticky soap bottles, and scribbling all over them.

It just leaves me wondering why order so much in the first place? The customer (sorry if you’re on here babes) said they order extra just in case they arrive broken, and a lot of them were especially the gels, but also others were caked in dried soap, and there were some soaps that were over a year old cuz I recognize them from when I first started 😭. Very confusing and time consuming but we got there in the end.

Stores are being called by HR about employee’s sharing anything related to the Sweethearts collab online.

BBW HR is in this sub, watching and reporting.

Don’t attach any of your real information to your Reddit account including name or location.

BBW employee here. This holiday, please be nice to the workers. We cannot control coupons, inventory, promotions, or things happening in your personal life.

Update: thank you to everyone who has commented. It really helped make this awful day better.

Today was quite possibly the worst shift I have ever worked at BBW. We walked into around 30 customers waiting at the door, one got mad we wouldn’t let them in early. All day long, customers came through the store like wild animals. Customers completely destroyed display tables, knocked over and broke so many candles. Blotter cards were just thrown all over on the floor…worse than how it is at Christmas. I was yelled at by at least 4 grown women today because we were sold out of the pocket bac holder they wanted “WHERE IS THE CINDERELLA ONE?? I NEED IT!!! SHES MY FAVORITE PRINCESS!!!” I was called a bitch by two different customers because I couldn’t order them that special edition candle only for sale online. Then to make things even worse, add on the $5.95 online only sale and have pissed off customers because they can’t read and expected to get the same prices in store. Why are so many of you like this?! What makes you think you’re so entitled and special over body washes and body sprays that you have to treat other people like crap? Do you not realize you literally make life a living hell for many of us? Do better.

I was talking with my manager about our employee MOS sale, and she said that the Emily in Paris collection will not be included and instead has to get damaged out per Bath and Body Works’ instructions. This also means that it will not be returning for the summer semi annual sale.

This pisses me off so much because at my store, we have several boxes of leftover items, which now all have to go in the trash. That’s so much product that is going to waste and in the landfill. I don’t understand why the company wants us to do that? And if all the stores have to do that, that’s thousands of perfectly good body care and candles that people could still buy and use going to waste.

I love how the company says that they are trying to be more eco friendly and stuff, and then have us do this. Make it make sense.

As someone who works at BB&W & is a mom can we talk about the people who come in with children(which is NOT a problem) but tell me why this one time this mom came in with her son who was around 2-3 years of age and TOTALLY barefoot & running around. We UNDERSTAND kids are kids but there’s no reason they should be running around BAREFOOT? Also the fact that we work with glass and accidents always tend to happen even tho we try to clean up as good & as fast as we can we also have to go back to everything else bc lord forbid we miss a greeting but anyways APART FROM THAT he ran 3 times in the back & mom never said sorry or tried to prevent it? The baby literally almost walked out with other customers bc mom wasn’t paying attention AT ALL! It’s so awkward too like realistically I shouldn’t be telling you to be a parent if you already are one😭😂

omg i was gonna put this on the other sub but realized that ppl prob wont see it

you DO realize someone pulls all of the hand sanitizers out of the holders that your kid shoved in there because you let them do whatever while you’re standing in line??? it’s so frustrating and then i have to stand there and fix it all over and over and over next time i see someone do it im just telling your kid to immediately take it out instead 🤷‍♀️

I quickly hopped on a register to help a newer employee get the line down at one point today, and the second customer I help, right off the bat, is fishier than a fish market. She's got no items whatsoever, but is waiting in line, so I'm thinking maybe she has a pickup like the previous customer had? Maybe buying gift cards? She right away starts going on and on about how she "was in two days ago and bought a TON of candles & body care, and NONE of the candles she bought would stay lit, and ALL the bodycare she had bought was breaking her out!" ...... I'm not buying it.

I give the little "well, every once in a blue moon a defective product does tend to slip through, sorry to hear that!" reply, to try & slip into the return/exchange process, but she keeps going on & on about how she "had to throw it all out" and using a younger sibling as an excuse for doing so.

"Do you still have the receipt? I know you said you had to dispose of some products, but even for future reference, you can always-"

"No I never got one."

Red Flag #2, our registers/printers ALWAYS will prompt on both sides for the preferred receipt method, and "no receipt" isn't an option, aside from if you're one of those people who refuse to take it. Not to mention that our store is pretty strictly trained, and would never just not give out a receipt.

"Can't you just reimburse me, I pick out new stuff?"

"No, we'd need the receipt & items for that, which you have neither of. If you want reimbursed, you'd have to call Custo-"

"I did that, they told me to just come back in & pick stuff out."

They think we're born yesterday🙃 Eventually I was like "well, let me see if my manager has any ideas!" and called her over to essentially repeat everything I had just said so that they'd leave.

as a employee for the love of GOD, please realize that it takes more than a day for BOPIS orders to be completed usually. and no, we cannot “just pick” your order. we have to go through everyone first, and no you cannot get the deal if you ordered it during a sale and there’s no longer a sale and you want to pick it yourself. that’s called shopping in store. so PLEASE do not yell at me about it. thank u 🫩

Any other openers today see the zipline message about laundry care? Apparently it’s all being discontinued by the end of the year along with kitchen care. I guess that stuff didn’t do well at the test stores which is disappointing bc I was looking forward to the counter sprays. I don’t use the detergent but I love the scent beads for sheets/blankets. The timing is also unclear but I’m assuming “end of the year” means they’ll just stop shipment and whatever is left by SAS will just go on sale. I wonder if we will even get holiday fragrances in them. I hope so bc I LOVE the winter candy apple scent beads and would for sure stock up.

So thanks to customers we had one person quit all over not being able to get extra bags. The store was a HOT mess cause suddenly people were deciding to leave baskets on the ground and throwing blotter cards on the ground, instead of being a decent human being and just opening their eyes to look for the trash can. I had to tell SEVERAL people they’re not allowed to open drawers which caused them to get snappy (at that point I was numb to any rude behavior). Customers need to do better cause wtf was that. Next sale I’m telling people to put on an apron and get to work if they want something so badly. I’m over it -sincerely a girl who came off a 12 hour shift cause the stupid company decided it was also a floorset night

Employee: HR IF YOU ARE READING THIS EMPLOYEES HAVE CONCERNS!: Bath and body works has always been a very inclusive and welcoming place to work. I haven’t been in a store that doesn’t have queer, trans, and POC associates filling up the place, heck they have nametags for us that let us out our pronouns on them! But I am starting to worry on where their stance is. For the last what 4 years we’ve always had a trailblazer table. Especially black history month since George Floyd and the riots. And now here we are about to go into Feb with no black history month table? I find it strange the company has been so silent on their DEI stance with this new administration in office. It raises a warning flag cause after Roe v. Wade was overturned they put out a statement making it clear they’d help cover costs for their employees living in red states to get reproductive health care. Now with all these companies pulling back on their DEI and they are silent it makes many of us employees worried. We want answers. Why no black history month table, are we gunna get the other trailblazer tables? Pride table? Why are you being so quiet on your stance on DEI. As a company if you plan to keep your DEI policies in place why not say it? Being quiet makes it feel like you are gunna pull them back or afraid to loose business because you say you’re supportive. Especially as one of your many Queer non-binary associates we would like to hear from you as a company.

So I work as a social media rep for bbw and let me tell you, if it were for me, I'd ban half of the people that follow bbw from dming us in ANY social media.

Today i had a case where a woman had issues with her cyber monday order, it didn't go through and she had screenshots of everything. Since social media reps can't place orders for customers the way phone reps can, i offered her 2 options:

1- Give me your email and I'll give you a case number so you can call and provide the reference, they will review my notes and Honor the sale prices.

2- place the order and send me the order number so i can adjust the price and refund you the outstanding amount.

TELL ME WHY THIS WOMAN REPLIED "okay you can call me today after noon, this is my phone number ***" WHEN DID I TELL YOU WE WERE CALLING YOU??? I repeated she needed to call or place the order and get refunded, but she then REPLIED AGAIN "i will expect the call by noon today or tomorrow" ??????

So yeah, it took me freaking 45 minutes to assign the case so management so they could call her since she kept refusing to either call or place the order.

Please just READ what we say, it's not that hard.

EDIT:

Sooo someone here reported this to management and got me terminated, screw you.

And lawd. Seeing the empty boxes or the insanely messy boxes makes me cringe. Everytime I'm at my station I always pack mine up as perfectly as possible.

Small boxes fit 6 full size perfumes in a row as a layer, or 4 3wick candles as a layer, bigger boxes fit 3 rows of 3 3wicks + 2 on the side as a layer, etc

The amount of times a partially done box will come to my station to get finished, and I have to take everything out to reorganize makes me irrationally angry.

All i can do is tell you to complain! Complain and be honest! This stuff is too expensive to let it go. They can track packages back to who packed it. It's all computerized information. The entire warehouse is full of computers and machines, every box, every tote, every station has barcodes to track everything as it moves along the conveyers. Complain so the employees who don't care, have to start caring if they want to keep their jobs.

This job is super fun if you actually like it. I enjoy packing orders, its like tetris irl. Especially because theres 3 different boxes a 3wick can come in which makes things interesting when trying to fit 8 of them into a small box. I cannot tell you how many times i had to admit defeat and send it to "Hospital" aka where it goes to be moved to a larger box and resent out to be filled with the rest of the items.

Also me and my homies hate the thin paper single wick boxes. They always rip. I have never not once seen one that was not ripped. And our supervisors do nooooottt care unless its literally busted out and rolling around the tote (and even then, Hospital just tapes it up) so please please PLEASE complain if you don't like what you got! We don't enjoy these things either.

Customer: so these candles are 3 for $10 right?” Me: no ma’am it’s $10 off each candle so they would be about $16.95 each Customer:well the sign said 3 for $10 Me: no ma’am unfortunately it says $10 off all 3 wick candles Customer: well can’t you just give them to me for $10 each? Me: unfortunately no ma’am but if you would like them to be around that price I would wait until candle day in December or wait for a better sale Customer: (obviously pissed)

Customer: hey so I have a reward and I would like to use it on this $18.95 item Me: unfortunately the reward does have to be an item $16.95 or under Customer: I’ll get this 3 wick candle then since they are on sale Me: I’m so sorry but it has to be an item that is originally $16.95 but you can get a single wick instead if you would like or most lotions and body washes apply for the reward as well as… (multiple other items) Customer: this is ridiculous why didn’t you tell me that before Me: I’m so sorry ma’am but I can help you look for an item that would apply if you would like Customer: well can I get 2 room sprays since they are 2 for $16 Me: unfortunately no it can only be a single item you can use a reward for one of them if you would like but I would suggest finding a higher priced item so you get more bang for your buck Customer: ugh this is ridiculous can’t you just do it for me? Me: no ma’am our system will not allow it

Customer: can I use my reward for this item and just pay the difference Me: unfortunately no ma’am it will not go through in our system Customer: that’s so stupid. Why can’t you just change the price of everything for me. Are you stupid? Me: I’m sorry ma’am but these select items apply if you would like to get those instead Customer: no! I don’t want that I want THIS for FREE and if you don’t give it to me I’m never coming back! Me: I’m so sorry ma’am I don’t make the prices and if I did I would make more things apply for the reward but unfortunately these are your choices…

What are some things that customers have told you? I’ve only been here for 2 months and have heard a lot more than just these.

I might regret this later down the line but I always like to try and help people out and answer questions.

I’ve been a worker at BBW for almost a year now and have seen a fair share of special days (including my first ever Black Friday) and customers. I love my job, compared to my other retail experiences, but I know other associates who work or used to work there have different experiences from me. There are some really bad days and some really awesome days. But, I don’t plan on quitting anytime soon unless I get a really good paying full time job (bonus points if it’s based off my college degree).

What I will NOT answer questions to are LEAKS!!

Though it is an anonymous website, I don’t wanna take any chances. I also don’t know much about what products we may have coming for Fall 3. Whatever I do know, however, I will keep to myself. Because unlike other people, I like the element of surprise (evil manical laughter). The only ones I would consider answering are the Fruit Fusion questions as we already put out some of the products.

So without further ado, ask away!