The Good Feet Store - Albany under appreciated, discriminated, and constantly scrutinized Albany, New York

On multiple occasions I feel I was the target of multiple personal attacks made by managers from the Rochester and Buffalo stores as well as the owner herself. I'll start with the dress code. Nowhere in our employee manual was it stated that we could not wear flip flops. In fact on my first day I was told it was encouraged in order to show how the supports can go into ANY shoe. So, since it was summer and New York summers are hot and muggy, I wore my flip flops everyday. It was a great selling point because customers could see first hand how it worked in that type of footwear. About a month or so later, while sitting at work in my flip flops, we received a faxed memo from the owner saying we could no longer do that and if we wore any sandal it had to be "professional" looking and have a back strap on it or be purchased from the catalog in our store. That day we had a manager from our Buffalo store visiting, who approached my store manager telling him I was violating dress code and my feet were dirty.

First and foremost - I had been at work when we got the memo and would have had to go home to grab another pair of shoes to wear since I had been unaware of this policy change prior to leaving my house. Also, I was extremely offended being told that my feet were "dirty" because if that were the case I wouldn't have decided to wear shoes that expose them.

As days went on, I was still slightly miffed about that visitation, but continued to go about my job as if nothing had been said. Not too long after, though, the owner herself visited the store. I have a tattoo on my forearm that is quite large and one on my shoulder that - with short enough sleeves - is partially exposed. Again, nothing in our employee handbook ever said anything about tattoos, and since another girl I had worked with had hers exposed at work and my manager said it wasn't a big deal, I assumed it was not an issue. Well, it was made evident that it was an issue for me to show my tattoos when I was preparing to do a fitting and I was alone with the owner in our stock room when she said to me "Honey, I like your tattoos but you need to cover them."

This may not surprise many and it may not seem out of the ordinary, however, nothing had been said to my co-worker. Not only had the owner known about her tattoo far in advance, but she had previously commented on how much she liked it, but never that she needed to cover it. After she left and I spoke to my manager, he confirmed that it was only me that needed to cover my tattoos and no one else and to avoid a "situation" he was asking all three of us girls to cover our exposed tattoos. I understand why he did what he did, but he shouldn't have to cover for the owner when she doesn't even know how to appropriately handle something as simple as dress code.

After all of that, I continued to work for this company. I showed up every day on time and worked my a*s off trying to sell over priced products to people that felt they had no other options because they were in so much pain. August proved to be a slow month and after not hitting our $15,000 goal to make commission, me and my co-worker were informed that (after forcing our other co-worker to leave before her two weeks notice was up because the owner only wanted a staff of 4) that we were bringing in a 5th person so the 3 of us could duke it out and whoever had the worst sales would then be fired. I'm not one to play games, especially when it comes to peoples' livelihoods, so I put my two weeks notice in and looked for another job.

I couldn't even get a good reference from there (even though my manager wanted to give me one) because all incoming calls are recorded and listened to at the end of every week for "customer service purposes". This is all done without the customer ever being aware. Not only that, but Good Feet claims that they don't allow refunds on their products and give store credit minus 20% restocking fee saying they can't resell their product. Well, I can tell you from first hand experience that they do in fact resell those products unless they are in fact damaged or flat. Depending on the supports condition they're either bagged as a try on support (which we rarely ever sell but they are discounted and the customer is usually informed of this) or new. In which case they're put back in the packaging and placed on the hooks to be sold to an unsuspecting customer trying to find any relief from their pain.

These are very shady practices and it embarrassed me everyday showing up to work and having to sell these cheap plastic supports for more money that I even made in a week. Not to mention, unless your sales percentages are up to par with what they deem acceptable, the commission you get from the $15,000 worth of bull crap you sold all month is laughable. And after all the money each employee makes them, they can't even pay the phone bill for the Albany store regularly and we're constantly threatened with being written up or fired if we don't follow their ridiculous procedures which they change daily and half the time aren't even given notice of. This store is a joke.