Work expect us to look like models

[Coldpop]

I've started a job in a clothing store where staff wear their own clothes.. or so I thought. No. We have to wear the clothes that work sell and we only get 70% discount. We have to have everything from work, top bottoms and shoes. We also have to wear stuff from the current season, so every 3 months we are expected to buy more tops bottoms shoes as we can no longer wear what isn't being sold in store. I'm on a 18 hour contract, barely over minimum wage. I can't afford this! I'm a mum with a mortgage. Clothes in my family have to last us till they need replacing. I also think it's very wasteful to have to constantly buy clothing. At the least to be able to buy the cheapest stuff from work it will cost me about £80- 100 every 3 months. It's not exactly a cheap store. There's posters up all over the staff room telling us to inspire customers with our outfit choices, that we have to be stylish at all times!. Im used to dressing smart for work.. but Im going to feel mugged every 3 months that I have to part with my wages to be an advert for my employer. I've just started, I've had no wages but I've been asked to sort my outfit choices as soon as possible. Don't know what to do. Is this the norm in retail now?

Yeah but you could choose to wear one charity shop suit every day if you wanted.

No, that’d not have been acceptable.

What shop is it? Do they do a basics range that they sell all year round such as black trousers, leggings, t shirts? If so could you then get away with buying accessories or cardigans/jackets etc every 3 months?

How would they have known?

Yes this is the norm and why some of my friends chose to work in a clothing shop.

I would look for another job.
You now have retail experience so you have a lot of options.

I am shocked that this is the norm I thought only in somewhere like US or abercrombie and fitch unless you are 18 living at home or get generous allowance or have no outgoings this is disgusting. I can't spend that much on clothes nor can most single mothers especially part time if they want you to wear their clothes they should bloody well give them to you replace every 3 months fuck off, plus minimum wage? Fuck off again. Rogue traders, the daily mail and social media need to be informed. With a global financial crisis and energy bills rising beyond affordability. FASHION NEEDS TO WAKE UP AND READ THE ROOM. NO more of this appalling behaviour.

I can't see that the discount is helpful when it's clothes you might not otherwise have chose and that you won't want to wear outside work. £80 a quarter to update your wardrobe is certainly excessive for a lot of people, particularly when, again, you aren't given a choice where you buy.

I think we need to know the kind of shop. A £20 would work out at only £6, but if you don't have that to spare, speak up. They either made this policy clear or they didn't.
You could ask for a couple of outfits up front to be paid for on payday?

@donquixotedelamancha is spot on, they cannot force you to purchase a uniform which would then take you below min wage. You'd need to price up a couple of cheapest outfits with discount, then work out the difference between that cost and what you are paid above min wage over the 3 months to see if this is the case.

Awful that this is still a policy in clothes shops, both in terms of cost to staff and for the environment!

£20 top or trousers, I meant to say

Just by looking. Like most people at his level the very minimum he’d do would be to get a very good off-the-peg and then have it properly fitted.

Plus how many days are you working on 18 hours? It's not full time so you'll need fewer items.

How does this work with male employees working in shops that don't sell men's clothes, or vice versa? Obviously they can't insist on only employing women. Or if the employee has a disability that means, say, they can't wear the store's shoes?

OP, choose a pair of trousers and shoes that are always in the 'current' range , and if you can, buy one top and wash often. If you choose fabric carefully and it's a wash and hang no ironing type even better.
Then every 3 months buy the cheapest current top. In my experience, by the time you are bedded into the job, people stop noticing what you are wearing and managers dont have the time or energy to chase it. Also consider swapping and changing with other staff. As we head into the winter with everyone worrying about money, I think very few managers will be able to insist you spend money. If you are in next or monsoon, you should be able to get a top for about £9 , and if you can sell on vinted afterwards you could get £4 or so of that back.

I probably don't spend £80 a year. Ridiculous comment and shows just how unaware some people are of how others have to live.

OP it's ridiculous - I would resell everything

As other posters have said, if this takes you below minimum wage it's likely to be illegal. Acas or the shop workers Union whose acronym escapes me.

I'd be tempted to wear the cheapest, least flattering outfit. If they want their staff to be billboards they should pay them for it.

And it is wasteful. Unless you can sell them on for more than you paid for them.

Well I'm an old girl and over the years have bought stuff in H&M, Gap, Next, New Look etc, and it has never crossed my mind that the assistants were required to wear what's on the rails. Once in Gap I noticed the assistant had on a hoody with GAP in big letters and wondered why someone would choose that instead of a plain one (not my cup of tea so it didn't do it's sales job, did it?), so probably assumed it was some kind of uniform. So from that pov, having assistants modelling stuff has been wasted on me as a customer and is a waste of your money and the planet's resources.
Mind you, if I saw you in Next and asked you where you got your top and you said H&M.... I can see why they have that policy!

£80 every three months updating your wardrobe isn't excessive and you don't have to waste your old stuff you can donate it to charity or sell it and recoup some of the cost.

Did you miss the fact that she can't afford to spend the best part of 2 weeks wages on work clothing as she has bills to pay?

Otherwise, your only other option is to work in a non-fashion related retail environment like Tesco, which i personally don't think is as nice a place to work.

Free uniform and staff discounts on product range including food, clothing, mobile and insurance.

Seriously I would name and shame them on social media. I would actually as a consumer want to know about this so I can avoid buying their products.

Literally every fashion chain does this, it wouldn’t be shaming for them in the slightest.

Topshop used to have a policy like this too, but they always tended to employ fashion/art students in my local one who were thrilled at the prospect of the discount.

Its tricky isn’t it, but if it doesn’t work for you then maybe there is another job out there.

Could you use your uniform allowance on the cheapest basics that they offer, and then accessorise with outlandish jewellery/scarves, etc from eBay for very cheap?

This is very common in retail.
I had to buy £200 worth of uniform (and that was with 75% discount) a week before I quit. I sold it all on eBay and made a nice profit 😂

I want to know which stores enforce these rules and I will avoid lije the plague. A list of each company and their clothing rules for employees. Office giving free pair shoes to employees is excellent I will go there.
Anyone forcing employees to spend their hard earned minimum wage in the shop they work in every 3 months as nothing else is accepted can sod off. I also want to know about what happens if disabled/plus size/wrong sex for shop what then? It needs to change

I've never worked in retail but if this is the case then why can't staff expensive the clothes they have to buy to wear to work that they don't necessarily like?

Are you sure they don’t give you an allowance for your ‘uniform?’ Then you get a discount on anything else you buy. I worked in fashion stores a long time ago and that was the norm even then. They don’t want people wearing their own random stuff.

I worked in retail in the 90’s and it was the norm then-I was a student and it’s why I worked there as had a huge amount of new clothes.
I couldn’t be arsed with that now, and neither could I afford it.

It is the norm, yes. I’s try a supermarket instead where the discount is actually useful.