Former Employees Reveal Toxic Work Environment and Poor Conditions at Primark Strasbourg

Between toxic management and aggressive customers, two people who worked – or still work – for Primark Strasbourg describe actu.fr extremely poor working conditions.

At Primark, very versatile employees

At the time, when Marie* was looking for work, the sign of fast-fashion Primark was the first to offer her an interview. “Looking back, I just understood that they took everything that moved,” the young woman says today.

When we ask her about her position at Primark, it’s difficult for her to answer straight, there are so many: “Restocking, shelf tidying, checkouts, booths… A bit of everything.” Marie is what we call in the jargon a “ versatile employee ».

“Managers started following us to the bathroom”

But also an employee that we monitors, and sometimes very close. “Supervision is complicated,” explains Marie. They put a lot of pressure on us pression so that we do everything quickly. There’s a lot of intimidation Also “. Of what genre ?

Marie says that, when she was a morning person, she hired at 6:15 a.m. Once the store finally opened at 10 a.m., she, who had taken “no breaks” until then, and her colleagues took the opportunity to go to the bathroom. “Managers noticed this and started to contact us follow to the toilet to know how much time we spent there and why we all went there at the same time,” relates Marie.

Forced to fight for a work accident to be recognized

The young woman also says she suffered a work accident. The former store manager – a new manager has since been appointed – wrote toHealth Insurance with the aim that it is not recognized as such.

Marie had to “fight for three months with Social Security to have this work accident recognized”. She finally won her case. “Primark complies with all legal requirements and procedures for reporting an accident at work,” the group said.

“You’re lucky, in Paris, it’s worse! »

For Lena, a former employee, “many managers are very understanding, but others pretend to be.” “For example, if we raise certain issues, we will be told: “It’s like that everywhere, and again, you’re lucky, it’s Primark Strasbourg, in Paris, it’s worse! “Or they will tell us that they too are suffering the problem… Except that it remains a problem and, no matter who bears it, it should not be normal.”

Discomfort due to the heat in stores

When asked what types of problems Lena is referring to, she replies: “For example, in summer, there is no air conditioning, so it’s 40 degrees in the store. They even had to close an entire floor of cabins because it was so hot. Customers and sellers have already made discomfort because of the heat “.

A poorly cleaned store

Another type of problem: “The household. In my time working at Primark I have never seen a company do this. Although the floor and employee rooms are clean, there is a lot of dust in the store. When we arrive to collect, there are piles of dust falling, we sneeze all the time.”

I myself went to the store this Friday, October 13, to see the condition it was in. Overall, it was okay, but it must be said that there was very little crowd during my visit. I still noticed some trash here and there on the floor, clothes in a mess in certain places and a cabin floor that could have benefited from a little sweeping but, once again, overall it was OK .

Employees left for 5 hours on the same job

Marie, for her part, evokes these very frequent moments when managers leave their colleagues “5 hours in the same place, without worrying about it”, whether “5 hours at the checkout, 5 hours in the cabin, 5 hours in the same area [des « zones » du magasin sont attribuées aux vendeurs, NDLR] ».

Chronic understaffing

The two young women both claim that the understaffed is chronic within Primark Strasbourg. And this understaffing means that it is sometimes impossible to manage the huge footfall of the store. This is why it is not uncommon to find it completely upside down, with montages of clothes on the floor and completely mixed up. Also, colleagues who hire on Monday must recover all the work that could not be done on Saturday, a busy day, due to lack of time and sufficient staff.

In October 2022, for example, there was a large influx from Germany, due to a public holiday there. And this was the result:

The same scene occurred at the beginning of October 2023. “We would like to apologize to the customers of our Strasbourg store for this exceptional situation,” responded Primark, when contacted by us. “The customer experience remains one of our obsessions in all our stores,” adds the brand, which says it has “the staff necessary to run the store in normal times.” “And our teams do everything to keep the shelves in a pleasant condition for our customers,” adds Primark.

Marie arrives with a lump in her stomach at work, leaves crying

All this combined means that Marie arrives “often with the stomach upset at work » and it is not uncommon for her to “ go home crying ”, or even at his workplace. When it happens to him, she leaves to “take refuge in the toilet ».

“For me, it wasn’t really tears of fatigue but more crying of anger », Testifies for her part Lena. “I woke up in the morning, I was already nervous about the day ahead of me. I was so tired that the smallest thing took on huge proportions,” she remembers.

Aggressive customers

But that’s not all. In addition to toxic management, Primark Strasbourg employees also have to deal with the aggressiveness and lack of manners of customers.

“People are very tense, because there are a lot of people, so there is not much space to move around, plus it is often very hot and there are generally a lot of waits at the checkout,” explains Marie. In short, the perfect cocktail to make it explode.

“When we are tidying or folding, customers come and complain because they don’t have what they want. When we try to explain to them, they immediately tell us that “this is unacceptable”, that they want to “speak to a manager”, etc. They want everything, right away,” says Lena. “The customers act as if we were not there, as if we were invisible, they have fun turning everything around in front of us,” adds Marie.

Both witnessed of insults from customers, never physical attacks. However, “the security sometimes has to intervene,” says Marie.

Feces left in cabins

Among the documents I asked her to verify and corroborate her story, Lena sent me… a photo of excrement in a cabinaccompanied by this comment, in view of my astonishment: “Yes yes, It happens more often than you think., there are no toilets for customers in the store so we see this regularly as well as used baby diapers.” I turn to Marie, who in turn confirms: “It’s recurring!” “.

Lena also sent me photos of what we find at the back of the cabins, and there too, it’s not very good.

“I was at the end”

Shortly before she made the decision to resign, Lena explained that she was “at the end of her tether.” “A few weeks earlier, I had gone to the doctor, who had put me on leave for two weeks because I couldn’t take it anymore. The doctor told me: “You have to change jobs, because you are not far from the burn out “. It was a click. My family advised me the same thing. My mother told me to resign, even without a job on the side.”

But then, why do some employees stay? Well because there are also some good things about working at Primark, despite everything: “You’re welcome, there are tickets restoand 13^e monthand CE [Comité d’entreprise, NDLR]… When we asked for a day off, we got it, and between colleagues, we got along well,” emphasizes Lena.

Marie also recognizes that the company was accommodating, in terms of hours… But that, strangely, was before she was forced to take leave of work. Today, Marie’s decision is made: she also wants to resign.

“Store management takes the well-being and health of employees on a daily basis very seriously,” Primark said. “The flexibility of different in-store hours allows us to adjust their workload. All directors also undergo training on personnel management and team support,” the group continues.

*First names have been changed.

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