Alright. So, I recently left my employment at Catherine's, and I have to say that it was one of the best things I've ever done. I had thought to get a part time job to make some extra spending money, and it is a load of bull.

First of all, all of your paychecks are put onto this "payroll card" debit thing that you have no access to until it gets shipped to you (took me almost a month, had to re-order it). You can get out of this trap by putting in the form for direct deposit, but they lost that form THREE times, and I ended up having to use the payroll card until I quit. Worst part? They won't give me the balance that is left on the card now that I am no longer an employee- I essentially worked over fifteen hours for FREE for them now.

Secondly, the coupons... coupons, coupons, coupons! You have no idea how many times I had customers walk out because their coupons only applied to the cheapest items in the store, and the best items, the 'perfect price' items, never were included. Not that it didn't say this on the coupon, but these women are "experienced" (shall we say) in life, and need magnifying glasses to read them! ***, I'm 19, and /I/ needed a magnifying glass to read them.

Scheduling... In the near four months I worked for Charming Shoppes, I only had ONE four hour shift. That was not to say that I had longer shifts... No! All of my shifts were 3 measely hours, and I only got two or three per week. This would be understandable if there were more than four employees at that particular store, and everyone needed hours, but Heather (manager) was always ranting over the fact that she didn't have enough people to cover the hours... Ooh! I'll take some!

But the worst part of ALL was the bag checks. My manager was more focused on making sure that I didn't steal anything than she was about the customers stealing anything! For part of the time that I worked there I was without a car and had to take the bus to college after work. This meant that when I got dropped off at work, I had to have my laptop bag with my computer, my textbooks, and my notebooks all with me. Repeatedly I was degraded in front of customers by being taken to the door by the manager and asked to pull out every item so that she could check the bag. She also checked inside my laptop, and inside my TEXTBOOKS! There were several occasions when the manager was rifling through my bag that my laptop fell to the ground and the screen was damaged as a result, as if adding insult to injury.

To finish off everything, the clothes are absolute garbage. We had to air them out because the bags that they came in individually wrapped were so full of preservative and starch that they would give us all headaches if we stayed in the store for too long.

DO NOT SHOP THERE, DO NOT WORK THERE. THEY DO NOT CARE FOR YOU, AND THEY TAKE YOUR MONEY.