Hey all,
I am a college student who has recently been hired by TJ Maxx. From all the retailers, restaurants, and other places I’ve worked, TJ Maxx honestly gave me a lot of green flags. Managers were all super nice and talked about how important a positive working environment for employees are and etc. They give us free food, a lot of call offs, and etc.
However, during my new hire orientation we were shown a number of videos and I hit two of the red flags about the place. One, I am not allowed to have my pepper spray in my purse in my locker and they do random bag and locker checks. I understand that pepper spray can be used to harm someone, however, the town I live in can have a lot of rape and mugging related crime. They also want us to park further away from the store and I work later on and am not done sometimes until 10pm. I feel extremely uncomfortable walking to my car after the store is closed knowing I have no way to protect myself should something happen. I have even worked for a big hospital and was never not allowed to have my pepper in my locker. TJ Maxx is the first place I’ve ever worked for to have this rule.
The second, bigger red flag was the fact they showed us an anti-union video. It was a very one-sided video as well. Now, TJ Maxx does have an open door policy with talking to managers, but I have not had to try it out so I’m not sure how well it actually works. But the video basically went on about how unions only want your money, they won’t care or know about you and your struggles, they will harass you after work when you’re walking to your car to get your signature, etc. They talked about how any time a union ever tried to form, TJ Maxx was ably to shut it down because associates didn’t want it. I have never had a place show me an anti-union video. It honestly sat with me the wrong way. I understand being structured well and not feeling like you need a union, but they dug deep into “the fact” that unions only care about money and they will take as much money from you as they can without helping you. One line in the video that had stuck with me – “we aren’t anti-union, we’re pro-associate”.
(Edited for grammar)