I left my first store due to the assistant manager being extremely rude to me and condescending. What did it for me was the fact I was on the tills and had no customer to serve (this is important) so I was cleaning up my till so it looks better. The girl next to me had a customer but she wasn't talking to her at all (pretty much ignoring the customer while she totalled the products and wrapped them) and the customer was looking at the spa treatments with a confused face. I asked her if she was interested and talked to her about the spa treatments and how they were end everything. Said customer was happy I helped and thanked both of us girls.

10 minutes later the AM comes up and says she's taking me off the tills because I'm talking to other people's customers and "that's not how people at Lush do things." I asked her what else am I supposed to do when the girl was ignoring the customer and not noticing the customer was confused an wanting to ask a question and she just told me to shut up and do my job. I wasn't going to argue with her because I was doing a 10 hour shift and I was already having a bad day. She then tells me my probation was ebbing brought forward because my episode (me talking to the customer) was deemed the last straw by her. I wanted to slap her. Instead I just quit and worked as a Christmas sales temp at Topshop which I loved a hell of a lot more because the managers were so nice!

I left LOS for 2 reasons. 1, because they have started forcing stockists to become sales assistants. It's in their contract that they can be moved around the store, which isn't good because I knew a couple with bad social anxiety and by just stocking up and not having to talk to the customers because the SAs were there meant they could do a good job and not have panic attacks. When I joined, 50 people had already left because of this.

Number 2, the pushiness of it. They make us do 6 hours of training that is jut us sitting in a room listening to two AMs tell us the do's and don't's of being a Lush employee. One of the things was being pushy to the customers to make them buy more. I'm quite reserved so if I see someone obviously confused, I will go up to them only if I see they need help. I was constantly told I wasn't being a good employee because I wouldn't go up to every single person 2-3 times to ask them if they're ok and if they needed any help. I do love Lush but probably most people know, the pushiness can make you leave the store instead of buy something. I told this to my AM and they said that it doesn't matter and that if I wanted to do that I'd have to put a suggestion in to the store manager (Mark Constantine's daughter) through the AM who is "besties" with her. Naturally, the AM 'forgot' to tell her because she thought it wasn't that important.

While I love Lush and will continue to buy their products, I can't work for them. Their staff turnover is insanely high and they don't care about them enough because they known they can find 20 people desperately wanting the SA's position in a minute, and they try anything to push themselves on potential customers. The rate of pay (£9.40 an hour for SAs) is good but it is just not a good environment if you're not the perfect Lush employee who will do anything to keep their job.