Walter E. Smithe Employees Verified via GlassDoor

Not a good company

Designer

Things are TACKY- having to sell $10k sofas as if it is a luxury company when the tv commercials target the lowest common denominator of the population. manager that makes designers feel like used car sales people. so delusional they insist they are like family but I don’t even make enough to cover housing and car payment (but I need my car for all the trips to training an hour away across all the other suburbs). I’ve seen higher ups deny designers their commissions based on decisions that went against the systems put in place. I’ve had a manager make inappropriate/ discriminatory remarks about my clients, my appearance and other employees’ appearance. Millennial couples come in looking for quality and chic, but they are getting Palm Beach Granny and Small Town Midwest Furniture Barn vibes that they just aren’t interested in.

Advice to Management

Figure out what the people actually want- stop giving them an idea of something on the showroom floor, and show them what they ACTUALLY want to buy. align the marketing with what you’re actually selling.

Churn and burn mentality

Designer

Upper management is a joke. If they only knew what staff and management is openly saying during meetings and training. The advertising is embarrassing. Morning huddles consist of trash talking the family and their poor taste.

Advice to Management

Wake up.

Hard Work Does Not Pay Off at Smithe

Despite being a family owned business this company does not care one bit about creating a family atmosphere for employees or a work environment that gives any sort of work/life balance. No work/ life balance examples below: One On Shift Home Consultation Per Week: Home consultations for design projects are the foundation of success for WES and the designers. However, you are only allowed to do one per week during your scheduled hours. You will not met your sales goals doing one a week so the expectation is that you will perform home consultations “on your own time”. A consultation takes a minimum of one hour in the home not counting drive time. You will be paid a one time spiff for going to the client’s home but you will likely end up going multiple other times to meet the window treatment installer, attend delivery, etc. and in the end the spiff won’t even cover your gas for the trips. Client Contact End of Day Rule: You are REQUIRED to contact clients back the same day they reach out to you with issues even if you have no new information for them. This means you will need to check your phone (must download the work number app to your personal phone) for texts, voicemails, and emails all the time regardless of your schedule in the showroom. And it doesn’t matter that the service department or vendor reps can take days or weeks to give you the information you need for the client, you will be the one getting screamed at for calling when you have nothing new to tell them. Work Every Weekend and Holiday: There is a rumor that you can take one weekend off a month but in my more than two years there I never saw it happen. If you are able to beg off a weekend day or a holiday you will be sure to regret it as it will come up if you miss goal that month or the next. The “Successful” Designers Never Stop Working: The designers who made their sales goals did so by working ALL OF THE TIME. A top writer worked in the showroom, open to close, seven days a week. Another who worked “part-time” in the showroom worked everyday and late into the night at home. Another took her work laptop on vacations and even then struggled to make goal let alone surpass it. They will tell you you have unlimited earning potential but the amount of work you have to do to even make a living wage is despicable. Awful work environment examples below: Straight Commission: Designers income is 100% commission after the training period is over. There were constant fights about who sold someone else’s clients, who didn’t split sales fairly, who butted in on your projects. The policies in place to protect your commission were not applied equally and many designers took advantage of others who didn’t want to have to fight it out day after day. Bullying: Top designers or manager’s favorites easily get away with bullying their colleagues. Yelling, name calling, fingers pointed in your face, were never truly dealt with and were an ongoing problem. Action Plans: if you miss goal you will end up on an action plan. This will be a monthly document you must sign that outlines everything you’re doing wrong with only the vaguest suggestions of what you can do to improve. You will be shamed as to how your performance ranks among your peers as everyone’s metrics are prominently posted. Little to No Support with Client Problems: When something goes wrong with a client you will not be given adequate resources to resolve it. Customer service deteriorated rapidly after the pandemic (They are constantly understaffed, I’m guessing do to low pay and miserable working conditions). Designers were responsible for getting the sales contract signed a dozen places to prevent people from canceling for arbitrary reasons but corporate almost always lets them cancel anyway. Meaning you lose sales volume and money out of your check because they would not enforce their own terms of the sale. And Finally Problem Clients: clients will yell at you, swear at you, call all hours of the day and night. They may even straight up harass you until you refuse to work with them but they will still be welcome with open arms into your showroom in an attempt to get them sold by another designer.

Advice to Management

Instead of training countless new designers who won’t stay more than a month or two, invest in the people who are willing to try and make it work. Your straight commission compensation structure is not going to be viable when people can go work another retail job for $15 an hour that doesn’t require them to be available all of the time and work from home on their days off. Please be up front about lead opportunities. It is an open secret that top writers are fed leads of Smithe family and friends. Just say if you sell this much or work here this long you’ll get the best leads. It’s insulting to make us all pretend like it isn’t happening. Stop acting like DC is accurately reflecting what is going on in the showroom. So many times I heard “numbers don’t lie.” While the people inputting the numbers do! They mark what would have been “no sales” as services or deliveries or input fake names and contact information. Realize you are never going to have your showrooms staffed by nothing but million dollar writers. Many designers may be below goal but working with a loyal client base and selling to the people the top producers literally ignore. Don’t have managers with their own sales goals as it muddies the water when they need to help clients on behalf of a regular designer. Create a work culture where people with small children, or elderly parents, or non work related obligations and interests can still succeed.

The company exploits their employees

Senior designer

The family operates under a very bi-polar leadership style that leaves you feeling defeated. If you don't agree with changes, you are treated as a whistleblower. The culture in the showrooms at all levels is toxic and pervasive. The mission/value is blatantly to make profit to the family however they attempt to hide it under charitable causes like donating furniture to low-income people. The company will pay as little as they can get away with and yet demand back breaking hours to make a decent wage. Designer roles are 100% commission so your worth and self-esteem is constantly being gauged.

Some might consider it a scam.

Designer

The girls that teach the training courses are terribly pretentious and utterly inneffective. Its basically a cattle call. I was interviewed and told "we'll call you later to let you know if you made it to the next step, we only have room for one more". Then i get to the next step and see the other 3 people that were also interviewing with me the previous week.

The pay is so bad its not even funny and the promotion system is basically just people hooking up their friends.

At the end of the day its a cut throat sales job with management breathing down your neck.

The worst part is how snobby most of the managers are. Its as if they live vicariously through the financial success of the guests.

Advice to Management

Learn how to actually manage. You have such high standards for all new hires yet the worst number in the building is your turnover rate. Why is it that you get to keep your jobs while everybody else gets booted?

Disappointed.

Poor Management, living in the 1950's, with very little regard for their employees. Takers, and offer no raises for the office workers who work tirelessly behind the scenes, to make the customers happy! So different from the public image they try and potray about family values.

Just stay away, you can find better.

You will no life, because you are always working for your sale. You often will use your days off either going back in to work to meet a client, to make sure another sales person doesn't take your client, going to a client's house, or working on a large project, if you have one. The pay system is terrible, you could make nothing for a month, and not get put on drawl till the following month. You could have order issues, warranty related, and somehow they become your issue, and you then have to be the one to follow up and make sure that that issue is being solved.

Advice to Management

Do their actual job.

Run Far Far Away

Designer

Basically its a scam... they seem to make sure that they smother success every chance they get. The managers are picked by who is friends with who and most have no clue what they're doing. Pretty much every management level employee is a design snob. The Smithes seem to not care at all about the gross turnover rate of their employees. No chance to make real money because they flood the sales floor with way too many workers. Any chance to cut your commission and they'll do it. Overall a horrible place to have worked.... surprised I stuck around so long.

Advice to Management

Realize that you treat your employees like garbage. Try to run an honest business and do your family name proud. The company can be saved but in the long run the turnover of employees and number of new hires isnt going to get you anywhere. If you paid people reasonably well and had competent GM's you wouldnt have so much turnover.....and you'd get more value out of each employee..... and you wouldnt need to hire so many people.... and you wouldnt need to staff so many trainers.... and you would maintain a higher level of satisfaction which would probably serve your customers better.

Its pretty obvious that your grandfather set up a great business to give to your father, and its obvious that he did a great job making sure that business grew and became a standard of Chicago furniture so he could leave it to you... but ask yourselves this. What are the three of you going to be leaving for your kids to run?

Not what it used to be

Client service representative

Low pay Minimum benefits Unrealistic expectations Very low employee morale

Advice to Management

Staff is demoralized by management and their boss. It used to feel like they truly cared.

You used to be able to trust your Manager, but now they wait for mistakes to be made so they can blow it up and then report to the owner. It's like they need to shift attention from their own mistakes because they will never admit they made a mistake. There isn't much staff left and long time employees are miserable and leaving or looking to leave.

No longer the Smithe we all loved to work for. Sad.

Spare Yourself

Sales associate

The training wasn't enough. This company is honestly backwards and the owners seem like con artists. Then they make YOU seem like the problem when they are asking you to do the impossible - memorize thousands of catalogs? Use a garbage website with 20,000 pages of listings to find furniture solutions (btw they don't tag the furniture correctly so you can't actually find what you're looking for)? They offer 150+ vendors, only about 10 of which any customer can experience in person. Otherwise it is your job to somehow convince someone to buy something they cannot see or experience before and it is EXPENSIVE. You are FULLY commission. If you don't make enough to support yourself, they will pay you for 40 hours legally, and then - surprise- you have to pay them back the next month?? So you better make twice the amount of sales! No paid time off, no sick leave. No weekend days off. You are guilted into making up time not spent in the store even though you are fully commission. You are expected to bring your own clients (lol - please just be a private designer if you already have clients). They don't care about if you are ok and making ends meet as their employee. The family is full of lawyers and they know what they're doing while also being a dumpster fire of a company which will fail because their model is based on a non existent need for a third party member (which is actually like a fourth party member) in buying furniture. The customer base is gone because of the internet and the pandemic is over. Their head buyer has trash taste and fills the stores with unsellable product. This is a great job for a house wife who likes helping people (the smithe's) and has disposable income and spare time.