"Zara taught us to be rude to the customers"

Zara's customers are accustomed to the staff being unfriendly.

The reason being: the employees don't trust each other and are encouraged to be unfriendly.

”The staff is supposed to be a bit superior towards the customers. It creates an aura that Zara is more upscale, a bit high class," says a former employee.

An investigation by Aftonbladet/200 Seconds of the Spanish-owned clothing chain Zara provides an explanation as to why customers don't receive the same service as in other stores.

”They taught us not to be friendly to customers. And if half the team is unfriendly, you follow the negative path," says a former employee, continuing:

”The focus is not on the customers. We know we're selling anyway. The focus is on pumping out clothes.”

”The staff should be a bit rude, not service-minded," says another former employee."

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Bad influence from the managers also creates internal competition:

”I'm used to working in different workplaces. Here, the management had created an unpleasant culture that trickled down to the employees. When I was new, nobody even said 'hello.' Everyone was out for themselves.”

"Many didn't show up"

Michaela Berg, 34, who worked at Zara's Nacka store in 2008-09, says:

”The managers had their favorites. When I was the weakest link in the group, I became the one they ostracized a bit, and my colleagues sided with the managers.”

”You couldn't really trust anyone. It's not like a regular workplace where you can confide in someone. But when you come straight from high school, you don't think it's so strange."

"It wasn't pleasant. Many suddenly didn't show up. They didn't want to continue working," says Michaela Berg.

But it's not just the unpleasantness of the managers that causes a bad atmosphere. It's also due to understaffing:

"Colleagues weren't nice to each other, because of the stress," says a former employee.

"Many think that the staff is unfriendly. But the management didn't allow us to provide good service. The focus was on cleaning, keeping the store in order. If they caught us helping a customer too much, we would get scolded," says another former employee."

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”Lies to customers”

A third former employee agrees that the focus is not on the customers, especially on days when there are many customers in the stores:

"The managers don't care. They say 'it's no problem, let it be chaotic, we'll fix it.' They believe that customers will still shop," she says, continuing:

"Customers come back because it's so cheap and because Zara offers 'fast fashion.' If a regular clothing store has a thousand collections, Zara has 11,000 collections.”

But if customers come to return a garment, they often face obstacles:

"We have a zero-tolerance policy on returns. The idea is that no returns should be approved at all. Only managers were allowed to handle returns; they had a script for what to say. It earns the company a lot of money," says a former employee.

The staff also lies straight to the customers' faces, according to a former employee:

"Employees said that items weren't available because they didn't want to go to the warehouse."

* This text has been translated with support of ChatGPT and reviewed by Aftonbladet.