u/xjs054

I worked as a Merchandising Manager at Quince. It was one of the darkest professional experiences of my life.

I fully expect employees, people close to the company, or members of the marketing/PR machine to show up and say none of this happened, that I’m exaggerating, that I “couldn’t handle the pace,” or that my experience somehow wasn’t representative.
Believe whatever you want. I know what I lived through.
I worked as a Merchandising Manager at Quince, and the culture I experienced was absolutely brutal.
80-hour work weeks became normal. Not “we had a busy launch week” normal. I mean work consuming your mornings, nights, weekends, and whatever part of your life was supposed to exist outside of the company.

And somehow, even while giving that much of yourself, you could still feel like you were constantly failing.

There was little meaningful direction. Priorities could feel unclear or constantly shifting, but the expectation was still that you somehow knew exactly what leadership wanted. You could spend an enormous amount of time building something, refining it, preparing it, and trying to anticipate every possible criticism…. only to walk into a meeting and have executives laugh at the work in front of other people.

Not constructive criticism.
Not mentoring.
Humiliation.

Imagine running on almost no sleep, pouring yourself into a presentation, sitting in a room with senior leadership, and realizing that something you worked relentlessly on is now entertainment for the people above you.

That does something to you after a while.
There was very little sympathy for exhaustion, stress, or the fact that people are human beings. The environment I experienced was deeply cutthroat. You learned quickly that vulnerability was dangerous. Admitting that you were overwhelmed didn’t make the workload disappear. Asking for clarity didn’t necessarily produce clarity. Working harder didn’t necessarily produce respect.

So you just kept going.
You wake up thinking about work.
You fall asleep thinking about work.
You spend Sunday feeling sick because Monday is coming.

Eventually you stop remembering what your personality was like before the job.

And what made it especially disturbing was how normal everything could look from the outside.
Quince has a polished brand. Beautiful marketing. Clean imagery. Aspirational messaging. Everything appears effortless.

My experience behind that image felt anything but effortless. If felt like pressure stacked on pressure stacked on pressure, with people expected to absorb it quietly and continue producing.

I’m sure someone will respond saying they work there and love it. And Maybe they do.

Someone will probably say the company has great people. I’m sure it does.
Someone might claim that I was simply bad at my job, disgruntled, overly sensitive, or incapable of operating in a high-performance environment.
That’s fine.

None of those responses erase what I personally experienced.

If you’re considering working there, especially in merchandising, I’m not telling you what decision to make.

I’m telling you to ask questions:
Ask about turnover.
Ask what hours people actually work, not what the recruiter tells you.
Ask how leadership reacts when someone makes a mistake.
Ask what happens when priorities change after weeks of work.
Ask whether people can disagree with executives without being punished or humiliated.
Ask people who have left, not only people who are still there.
And pay attention to how those questions are answered.
I wish I had.

A job should challenge you. It shouldn’t hollow you out.