The company is a joke. I see Michaels Stores going out of business in the near future. We are so understaffed that customers get fed up and leave before checking out or even finding what they want and STILL the manager cuts hours because he gets in trouble for payroll. Meanwhile, we got new computers and new rules and money spent on senseless crap. For example, the partition between the registers and the store. It's like Fry's just way less thought went into it. The idea is for customers to form one line and wait for the next available register. The reality is that we can't see the store or how many people are in line for the register. There should be a sign on it "No one can see you. Please- Help yourself." Bet the money from that wall could have paid an extra cashier for that 15 person line we had going yesterday. Thanks corporate.

I love working at Michaels. I started when I was eighteen and I've been here for about one and a half years. My manager is very encouraging and warm to everyone, although not without his faults, but I don't think those should be held against him. He has given me as well as other associates so much opportunity to move up; at the moment I am very close to becoming a department manager, and not many managers would take a second look at a teenager in her first job. My manager is also incredibly understanding and communicative; he tries to work with associates who are going through a tough time to make work less stressful on them.
The problems I have with working here come from corporate. I want to know their reasoning behind their policies such as one coupon per customer. They should know that customers are just going to keep going through the line over and over to use every single one of their coupons, making that policy worthless except to aggravate customers to the point where they don't want to return. You can imagine the toll this takes on our cashiers who are forced to deal with implementing the policy at the stake of their own jobs.
Also, we seriously need new equipment, especially cash registers and RF guns. Our registers and ATM swipe things are pathetically slow and customers constantly complain about them, not to mention how filthy they look. I don't know how things are going at corporate, but it doesn't seem like they do much listening to the problems happening in-store. I haven't seen changes to these difficulties or others since I've been working here.