Lush Cosmetics Has Always Done Their Employees Dirty

Today, I logged onto Twitter with no intention of minding my own business. As usual. But something in particular caught the attention of my little nosy self this morning. An outcry over Lush Cosmetics firing their employees because of the COVID 19 pandemic. Everyone was so shocked but like, why? Then I realized that 96.4% of the population probably doesn't know the carfax on Lush and their ethics. Or lack thereof.

In October 2018, I was in the business of applying for seasonal work very unsuccessfully. After going into Lush to get a face mask for my bi-annual midterm breakout, wherein a bunch of cystic acne sets up camp on my chin and cheeks, a very sweet cashier recommended I apply for seasonal work there. I "looked the part", according to her. (AKA I had a buzzcut and looked remotely queer.)

I was interviewed within 24 hours of submitting my application online. I was told to come in at 7pm because the store would be dead, which I didn't realize would be important info until I walked in that fateful Monday night. They were holding interviews in the middle of the store, with customers all around. I got there at 6:55 because I'm a good egg, waved to the cashier who recommended me in the first place and was told they would be finishing up the other interview in about 10 minutes. I mind my business, eye the henna hair dye that ruined my life 4 months earlier, and wait for my interview. Yeah, as you can imagine, being interviewed in the middle of a Lush where future coworkers and current clients are dumping bath bombs into metal tubs of water was...different. That wasn't the weirdest thing to happen in that interview, though. The two hiring managers made me do a sale demo, on a customer. Yup. I had to physically touch a customer, sell them a lotion that I knew nothing about, and make a sample. Babes, they didn't even have my social security number on file.

I thought this was gonna be one of those "You're hired on the spot" things, "when are you free for training" things. Nope. The hiring manager who hadn't left 5 times to assist customers in the middle of our interview said, "Okay, when can you come back for your next interview?" Me, being a naive 19 year old, was confused by this. He said I needed to have 1 more interview before they can decide to take me on. Then I go through a month of training. Idiot that I am/was, I told him I have classes Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday so those days wouldn't work for me to come in. He said those are mandatory days and handed me a goody bag of soap samples and sent me home. I was so upset at the time, but once I got home I researched the company and what employees were saying about their time at Lush and yeah. I most absolutely dodged a bullet the size of a torpedo.

Look up "lush employees" on Twitter you'll find a slew of memes saying the bubbly personalities who rely on selling luxury soaps to bratty Pinterest girls for their paychecks are annoying, aggressive, threatening, whatever. Look those same keywords up literally anywhere else, and you'll find an onslaught of stories of abuse written by employees, past and present. I just think I'll throw in this excerpt from the LushCosmetics subreddit.

"I worked for Lush for 4 months last year and it was soul destroying. The internal politics, the total lack of care about staff’s wellbeing, constantly being told to manhandle customers, being told you couldn’t take a water or bathroom break on 4 hour shifts. I was told I didn’t have the 'Lush ethos' for not chasing customers more & that it wasn’t reflecting their image of 5 Star Service, yet I had customers who would routinely ask for me over the Christmas period. They obviously didn’t mind my style of working as I was working 40 hours weeks for well over 2 months straight once all my training was finished. Management counting my legal entitlement of 2 days bereavement leave after a death in my family as 'unexplained days off' during my review for a permanent position pushed me over the edge. I didn’t bother showing up for my last 2 shifts of my contract and told them where to stick it."

Yeah. Don't really think those jokes about employees being overly touchy are really that funny anymore.

But it goes beyond the possibility of this being one horrific store with one terrible management team. In 2017, Mercedes Gonzalez took the corporation to court over racial discrimination, citing, "Lush failed to provide her with the same level of training, support, and opportunities as her white colleagues, resulting in her dismissal from the company in September 2016." After Mercedes's white colleagues were receiving extra help in week 2 of a 7 week massage training course, she and the only other non-white trainee were told they weren't progressing quickly enough and Mercedes was shut out of the program. She raised concerns with management over being pushed out of the training program because of her ethnicity and body type, not because she was progressing any slower than the other trainees. The other woman of color who was discriminated with alongside Mercedes also filed against Lush for racial discrimination.

So maybe just a handful of employees had bad experiences? Their products are still good and they raise a huge amount of awareness for anti animal testing campaigns in the cosmetic industry. Uh. Sure. Okay. While Lush's products are lauded for being organic and natural and better than whatever you can pick up at TJ Maxx or Marshall's, many of their top selling products contain Blue 1, Red 27, Red 28, Methylparaben, and harmful fragrance among other things but yay! Animal rights! Yeah, it's really amazing how Lush has gone out of their way to create sustainable packaging to reduce their carbon footprint but they use PET plastic as glitter in some products, which ultimately ends up in oceans and kills marine ecosystems but yasss eco-friendly!

I mean, seriously. Just go on Glassdoor. Hundreds of employees saying they were physically shoved towards customers by management, being forced to travel for training with no financial reimbursement, being pressured into impossible sales goals for their stores' densities and locations, and emotional abuse from management.

Lush didn't just wake up in the middle of a pandemic and decide to be terrible. Lush has been terrible, for years. But their bathbombs became Tumblr favorites and their hair products cult classics among the eco-friendly consumer crowd. Everyone just looked at the assertive employees as a little obstacle to getting their blueberry clay face mask. But scratch beneath the surface and see that this kind of behavior has been enforced by their management on the store and corporate levels dating over 5 years back. So yeah, boycott Lush, but not just because you finally realized how vile their ethics regarding humans is. Boycott Lush because there's a basic lack of respect, and there's no hiding behind the mirage of being a cute, eco-friendly indie shop when they're a giant, plastic filled, corporate monster.