This year, beauty retailer Sephora made $10 billion in North America alone — thanks in no small part to the people who work in their stores.
Alas, a whole lot of Sephora’s beauty advisors are super-pissed because the big “thanks” they got came in the form of a reportedly not-very-good and rather stale cookie. And not even a good kind of cookie. A sprinkle cookie.
They didn’t even shell out for chocolate chips!
“We are thrilled to share that Sephora North America hit a record 10 billion dollars in sales in 2023,” read the card accompanying the box of what was reportedly just 20 cookies for an entire store. “We know that 2023 was a marathon, not a race. These [milestones?] wouldn’t be reached without the dedication and efforts of all employees.”
“‘We know that 2023 was a marathon, not a race…’. BITCH A MARATHON IS LITERALLY A TYPE OF RACE,” wrote one person on the r/SephoraWorkers subreddit.
“This is nauseating,” wrote another. “As bonuses were delivered at not the stated amount that would be received, the severance for the erased Home Chat team that had a HUGE part of locking in those .com orders was taxed at some 30+%. Don’t break your back, lose sleep, or negate your own self care over any company, especially this one.”
Many Sephora workers had also been recently disappointed to see how much smaller their “bonuses” had been than they had hoped, and this has been another big discussion on the messageboard recently.
Dripped Out Trade Unionists also shared pictures of the $10 billion cookie in a tweet that ended up getting shared more than 1000 times.
Unsurprisingly, there were more than a few comments on the multiple $10 billion cookie posts calling for a union. So far, only the Sephora store in Kamloops, British Columbia, is unionized, but now that it’s already been done, other stores will be able to follow in their footsteps.
Sephora workers deserve better than this. All workers do, but honestly I am so continually impressed with the workers at my usual store — they know their stuff (some have actually worked as make-up artists), they know me and what kind of stuff I like (though that may be more of a sign that I, personally, have a problem), and they truly could not be nicer people. In fact, I was actually planning to go there later today when I was done here, because I wanted to go see the new Pat McGrath limited editions in person, but now I feel gross about that. So I’m probably going to stay home trying to figure out how to do that porcelain doll lewk that Mother did for the Maison Margiela runway show like a giant weirdo. See what you did there, Sephora?
Be good to your workers and don’t gross out your customers.
If capitalism is so great, why does it need to be bailed out by socialism every twenty years?
I looked it up. Sephora has about 46,000 employees (according to their LinkedIn page). $10,000,000,000 divided by that number is $217,391. Even a $50 thank you is $2,300,000 total cost, which is .023% of that $10B. “Have a cookie” is just goddamned gross.