Jennifer Jones

I would attribute my success to just being motivated, just getting up and going to work and knowing that's what I need to do. It's really about loving the atmosphere, to be honest. It's different when you like your coworkers, because I feel like every job I've had, like even at H&M, it was hard leaving because I felt like everybody was kind of like family, you know, everyone was close. We owned each other, so it's hard leaving jobs because you build a relationship with everyone. So I would just say the atmosphere of coming to work and being around your coworkers is what keeps me going.

Definitely be positive, have self-confidence, and have a tough skin. You're going to deal with all types of people all day long, so you gotta learn how to bounce that off of you and just keep smiling and not take things personally, because you never know what someone's going through. They might take it out on you, and you gotta brush it off, like alright, whatever, you know, it's not a big deal.

The biggest challenge in retail right now is that I feel like retail is slowly dying because everyone's doing everything on their phone now, so it's so convenient to shop online. This makes it harder to have opportunities to move up in the chain and have different positions open. For example, my jewelry team is so small, it's really technically only 3 of us, and there's no other positions open, so we need more help and more hands on board. But at the same time, there are still opportunities because people are never going to give up shopping in stores completely - they want to touch things and look at them, especially when they're spending a pretty penny on jewelry. They want to see it in person before they buy it. So the opportunity is really about having different positions open and the chance to move up, because no one wants to be in one spot forever.

Loyalty is definitely the most important value to me, because you always see a huge turnaround in retail. At retail, there's a huge turnaround rate, so people who actually stay and show longevity is very important, especially in retail, because that's rare, it's very rare. That's one thing I've noticed about Macy's - a lot of people have been there for a long time, and that's good. I also value having opportunities, because that's very important - I don't want to be stuck in one spot. If I want to maybe be management or move up, I need those opportunities, because no one wants to be in one spot forever.