Why would a large store like Victoria's Secret refuse to give out the name of their CEO?

Probably just bad staff training. Manager was clueless too, and told employee not to answer, because of some combination of ignorance, apathy, lack of courtesy, lack of understanding of the value of always being courteous and helpful, as opposed to shallower thoughts, like “better to invent a policy that gets my clerk off the phone with someone who’s not immediately going to buy something from us.”

It’s common knowledge. Go their website, or for that matter, the SEC because it has all their stock filings, and the CEO’s name is on all of them.

With all respect to the person who answered the phone at the branch store – they’re nuts.

Its not their job to answer questions like that. What they should have done is give you the number for head office and let them deal with you.

Yes. Meanwhile, I wonder how many people are going to read this and get negative feelings about the whole company. Could end up costing them thousands of dollars indirectly, trying to save a couple of minutes of employee time that probably would have no effect on anything, and result in a positive story instead.

My wife worked at Victoria’s Secret for a few years. The company has a strict policy about employee information. Depending on how literally someone’s district coordinator takes the policy, the employee (or the store manager!) could have been fired for confirming the name of any employee without permission. District-level employees also have a strange tendency to exemplify the Peter principle, so it’s not entirely unlikely that the store manager had a legitimate concern.

In addition to what @SavoirFaire said (a lot of companies have such policies), it’s also entirely possible that the worker bee in the store doesn’t even know or care who the CEO of L Brands (the parent company that owns Victoria’s Secret) is. Why would they? They’re just there trying to push merchandise out the door in order to earn whatever meager pay the company tosses them.

By the way: this is the dude you’re looking for. This info was not difficult to find.

Most store employees wouldn’t know or care who the CEO is.

Public companies are required by law to publish a lot of information about their personnel and finances.

You can read through the L Brands filings here at the SEC. The annual report will list all the company officers.

@Darth_Algar: I saw that guy, and that he’s the CEO of L Brands, which owns VS. The two ladies I came up with as CEO of Victoria’s Secret, and presented to Amanda at Southbury CT Victoria’s Secret, were Sharon Jester Turney and Lori Greeley.

Yes, I saw that in your original post. And yes, I’m aware of who the man is, and what his position is. I stated as much in my post.

The point was that you can easily find such information on your own, rather than bothering the low-rung retail workers about it then questioning their motives when they can’t tell you.