Upward mobility for willing scapegoats
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
In all stores, employees are instructed to either refuse a customer's order cancellation or process it thief-style outside the system, allegedly because cash registers being reopened for refund activate management's paranoia of employees stealing money. However, management knows all this; more than anything else, they care about their employees fearing them.
Verbesserungsvorschläge
Management should focus on sales and profits rather than on drilling and humiliating employees. They should favor, at least symbolically, high-performing employees over guilty-faced ones. They should dare to consider working atmosphere and communication as something useful and desirable.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Strained by bossy affectation, unfounded accusing, and constant lying on all levels. Low-level employees worry that working too committedly next to clown-like supervisors undermines their dignity—which drives the low-performing into staying as they are and the high-performing into leaving before asking for a raise.
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Employees mostly use the terms “kindergarten” or “psychiatric hospital” for comparison; they often complain of lacking leadership.
Work-Life-Balance
Overtime hours are not paid despite regular promises, but explicitly expected and used to measure the loyalty of middle-level employees. Vacation requests must be submitted multiple months in advance and answered less than a week before the requested period, more often negatively than positively.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Middle-level employees are played off against customers and colleagues as a test of loyalty to management: they must prove themselves as willing scapegoats at satisfying customers without qualified staff, functioning systems, or available products and at leading their team without the power to reward or sanction. Low-level employees enter this leadership gap: they snitch, incite, slander, cheat, ingratiate themselves, beg, blackmail, lie, rival, argue, and beat each other at the expense of colleagues, customers, and the company—and without fear of consequences.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Supervisors attempt to compensate for their leadership being undermined from above with intimidating threats that fail to be followed through—ultimately, they are not ashamed to beg ex-employees whom they have fired after numerous warnings for their return. Those above the stores are tasked with disabling subordinates from decision-making, impeding their work (e.g. repairs of essential machinery or recruitment during understaffing), throwing obstacles in their way, affronting, cheating, fighting, backstabbing them—and then declaring them solely responsible for operational results.
Kommunikation
Only permitted from the top down. To enforce this rule, suggestions are rejected on principle, simple problem reports are returned as accusations or mistaken as personal insults, and false promises are made. Supervisors are supposed to avoid all contact with store employees and limit themselves to surveiling and commanding from distance.
Gehalt/Benefits
Worse than at peer companies. Night and weekend shifts are treated like normal shifts. Usually, a fixed net salary is negotiated with employees, then the payroll turns out to be full of false specifications and accounting tricks.