Interviewed with 1800Flowers through a contract firm they are outsourcing through. I’d be a full time W-2 employee but I’m also located in NY so it appears the main purpose of this arrangement is to save costs. They, along with the contract company were very unprofessional throughout the entire process. There was no transparency throughout the interview process, I was often scheduled a video interview 1-2 hrs beforehand, and they tried to negotiate the salary much lower than it was originally budgeted for, which was already a little below market value and I guess it didn’t include any benefits even though was a W-2 position with the contract company. I also heard in the interview process that working 40+ hr work weeks is part of the culture. This was not reflected in their new budget for the role. I declined the offer, as I want to work for a company that values and respects its employees and has a good culture with a good quality of life. I am glad this was exposed to me now, as I was very excited about the role prior. I am reading the rest of the reviews now and can see that this company has a historical strategy of undervaluing its employees by not paying them right. If you do decide to use a contract company or staffing agency, if you must discuss salary expectations upfront, make sure you provide a much higher number than what you expect. I always ask for their target budget if it’s required to submit the application but in this case I should have provided a higher number than their allocated budget because they will still negotiate a lot in the contract phase.