I was explicitly told, "Fake being perky or you'll be written up" in a performance review with my Team Lead. If you were a quiet introvert (like me), you had to go out of your shell or get in trouble. Someone actually complained to my Lead because I only smiled at them in the hallway instead of verbally saying "good morning." Really?
They always hired outside the company for management positions in the Licensing Department. There was no opportunity for advancement; they would dangle a "promotion" (no more money, just a title) in front of you like a carrot. Then at your next one-on-one, they'd say "work on A and B to get this promotion." Then at the next one-on-one, it's "ok now work on C and D." You were never good enough.
They also value personality and friendliness over whether you could competently do the job. I eventually left because an immature coworker was inciting drama and making fun of me on a daily basis, often right to my face, and management did nothing. The last I heard, he'd been promoted to a senior position on the team.
The quality control process is a joke. With 80+ decision points to make on one piece of processing, if you made even one error, the item was "failed." They were told over and over again by every single new person to the team that using "failed" was detrimental to the well being and morale of the employees, and they didn't care. They told us that it would not ever be changed. QA failed work if they didn't like you, and passed work from people that they were buddies with. Too many failed pieces of work and you were disciplined. I had a 96% success rate - the highest on the team - and yet I was never promoted because I'm a quiet person and other people misread me as rude or stuck up. My manager never went to bat for me.
