-Take everything from PROS section above and understand that they're all declining.
-If you have a college degree, aiming high and desires to move fast or annually, or considering different job offers while on the hunt, consider elsewhere or make sure to treat this in its current state as a 'filler job'
-Culture has declined to a nearly a no-identity type of company (basically zero culture).
-Lacks a merit, skills, and peer acceptance based promotion structure. It is simply how good of friends can you make with your immediate and other teams manager, and definitely do not tell the truth on feedback surveys or meetings as this is simply going to 'black list' you with the ones who hold your destiny towards promotion and truly tackling the companies weak points.
-Management that is 4-5+ positions removed will dictate and twist direct operations meaning that solutions or implementations will always be communicated and then twisted or misread [think of the game telephone] 4-5+ times down the line, as well as implemented incorrectly 4-5+ times down the line. This means that your feedback and proposed solution will never be accurately addressed and fixed properly since a director and the board of directors that is 3,000 miles away now need to understand, resolve, and dictate to 3 more managers down the line how to operate. This propagation effect over the past 2-3 years has started to show its impact, and will continue to snowball over time.
-To the same degree as the previous note, the metrics have shifted to look at only 'statistics' where someone with a IVY league degree that is a director who is far removed is looking at spreadsheet data each day and making forecast, adjustments, and guidelines. The odd part is that they'll look at the 'core average' for a specific metric; this is fine and accurate...except when you then decide that the other metrics where someone is well above average are NOT being taken into account. Sorry, please replace this person with our brilliant computer engineers, or a stats 101 book, and every single replacement (person or stats book) will realize this is totally incorrect.
-To the same degree of the above note about statistics. They action plan employees before their 6 month grace period over these incorrectly looked at stats. They have utilized this in the most recent quarter to place approximately 75% - 80% of the sales force on an action plan (I can only use the data from the local teams I have discussed with and used this data from, but this appears accurate across those particular teams).
What is strategically important here is that during this time frame there is NO customer volume, it's historically a lower volume time of the year, AND they will simply pick and choose who they want to 'keep' and not keep just based on their management decision alone (rendering the whole plan somewhat pointless overall).
If you've survived this literal Hunger Games, congrats, you'll be kept for the busiest time of the year that will happen later on, only to prepare for your next Hunger Games moment later in the year (good luck!). Now if I can add one last aspect to this point before I discuss managers let me just add that defunct assistant managers who are overloaded with busy/BS work are the ones that are tasked to CALCULATE. YOUR. STATS.
So anyone still employed and finding themselves in this situation, not only check this work yourself to be sure, but REFUSE to settle for anything other than a triple check from multiple managers, which you can oversee or have a peer assist you with this. With the standard amount of human error, how often our guidelines change, and how poorly we actually account for error I just cringe at the thought of truly calculating for true accuracy that has been misrepresented.
Okay lets talk management:
-Veterans in the core work force of 5+ and as high up to 13+ years have left also due to management, culture, and changes in a mass exodus style of "see you laters, y'all". I have been shocked to find that these were people that were claiming to be "lifers". Although receiving a coupon of $10 to any restaurant, as well as a T shirt as a 'Thank you for your service' along with the lack of promotional or compensational movement would definitely seem like a back handed slap in the face as well considering all the "growth" we talk about. I'm certainly not excited at all about my upcoming 'Gifts' for service here.
-HR is kind of a joke with 1 person at each location, the recent replacement at one location has had no actual formal training. Hmm I wonder how this person got the job, jk just refer to this and any past reviews on how to find a new position at Custom Ink and it's easy to find out that you just need to join the High school clique based crowd.
-Other key middle management positions have started to leave (one particular position and it's successor 6 months later).
-Management is INEFFECTIVE. It should be stupid easy: Compensate for skills, experience, and effective communication, rinse and repeat. Stop trying to pull this lever and that lever and train assistant managers how to micromanage, then measure results, change more levers, and only listen to the micromanagers feedback, then pull more levers...stop. It's simple, someone recently tried to train us to "create moments" for any Custom Ink customers. If you do not want the apple to fall far from the tree then you know what you should do for your workforce? (hint: create [amazing] moments for your employees).
-No joke for this one: Fire or demote nearly ALL Operations directors, why be so far removed? Our company ORG chart is getting out of hand that I'm starting to go cross eyed each time they send an update. Maybe then we can better compensate and create moments for the workforce like in the previous note. As we claim to run "lean" this is one area we clearly do not.
-Assistant managers are essentially a clique-d posse. Did you just give honest feedback, well guess what, now you'll notice ALL the management in general treating you negatively. Check their socials, check their office interactions, and check the promotions within the company and you'll know what I'm talking about. Effective managers lead their team to become their replacements, not shun and blacklist those that give them the feedback on what they directly asked them for. I used to think this was a line of work you'd consider a career, then learned it's just still living in High School.
-Make sure you literally take anything said from management with a grain of salt. Someone encourages you to remove yourself from your role to engage/help a different role in the company for 1 or 2 months, I recommend you get what you can in writing. Because you get told that this will only help you out, however, this now becomes 1 or 2 months out of your current role and your STATS start to suffer. Before hand you're told that you're not 'plugged' in, however this in truth is a total lie (or as my previous note points out, its incorrectly calculated by someone who is not good with numbers or following their word). Not only would this affect your paycheck, but also your potential to lose your job as you'll have a high chance of being put on a plan.
-Do you feel great when you get out of a one on one meeting about 'advancement' great, guess what, they just said that to every other person that they met before and after you with what you feel could be a unique discussion. This is literally just 'fill the void' time since having a one one one meeting every two weeks is mandatory. Stop wasting time please. Either give us that time to truly improve and learn a new skill set that we care about, or just meet with us half of that amount of time, but stop whispering sweet nothings in our ears.
