So I wanted to take time to share my own personal story of working here. I also want to let you know reader, that you will have to agree to a post employment agreement, stating numerous things. But one of them is that you will not say anything disparaging about the company. If you see negative reviews on here. Employees are risking future employment to make sure the public is aware of the dangers of this place.
I should have known this was not the place for me right away. When I applied they reached out for an interview. However, I was setting by my phone and never received the call. They emailed me an hour later saying they couldn't reach me and needed to schedule a new time for a phone interview. So we scheduled another one a week later. Once again the same issue occurred. My friend came home from work that day, and informed me that he was pulled into an office and had his job threatened for recommending me, even though this was neither of our faults (constant threats of firing are consistant.) Eventually I was able to get an interview. And they stated that the issue was on their end and that the call system they use glitches out. But never apologized for that, or apologized to my friend that they almost fired him over something that is their fault.
After getting hired you will be put through a insane first week of training. Not training for your job though. You will be put through a training course for an LO position, even though only a small percentage of the training class will become LO's. So it is pointless. Especially considering if you do become and LO you have to start over and do completely different training for a few months.
I will admit that I fell for the glitz and glam initially. I had just gotten engaged (this will become important later). And lost my previous job, so this job was a life saver. The co workers in my department were fairly cool people, and they gave us free t shirts. So I was having an okay time. The department I was placed in was recently created so everything was a bit rocky. One of the bigger issues I have with the company, and something apparent from the beginning was the weird frat and bro culture. Especially amongst sales. If you are not in sales, you will find pretty quickly you are not a valued employee.
The issues started to get worse when I showed up late to work once. Now, I must state, that this is my fault, and an employer being upset about that is totally reasonable. However, I am not always able to control this, as I have a number of medical issues, and medication I was on at the time made me over sleep. And for a first offense the punishment was pretty severe. Because of this they basically asked me to stop taking my medication. I was about to get married and was terrified of loosing my job. So I did. I let a corporation tell me I could not take medication. My health started to deteriote and I started to feel some pretty negative side affects. But more on that momentarily.
There was also an issue with a specific manager making women feel uncomfortable and them hating anytime he would come into their departments as they felt he was pretty predatory. He would hardly talk to any men except to belittle them. But would chat up women for extended periods of time and they would constantly complain to no avail. I will say that this claim is vague. However that is how the women feel, and I have seen other employees on this site state the same. So just wanted to also help voice that this is a common story.
This manager would also get mad if you took any time off, like I had to for my wedding. And would pull you into an office and ask why, and then convince you to do otherwise (I still got married, did not budge on this one.)
However, the policy of Lower is that you start with no PTO but are not allowed to take time off without PTO. So, you have to borrow PTO time. So you have to put yourself at a deficit immediately.
So, after taking time off for my wedding. I was no longer allowed to go to the doctors. So now, the job and job requirements are getting stressful. Mandatory overtime, constant threats of termination, a demand that you have to meet daily quotas (despite the system constantly malfunctioning, loans being terrible and no one taking responsibility or getting back to you in a timely manner to get things fixed etc.). And when I asked to go see a doctor because of my health being in decline. I was told no. And that I needed to tough it out till PTO reset in 6 months.
There were constant lay offs due to over hiring. They have a very fast turn around here. No room for growth if you're placed in the wrong departments. If someone leaves a bad review about the company as a former employee. The CEO has read then on morning meetings and then roasted them to the whole company.
In this most recent round of lay offs. They started outsourcing jobs to India and the Philippines. Just so people also know, that means people's secure information is being accessed in an unsecured way across the globe. And we got hacked not MULTIPLE TIMES. So people should not feel secure using Lower, when they have proven they don't care about keeping your personal information safe.
This company also makes working from home an impossibility. Even when I was exposed to someone with covid. They tried to force me back into the office. They don't force masks. So you are told you have to put your co workers at risk. And if you do work from home, you have an even higher minimum daily quota you have to meet. Because they want to make it impossible for people to be safe, keep others safe, and still work normally.
There are numerous managers that will verbally abuse you, and put your mistakes (half the time they were not mistaken, the manager was jawbreaker of the system and then never apologized that they didn't know what they are doing) but they would tag your top managers and send out an email berating you. So you are constantly getting put down, even when you're not wrong.
If you want to be a team lead. Good news is, you don't have to try very hard. Just suck up to the right people, and even if you have no idea what you're doing, and you have worked there a shorter amount of time, and other senior employees are breaking their backs to help the team, the person who sucks up and gets buddy buddy with people will get the job and then take out their frustrations on you.
Hey, you want an opportunity to get promoted and be certified? Great, take this class, if you fail we can't guarantee you'll have a job afterwards. Oh you passed and are a certified underwater now? Well, we don't want to pay you more, so this whole class of people are now just going to another department, we decided we don't want or need someone with a certification.
HR will probably respond to this and ask to email them. That's just so they can get personal information and harm you further. Don't fall for it.
The business practices here are criminal. And the culture is genuinely dangerous. Please be wary. There are many other jobs in the area that will hire you for more money and have better environments.
I have more to say. But hopefully at this point the overall theme is understood.
