Where does one start? This company is weird. They've managed to turn white-collar work into a blue-collar process. No one person knows anything about the company beyond their own role. Only the highest levels of management seem to know what the company trajectory is, though most of the time I felt like even the branch directors were making it up as they went along. And the lower down the chain of command you go, the less and less people seem to know and yet they're in charge of entire departments. Because of this, the department focus or direction frequently changes. And so starts the endless cycle of blame and "feedback."
This company puts such an emphasis on "feedback" that it has created a toxic environment of endless criticism, undermining behavior, passive aggressive attacking, and a habit of pushing the blame off on someone else. It's so bad that you go into work expected to hear nothing but backhanded, rude remarks that subtly question your intelligence. And when you don't get that "feedback" you're actually surprised and mildly worried about it because when the "feedback" stops, they've usually already decided you're going to be shown the door.
There is next to no positive reinforcement which only makes you feel like your work isn't valued. The work is already mindless crap that could have been automated ages ago. The company doesn't reward good work even though some employees have been there for DECADES. You will not be given more responsibility, you will not be promoted if you're a regular "business operations specialist" and you will be carelessly transferred to another department when the mood strikes a supervisor or manager and have that lateral move described as a "good thing." It's not. They just needed you in that department because they probably just fired the last guy.
This company is clogged with management. They're constantly parading more and more candidates through the office who are interviewing for the "management trainee" program. Almost all of them are soon to be college graduates from highly recognizable universities (though this seems to be changing because more and more of these top tier candidates seem to be turning them down, according to a manager.) These Management trainee college grads are immediately given supervisor positions (though usually in the warehouse or the text contact department) and expected to know how to motivate and lead employees, with next to no work experience let alone leadership experience. They all inevitably fall into the habit of parroting the more "experienced" managers and fall back on nit picking and criticizing every little thing an employee does in a sad attempt to justify their pointless position and make it seem like they're "managing." I guess it's nice to hear when a genuinely incompetent manager is demoted back to a supervisor role and eventually shown the door.
None of the "skills" are transferable. You learn nothing and they do this intentionally. If this is your first job out of college, know that you are royally screwed if you want to leave. Your work is meaningless and the sad fact is that any company worth working for will be able to see that on your resume. Before you think I'm some sort of disgruntled employee that was fired or let go, I left voluntarily. I knew this wasn't the place for me after six months and carefully set money aside in case they went through a random round of firings. I casually searched for a new position and when the right one came up, with a better salary and better opportunities, I took it and ran as fast as I could and haven't regretted it once.
