In January 2023, Mini Mall took over the small business I used to worked for. The former business was performing well and certainly did not need this messy startup to save it. The owner was simply looking to retire.
I was optimistic for things like technology upgrades for the facilities and health insurance for the employees. I understood that Mini Mall sought to adopt the hub-and-spoke model my team successfully utilized and wanted to learn from us.
However, my team's practices were immediately tossed aside in favor of Mini Mall's unestablished methods. I questioned the functionality and even legality of these methods. I was called combative. I was yelled at within my first week. I was outright lied to. My team was restricted beyond recognition.
As a site manager, I was the highest authority a customer could speak to, but I couldn't do literally anything besides moving people in. I couldn't even process a refund myself!
Before I knew it, my first and last name was slapped onto rate increase notices I adamantly opposed.
By spring, our customers had ran for the hills, occupancy tanked, and the impressive revenue that had made our portfolio so valuable was gone. Any suggestion I made to turn the situation around was ignored. I instead had to promote predatory sales practices established by people with no industry experience.
By summer, customer relations were totally destroyed, integrity was gone, and I had given up. Mini Mall treats their customers like dog vomit. They destroyed what my team created, and then questioned us about the newfound poor performance of our 9 sites. Previous data showed that these locations had never performed this poorly until Mini Mall's interference.
I began to understand the purpose of the site manager title is merely to give customers someone to blame. Several nonsensical positions exist between a site manager and the "president," as he so kindly informed me during a visit in May.
Ground teams deal with all the backlash, and are unable to even escalate a problem to one of these nonsense six-figure earning wieners.
Egos and red tape stand in the way of a successful business and a desirable place to work. Ground teams are left to suffer through the backlash for Mini Mall's bad business practices.
Work here if you're okay with answering for the sins of faceless, uneducated, and inexperienced executives.
