ANDROS Reviews

An appallingly rigid business. The MD is an incredibly strange man and has built a suspicious, inhumane & unsupportive culture, accordingly. His paranoia loom over the head office like a dark cloud. You have a simple choice on joining this company. Either embrace the rigidity of the 1950s office environment, and forget the flexibility we now associate with every business operating in 2018, or it won’t work. Every attempt to find logical, middle-ground, through adult to adult conversation, will be dismissed out of hand. The question for me was ‘why would anyone accept this?’ Maybe if this business was CV gold, its name instantly providing proof of working at the very top of your game, I could start to understand it. However, employees, software, flexibility, ways of working and IT is befitting of a company in the bottom class of FMCG. Maybe some people really, really like jam, to the point they’re prepared to suffer indignity to help sell it? It is good jam, to be fair. My suspicion is the only reason anyone would put up with this is, your confidence is so shattered, you doubt your ability to succeed in a world where you are not being denied basic empathy. From some longer term employees, there is the unmistakeable air of Stockholm Syndrome with extreme rigidity and dead-eyed embracing of the illogical. Others are able to laugh at the situation, play the game and compartmentalise their working life. You will need to fall into one of these categories to stay. Forget WFH. Forget coming in a little late to drop the kids off. Forget sick pay in year one. Forget bringing new ways of working. You sit where you are put and stay there until the whistle blows. Don’t even think about putting headphones in or you will suffer the humiliation of a public dressing down, as if you’d been caught wearing a wire and transmitting information to rival companies. On arrival (they hold it back during the interviews to stop candidates running out screaming), you will be presented with the most patronising 3 page document of rules you will ever have the misfortune to read (although, it is comedy gold, for all the wrong reasons). Alot of this document is geared towards employees incorporating the cleaning into their responsibilities. Personal highlights within the 3 page document (everyone I’ve shown it to has their own favourite) “Please be conscientious about utilising the space in the dishwasher correctly. Think of it as a daily Tetris puzzle” (Attempting to incorporate light-heartedness into the creepiest document of all time) “When you leave the toilet, take a look back & leave them clean” (They don’t trust you to handle a trip to the toilet) “Please be careful not to mark the walls” (For the toddler cravings, within us, when in possession of a crayon and an unblemished wall) “Be prepared for meetings” (Ranging from the mind-bogglingly specific right through to the absurdly generic) I would encourage you to ask yourself some serious questions before you join this company. For starters, am I happy to take a holiday every time I need to be at any appointment within Monday to Friday, 0830-1730? Andros UK is deserving of contempt and should be laughed at. However, beware, the eccentricity and silly rules are the lighter side of an extremely sinister, dinosaur of a business.