Altar'd State Reviews

Basically everything else. This company fabricated itself behind “Stand Out For Good” but it does NOT SOFG. The CEO, Aaron Walter’s hides behind it being a predominantly woman company saying he “supports women” but will turn around and make sexist remarks and believes feminists are wrong. Visits from the District Managers sent panic through the stores because expectations kept raising while staffing kept dropping. This location has been without a store manager on multiple occasions now and will make its Assistant Store Managers (with no previous experience) take on all the store manager duties with no real direction or coaching, while still expecting the same results. They also do not properly compensate for those situations where an ASM or keyholder is taking on extra responsibilities. Keyholders are offered very very minimal benefits and with the pay cuts happening it’s only going by I get worse. They used to do quarterly bonuses, no more. They used to do annual trips for the store manager, no more. They used to have a nicer dress code, no more. The longer I worked there the more the benefits or perks from working for the company were being taken away. They raised wages in 2022, realized that was a business decision they couldn’t afford and are now back tracking and lowering EVERYONES pay while cost of living is at its highest.

I will start by saying that I am still recovering from how verbally abusive and unstable the CEO is. When you have a core that is rotten the whole Apple eventually turns bad. The CEO is the example of how you shouldn’t treat people and unfortunately this then trickles into the executive team and other leaders. Examples: the CEO on multiple occasions has stated “ If you are unhappy than I would be more than happy to pay you to leave” not I will try and fix the issue … if you are no longer a “culture fit” you are not welcome. Culture Fit at Altard State means you are not allowed to have an opinion, you are expected to listen to the CEO’s religious, political and any other views he feels necessary without being able to have a voice to speak back. On multiple Friday All Store All Associate calls( that there was never payroll provided for-think about the entire company being on a 2 hour call every Friday there was never enough payroll for that … you were expected to be on that call no matter what working or not) he spoke about abortion, single mothers and I quote “ women if you date or marry a fool don’t be surprised when you create a fool” he spoke about black people as if they were an alien race. Stating on one call “you know they never seen a white person playing basketball before” he also played an entire video of Emmet Till and showed photos of his murder, then requiring the entire company again without payroll to write a black history report and submit it to him stating “I know more about black history than any black person working for me” …. This is all just the icing on the cake of what is very very wrong with the CEO, the executive team that sits next to him , HR and the company as a whole. Everyone in the company deserves to be treated better and provided with a normal stable working environment. At no point should HR sit by and subject its employees to the rants of the CEO and still feel comfortable in their role. Severances are provided to those who want to exit constantly as a tool to quiet employees who have spoken up In discomfort and disbelief. What you see is not what you get, beware, read reviews and know a lot of the good ones are fluff, the whole company during lockdown were asked to leave positive reviews. “Asked “as in you don’t have a choice and will be asked until you do it. And as for a certified great place to work… all associates provide reviews for their leaders and the first few times this happened people Felt they could be honest and they were. Unfortunately stores thought they were reviewing the company as a whole and not specifically just their leader, the CEO took initiative and fired everyone who received surveys not to his expectations. So now when stores take the survey and don’t want their leaders to get yelled at or fired for not getting scores he wants they all get 90-100% because they better than to be honest. Not at all because they are reviewing the company because they are scared.