Negative work environment and bad management - Anonymous employee Damon Liss Design Employee Review

Office culture: Desks are arranged in a semi-circle, and the principal’s desk is in the center, like a miniature panopticon. Principal spends a large part of the day taking personal calls and berating people loudly on the phone in front of the entire office. He also made many inappropriate and unprofessional comments and seemed to expect employees to laugh. The office has no microwave, kitchen, or coffee machine, so you can’t heat food and have to wash dishes in the bathroom sink. “Free La Croix” is touted as a major office perk. Office culture is to run out, grab a salad, and eat at your desk. Heat is often broken. No rigorous design process. Everything is simply described as “pretty” or “not pretty”. One very indicative experience: An apartment was completing installation, and I and a few designers were asked to “oversee” the move of the client’s belongings from their rental to the finished apartment. When I arrived, nothing in the apartment had been packed and there were no movers save a handyman to do the heavy lifting, as the principal had told the clients we would do it, and they were expecting to have everything at their new home that evening. I found myself frantically packing up the entire five person household’s apartment, including the client’s underwear and personal belongings, and wrapping each piece of barware and their kids’ legos. This experience was indicative of the overall office culture, as the principal put his highly trained staff in the position of being movers and packing up a client’s jockstrap in order to provide exceptional client service.