Don’t Drink The Kool-Aid! - Manager Junk King Employee Review

1.0
7 Dec 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You get to take things home.

Cons

Prior to me being hired by this company, it was run by a genuinely great person that I would love to have met. Unfortunately the owner passed away a few years ago and the company has been going down hill since. The current leadership is inept and far more concerned with creating an image that they care about the community and their employees than actually backing it up. Junk King Cincinnati will sell anything they haul that is in good shape for profit or the CEO or COO will take it home and brag about it incessantly. The non-profits they “support” essentially get the scraps, but every busted piece of furniture they donate is a photo op and an opportunity to perpetuate the lies. The farce doesn’t stop there. The company culture is also not what it is presented to be to the outside. New hires are sold on below average wages with the "opportunity" of moving up within Junk King Cincinnati and obtaining a successful career. However, management is a revolving door like anything else at Junk King Cincinnati and more than a dozen managers or supervisors have left or have been fired this year alone. The managers who do hang around are bound for the meat grinder. Those folks are essentially being made to sacrifice their personal lives and run the company for the CEO. In return, the CEO offers little guidance and very little oversight or engagement in the day-to-day, topped off by false promises that it'll all be worth it for you. As a result of the CEO's absentee leadership, his managers are unsurprisingly overworked and burnt out. That said, a few managers cling to a glimmer of hope that they can do right by their employees and provide an enjoyable workplace. Despite this misguided hope, the managers of Junk King Cincinnati are unable to truly succeed in their roles because of the CEO's inadequate leadership. The lack of support comes at no surprise given all the vacations, golf outings, working from home for weeks on end and whatever else he can do to remain absent from the office (and set a poor example in the process of doing so). Evidence of this is numerous and obvious to anyone working there, but includes the sad reality that the CEO often doesn’t even know his own employee’s names (a company of around 25-30 full time employees at best and is by no means the mega corporation the CEO fantasizes Junk King Cincinnati to be). When the CEO does engage with his employees, his ego blinds him to his employee's feelings and approval of him. This is best exemplified by the breakfast he cooks for his employees, which involves forced smiles and dragging his employees in at 7AM during a pandemic to eat food prepared in a filthy warehouse. Thankfully, this rarely happened but not as rarely as when the CEO would show genuine appreciation for his employees, who he underpaid ($13/hr for 10-20 hours a week is very common) and often conspired against (If you weren't lucky and didn't benefit from his chronic favoritism, though you were still underpaid and perhaps even more so). In contrast to his COO though, who is a coattail rider and middle aged burnout, the CEO is the "World’s Best Boss". Needless to say, none of this bodes well for the future of a once promising young company, one that was founded on the principles of putting people first. Junk King Cincinnati is now a company built on false promises, lies, finger pointing, crippling dysfunction, taking advantage of their hardest working employees and managers, and profit over people (except the profit isn't there). The shoe will drop eventually, but in the meantime if you’re a fan of sinking ships; wastelands of zero accountability; boys clubs; the absolute worst forms of nepotism; or business practices so shady, they're dimmer than your chances of being happy with your "career" at this company… then you might just give Junk King Cincinnati a shot and perhaps last long enough to be promoted and then scapegoated and fired for CEO or COO’s own failure to actually run their company, which they instead use as a platform for their own self-interests and self-glorification.

Explore other reviews about Junk King

5.0
1 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great pay, great work culture

Cons

Physical job and can get hot

5.0
16 Mar 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great team environment and a job where every day is different. You stay active, meet a lot of customers, and there’s a strong sense of camaraderie among the crews.

Cons

The work can be physical and demanding,

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