Rescue-focused fast paced environment - Anonymous employee Seattle Area Feline Rescue Employee Review

It's incredibly rewarding to work with cats. Their well-being is the rescue's top priority, and it shows. The adoption rates are extremely high, and the cats are exceedingly well cared for. I absolutely recommend volunteering here; volunteers don't have to deal with management and thus are subject to none of the downsides.

Management is, in a word, insane. Employees are given absurd time limits to perform their tasks and are chastised when they inevitably fail. To quote a coworker, "I'm pretty sure nobody can work up to [supervisor]'s standards." They are currently threatening to fire me because of my inability to perform 5 hours worth of work in 4 hours' time. My coworker is apparently often in trouble for the same reason, and she says they have been threatening to fire her for a year. The owner of the company is not as overtly harsh as the supervisor, but she backs up her outrageous demands. Whether the owner is simply operating on bad information or legitimately agrees with the supervisor, the result is the same. The pressure on employees is enormous, and I've heard several have been driven away by management. The supervisor is universally loathed by the employees, and even the volunteers, whose interaction with her is limited, dislike her. She gaslights employees by claiming that prior jobholders lived up to her standards, but this is easily disproved by asking veteran employees, who will tell you that no one has ever satisfied her. You have to have thick skin, the ability to smile and nod when your boss talks nonsense, and probably a spiteful streak to survive working here. (The cats can act as therapists in a pinch, which makes it a little easier.)

Working with the cats is great, and they're given very good quality of care.

The supervisor is downright mean. You won't get any positive reinforcement, only criticism when you fail to meet the ridiculously difficult standards (most of which aren't communicated to you until you're being scolded for not meeting them). I was stressed out and miserable the whole time I worked there, I do not recommend. It's been a while since I worked there but the same supervisor is still there, and from what I've heard the work culture hasn't gotten any better. Oh, and the supervisor is just as terrible to the volunteers, treats them like the inconvenient help they'd rather not have to deal with, rather than a gift to the organization.