I would like to start off this review by admitting that when I took this job right out of my master's it was always my intention to move on from the company within a year. It was not what I wanted to do at all, but I needed to make some money and why not do it in a part of the country I've never been, right?!
Now, I did not expect the situation to deteriorate at the rate it did. It has been a little over a month since I left this sorry excuse of a business operation (I just want to specify to mitigate the ensuing internal witch hunt that always seemed to occur when a review was posted during my short time at the company) and it was undoubtedly the best decision I've made. I believe I was the 16th (?) employee to leave the company in the last year, 4th in my position, which simply speaks for itself. Nevertheless, I want to at least make the situation at this company public knowledge to ideally save any future employee from to the horror I was exposed to. I really don't even know where to start with the laundry list of grievances these people pulled but here goes nothing. (Feel free to silently correct my grammar in your head)
1. Right before I left the company they had me in charge of two entire magazines, both Canada and US, because apparently the office in Canada was too incompetent to handle their own content, but that's neither here nor there. It amounted to a total of 18 or so articles and 60-70 pages worth of content. This was all expected to be completed within a month and arbitrary, utterly ridiculous deadlines were consistently assigned (like finishing one magazine 2 weeks after it was assigned). Not only was I in charge of the writing but also the logistics (i.e. setting interviews, collecting pictures, page layout, etc.). They expected top executives from leading corporations to cater to their deadlines when, quite simply, they could care-less about their meaningless magazines. Sure, it is a form of marketing and exposure, but the reality is they became multi-million and in some cases billion dollar corporations without your magazine and will be fine with or without you.
Crazy expectations aside, the real kicker is what happened after I left the company. Things (we will return to these in a bit) had built-up to the point of no return and I knew I had to leave the company by Christmas. With that being said, I wanted to complete both the magazines I was assigned and did the majority of content for. When I did end up leaving almost all of the 2nd magazine was done besides some of the editing. Despite the fact I wrote almost all of the US magazine, A vindictive management member decided he would really stick it to me by not including my name on the by-line (jokes on you bud, I didn't want to be a journalist). You may be asking yourself, 'wait isn't that illegal... some sort of plagiarism?' That's exactly what I thought when I learned about this! Admittedly, I am not an expert on the subject and do not want to speculate about the legality of such a bold move by these new wild west cowboys who are so consumed by their wealth that they think they're above the law. Therefore, the National Board of Labor Relations' legal department as well as a Copyright lawyer seemed the most appropriate experts to investigate such a matter. Stay tuned for the result of the investigation!
2. The treatment of employees at this company is admittedly dire, but the way they treat women is somehow more appalling. I heard them treat excellent people with such disregard it made my stomach turn. One person on the management team repeatedly called a woman he worked with a word traditionally used to describe a female dog behind her back and one of the more senior members described one of the employees as 'not being all there in the head.' Beyond this they had total disregard for their employees having to take care of their kids and reduced several of the women to tears on multiple occasions.
3. Generally speaking, the management also uses fear and passive aggressive tactics to 'motivate' their employees. For instance, my boss sat no more than 20 feet away from me and almost always sent passive aggressive emails with directions, usually right before he left the office. A real leader. Additionally, they threaten you constantly and try to use your talents to line their pockets. The pay isn't particularly great either.
4. This company has water-coolers. Unfortunately, I'm not kidding. It's like office space but worse. They're super productive too. If they didn't do them I'm not sure how anything would get done.
I could talk about the insanity of this company for hours but I hope some of the things above paint a general picture for how bad this situation really is. I haven't done it full justice but in all honesty you can't imagine how bad it is unless you live it. I would strongly advise against working for this company.
p.s. Someone from the management team is probably going to write a positive review right after this one is posted to make it seem better. They've done this many times.
p.p.s. In their latest issue they included a felon in their hot 100 list.
Ta ta!
