Muller Reviews

There are significant cons with the organization, the biggest being a culture built around coercion, intimidation and impulsive decisions made by “A leader” without business acumen. The talent amongst the ranks now, and in past years has had to endure routine belittling, constant threat of being terminated and irrational and disrespectful behavior from an unappreciative owner. I quickly learned the organization was not operated by making calculated, rational decisions with the company's best interest in mind. The direction and decisions were made on impulse by one individual without the skillset or business acumen to understand basic business principles, for example on an elementary report a simple bar graph inspired an outburst where it was determined "no more fancy pictures" referring to said bar graph. There was a significant disconnect with comprehension of basic business principles, which often lead to positive initiatives being ended even though the company would benefit, it was counter productive regularly and contributed to terrible morale. Leading a staff of both union and non union(management) I spent a significant amount of time doing damage control to keep my team together due to the disrespect and belittling verbally or via email from "a leader". The “leader” directed the same belittling towards her family who work for the organization as well which was difficult to watch, at times this lead family members to tears. As much as the family recognize there is a problem, they are not in a position to resolve the issues. As a manager, as a leader, it was a difficult environment to accomplish anything positive due to the road blocks stemming from a lack of business acumen or direction. At one point I was told we as an organization did not have a long term plan, a 6 month, one month, one week or one day plan. Like any committed employee, leader, and manager my team and I continued to work to get better with significant success with the data to prove it, but using the data/facts only lead to a contentious relationship ultimately leading to “the leader” confronting me and belittling my efforts, goals, my team and unfortunately disrespecting my family. Unfortunately the culture hinders productivity, buy in, gratification, development etc and allows deceitfulness, vindictiveness, resentment and dissension to thrive. There is significant talent and opportunity here. Unfortunately its being squandered. Several 10-20 year employees have left in the past year and a half as a result, which is extremely uncommon in this industry in this region. PTO is minimal compared to competitors, and there are hurdles to use it as well. The portfolio does not keep up with market trends, and when it finally catches up its too late to find brands to compete putting sales at a complete disadvantage.

Ownership & some managers are terrible. Every employee walks around on eggshells.