USO Reviews

If you are looking for a toxic workplace with inept leadership and some diversity but a complete lack of inclusion, then the USO is for you. Don’t let the Juneteenth social media post fool you, there is such an abundance of dysfunction, leadership failure, conscious, and unconscious bias happening there that it would make your head spin. While companies and organizations across the country claim to be “listening now” to voices willfully unheard in the workplace, my hope is that the lazy and biased HR department and senior management will take an honest look at how they are conducting business if they wish to remain viable in this new environment. With the exception of one member of the C-suite, the entire senior leadership team is too wealthy and elitist to have actually joined the military themselves, yet they enjoy attempting to run the organization as if it is an unofficial branch. The culture is fear-based with a title-driven hierarchy where there is a different standard of treatment for Director-level and above staff versus Senior Manager and below. Expect to be talked down upon and have your opinions deeply discounted, if acknowledged at all; there is an environment where junior staff do not feel valued. There is a profound lack of collegiality in email exchanges among staff. Many of the assertions in previous reviews regarding favoritism are absolutely true. There were clear discrepancies in how individuals were treated, based on proximity of their relationship to senior management staff. There is one particular case where an employee with exceptional proximity to senior management staff was promoted to a position without meeting the time-in-seat nor experience qualifications for the role. This had a lingering demoralizing effect on the department in question at the time. An appalling lack of integrity within the Development department was revealed when another now-former assistant of senior management staff distributed invitations to a secret intra-department mentorship program that were interspersed with meeting agendas. As a result, several individuals who were not selected for the secret program were made aware of its existence. Senior management staff tried to cover their tracks during that meeting, but the damage was already done. No one had any idea that this program existed, how long it was going on, what the qualifications were, nor what the selection process was. It was unclear how participation or lack thereof affected promotions and/or assignments. Unsurprisingly, there were no black or brown employees intended for or selected to the program. The Juneteenth social media post is quite the departure for the USO. Rarely have they ever acknowledged the accomplishments nor achievements of people of color who have served our military proudly; not through Black History Month or any other ethnic history month social posts, cultivation of relationships with current service members or veterans of color, nor consideration of an inclusive entertainment tour that features more than country music. The military has historically been one of the most diverse employers in the country, yet the USO willfully misses the mark on acknowledging and championing that. We’ll see if this post leads to meaningful change, or if it’s just another organization doing performative allyship with no intention to improve anything. Not only are veterans and employees of color looked over, the voices of millennial and Gen Z staff were regularly ignored, despite the USO having an aging donor base and an alleged active strategy to attract younger donors. A former senior management staffer attended a workshop on millennials in California but did not want to do a report-out of the meeting, so he had the department spend money to fly the instructor cross-country, put her up in a hotel and teach the exact same course. Not only did the USO have a team full of millennials who could’ve shared the same information for free, exactly nothing from the course was implemented. This same senior management staffer also decided to take a development opportunity from me by attending SXSW 2018 in my stead (after I put together a full agenda of military-focused workshops to attend), only to once again have nothing to report out when he returned. He shared that most of the presenters were people whom he had already met (which he would’ve known from the agenda I prepared, as their names were present), and that he doesn’t like crowds (which a cursory Google search would’ve also made clear would occur at SXSW), so he ended up simply robbing me of a professional development opportunity. And did I mention this same individual would put dummy meetings on his calendar so he could schedule trips to NYC to get his hair cut and expense his trips back to the USO? Sadly, this individual was allowed to repeatedly waste donor dollars for years before being shown the door. The career pathing at the USO also leaves much to be desired. There was a surprise career development meeting by another senior management staffer and my manager for me, and I was put on the spot about my intended next steps at the USO, without having the opportunity to prepare. I shared this during my exit interview with HR and learned that no other employee was asked to do this. During this meeting, the senior management staffer and my manager both belittled and downplayed my aspirations. They were also either ignorant of or dismissive towards my previous work experience, as no one with a genuine interest in understanding a high-performing employee’s next steps would choose to demoralize them instead, right? I ended up putting together a proposal of increased responsibilities, as well as a request for raise and promotion, which was denied. The senior management staffer told me that he needed “to see more” over the next six months, but that was never defined nor explained, and thusly could not be made actionable. I was told to not bring my lap blanket to any more internal meetings in our exceptionally cold office because it “bothered” this senior management staffer and “took away from my executive presence”. Our office was business casual at the time and we had a jeans policy on Fridays, but my manager who was in this meeting wore jeans every day of the week and nothing was made of how that may affect his executive presence. In retrospect, it appears this senior staff member simply was annoyed by my blanket; he used performative concern about my career development as a vehicle to reprimand me about something completely unrelated to performance and wouldn’t have been sanctioned by HR. I’m not sure that person has any idea of what the definition of executive presence is, but I know it has nothing to do with a blanket. I brought this conversation back up the day I resigned from the USO, and my manager backpedaled so quickly about the things that were said in that meeting that I thought he was going to moonwalk out of his office. He claimed that the meeting caught him off guard as well and that he was equally unprepared for it, but when it came time to stand up for me as I was being disrespected by this person, he ultimately chose to join in instead of defend me. Every employee’s professional development should be taken seriously, and singling out a person of color on staff to belittle their goals and put them down over a personal preference that has nothing to do with performance should not and will not be tolerated in the marketplace as it was in the past.