Daedalus Books Reviews

– Management is quick to criticize and slow to praise – Employees often feel underappreciated and unsupported – The definition of horizontal mobility; absolutely no opportunities for advancement – No room for creativity. New ideas or even best practice suggestions are met with stubbornness and even hostility – Mediocrity and subpar work is tolerated; as long as you find out what management wants to hear, you can get away with doing very little (it's obvious which employees have one foot out the door to retirement) – Meetings that are supposed to be "brainstorming sessions” is really a display of chest-beating and public a questioning of your intelligence – Unprofessionalism by those at the top (e.g. arriving later than most employees, leaving during work hours for personal activities, leaving early to “work from home,” taking vacation during inopportune times for employees) – One individual at the top is excessively mean, condescending, and are never held accountable for his/her actions. If you’re in a department that works closely with this person, your workday will be insufferable. – Favoritism: some departments are held to a higher degree of standard than others

Call center management was absolutely terrible at the top, lazy in the middle, and all of the actual work was performed by a few the "Customer Service Specialists" who were undervalued & overworked and some CSRs who actually cared. The company was lucky no penalties were forced after the ACA required employers to offer health benefits to anyone who worked 35+ hours. When the law first went into effect, they did nothing to acknowledge it. Eventually they made cuts to hours to loyal employees who had been working "full time" with zero benefits, instead of repaying them for 6+ years of employment with health insurance. While the starting wage is higher than minimum wage and is decent for retail, the lack of benefits and no significant raises has led to a VERY high percentage of employees who have needed to file bankruptcy for medical bills and other debt. A quick search for the company name in Maryland court records will show dozens of rulings where the company has been asked to garnish wages for employees in financial trouble. Payroll and HR should realize the amount of time & effort they put into making sure wages were properly garnished is a hint employees are underpaid/not earning a living wage. The sexism by top management in the call center was also noticeable. One of the highest in the center, who may or may not have left the company, would make creepy comments & ask inappropriate questions of female employees. There was an incident in which someone accidentally got what appeared to be menstrual blood on a chair. Instead of cleaning/disposing the chair and moving on, the individual in question went around and checked the cubicle chairs of all female employees to see who was to "blame." The company offered a good amount of sick & vacation leave, but would actually penalize anyone who took more than a small portion of it for taking off too much time. It was clear this leave was meant for the executives to be able to take that much. Due to leave carryover, employees who are leaving after 10+ years are getting 5 figure payouts. This cannot be good for a company already in financial stress. The environment is very vindictive, even at the lowest levels of employees. If you did anything or said anything that someone didn't like, they would act like any small historical mistake was a huge offense. They keep records of small mistakes (typos in orders, etc.) on file for each employee and instead of reviewing them as part of a normal company review cycle, they only bring them out when they want to criticize an individual or need to make large cuts. For the employees they liked, they would have 10x the mistakes as others but would not be reprimanded in any fashion.