Animal waste is treated better than staff in the retail & admissions department. - Anonymous employee Colchester Zoo Employee Review

Zero hour contracts. Needing to ask for permission to go to the toilet. Needing to ask for permission to drink from your bottle. You are NOT allowed to keep your water bottles within the department. You must ask to go to the staff room to drink your drink. To do this you would need to obtain the key for the staff room. I say staff room, it was more like a box. Very cold working conditions in the winter and no air conditioning in the summer. Very unpleasant working conditions. You have to work on your knees when working at ground level. For instance, should you be restocking/tidying a shelf which is at a low level you are forced to work on your knees. This is very uncomfortable due to it being a hard laminated floor. You are not supplied with PPE equipment. We was actually told that if we was that worried then we should bring in our own knee mats. Friends of mine who have since left like me have had knee problems. Particular supervisors have their most favored members of staff and are very open about this. Offensive comments were often overheard. Ungenerous lunch break, especially when working 12 hour shifts in the summer. No additional break, just one short lunch break, the bare minimum, 30 minutes. The staff room was approximately 4 meters long and 1/2 meters wide. Colleagues were often made to sit outside in order to have some space, even in the rain. The radiator inside the staff room would never be on. Hot water out of the taps was hit and miss. They also had very small lockers, locks/keys were not provided. A sanitary bin was not immediately supplied until a fellow colleague raised the issue. No official ending time to your shift. Supervisors would at the end of your shift walk around the department picking their favorites to sign off first. Should you have (just one example) spoke to other members of staff during your shift the chances are you would be last to sign off due to this. Morning briefings would often be filled with 90% negativity. Penalized for socializing with members of staff/ex-members of staff OUTSIDE of work which supervisors did not like. Harsh comments were a regular occurrence. Multiple members of staff within my department had been emotionally upset multiple times due to how they had been treated, sometimes even been made ill mentally signed off of work. Females are forced to have their hair tied up. Females are not permitted to have nail varnish. Jokes via supervisors would often be at peoples expense. One example included a supervisor making a mockery of one colleagues sex life. Computer systems in dire need of modernization. Different pay rates. Profit orientated.