Work offers fascinating tasks but suffers from extremely poor management
Pros
- Production floor workers are great co-workers; kind, friendly, easygoing. I've made some great friends there. - Relaxed dress-code. - Interesting and meaningful work - work occasionally involves engaging with fascinating materials - family materials, glimpses into different historical/cultural settings, unearthing past media that bears some importance, whether personal or historical.
Cons
There is a fundamental disconnect between management and the technicians who actually carry out the company’s core work. Technicians are responsible for the entire lifecycle of the service (intake, organization, digitization, and final delivery). We are the ones entrusted with clients’ irreplaceable, deeply personal materials. Despite this, there is a massive lack of trust from upper management. This often takes the form of constant surveillance and punitive responses to minor infractions, such as briefly checking a phone or looking something up online. Salary is extremely low, especially given the level of responsibility, and the work environment prioritizes output volume over quality and employee well-being. A ten-hour shift gets one 30-minute break. Sick time is extremely limited and inflexible. Full-time employees can’t take unpaid time off. All this creates pressure that undermines morale, the care with which client materials are handled, and the quality of the final product. It runs counter to the company’s stated mission. The work itself is highly demanding, repetitive, and, in my experience, frequently involves very long hours. Management showed little flexibility when I requested to leave at more reasonable times and was unwilling to offer differential pay to compensate for extended shifts. As a result, I often left work feeling exhausted and demoralized, with little sense that the technically demanding and emotionally significant nature of the work was recognized or valued. Management decisions have also created significant instability on the production floor. Essential staff members have been terminated without warning under the justification of “restructuring,” causing critical responsibilities to disappear overnight. These duties are then redistributed among already overworked technicians without any corresponding increase in compensation. Beyond the practical consequences, these decisions impose a substantial psychological toll. The production floor relies heavily on camaraderie, trust, and cooperation among technicians, and those relationships are often what sustain morale under difficult working conditions. Abruptly removing well-liked, dependable personnel creates a workplace culture characterized by fear and disillusionment. These conditions have led to extremely high turnover among technicians. Rather than investing in retention, the company appears to rely on continuously hiring and training new employees. This creates a self-defeating cycle: the loss of experienced technicians erodes institutional knowledge, making it more difficult to resolve technical issues, maintain efficient workflows, and uphold consistent quality standards. Management is fundamentally disconnected from the realities of the production floor. I have been instructed by managers to perform tasks in ways that were inefficient or even objectively incorrect from a technical standpoint, and I was criticized for raising concerns or attempting to follow established best practices. This disconnect demonstrates a lack of understanding of the work technicians actually perform on a daily basis. Technicians are routinely overloaded with responsibilities and given unrealistic productivity expectations. This creates a persistent sense that our work is never sufficient, regardless of effort or output. Despite leaving work physically and mentally exhausted, the message conveyed by management is that we still have not worked hard enough. Such expectations are unsustainable and contribute significantly to burnout, low morale, and employee turnover. Management's response to employee dissatisfaction further illustrates this disconnect. Employees were sent an email encouraging them to submit positive Glassdoor reviews because existing reviews were too negative.