Collective Alternative Reviews

I worked at Collective Alternative for 7 months and as crazy as this sounds, that is a long work life at CA. Besides the leadership team, employees at CA come and go at an alarming rate. In my short time there, 10 employees left. 7 of those employees were fired and 3 of them quit. If this sounds like a red flag, you are not wrong. The work environment at CA is toxic; and it all trickles down from the bad leadership of the owner, Amanda Parker. Here are the ways Amanda Parker makes working for her and her company unbearable: • She micromanages every single piece of content/work. No one feels like they can take ownership of their work because Amanda must review, approve or change every little thing that is given to clients. This makes employees feel like she never trusts them to do their job and they also feel no ownership over their own work. • She never takes ownership for her own mistakes and instead blames her employees. Unfortunately, if micromanaging was her only leadership error, CA would be a lovely place to work. It was confusing to me if she would approve a piece of content you did, but then a mistake or issue is found later by a client, she will then blame you for that mistake. And she doesn’t just blame you; she may berate and belittle you in front of the entire team. She may yell and scream at you. She may tell you how much money you cost the company because of your mistake. She may turn others (usually her leadership team) against you to take the blame off herself. No one wants to make a mistake, but she piles on so much work that you must decide between providing your work late or risking your work containing a mistake. This creates a constant fear in her employees. • Her attitude can change multiple times in a day. I spent more than half of my time at CA trying to gauge Amanda’s attitude at any given time. I even started asking her on a scale from 1 to 10 how irritated she was before asking her a question. She thought this was funny, which I find telling that she knows that she is so unpredictable but does nothing to improve her attitude or leadership abilities. People are scared to ask her questions but also scared not to, for fear of making a mistake. Not one week went by while I was working at CA that Amanda Parker did not yell at someone in an abusive way. • Amanda expects you to work all the time. I worked every night and almost every weekend during my time at CA. I’m a hard worker, so at first, I found this exciting, but I soon realized I couldn’t keep up with the amount of work she expected from me, and I also had no work/life balance. Every employee at CA is battling burnout. Especially the leadership team. • She is the queen of gaslighting. Amanda made me feel like I was one of the team at first. She is great at manipulating people by buying them lunch, taking them out to get their nails done, private car rides where she opens up to you. She soon makes you feel like you belong there, but unfortunately, that time comes and goes. Just when you feel like you belong at CA, she starts pitting other employees against you and saying negative things behind your back. Slowly you realize that she is manipulating you to feel like you belong all while also blaming you for issues and mistakes that may or may not be your fault. • She has no empathy. How do I know this? She told me. Once we had an employee whose family was in the hospital due to Covid. She told me that when she heard that, the first thing she thought was “Great, now we need to find someone to do her work.” She cares about her company and herself above all. • She’s a jealous boss. She wants everyone to love her, but she knows they don’t. That is why she has to frighten her leadership team into loving her. The 3 employees on her leadership team will never say anything that would even be considered constructive criticism about her even in private. I did not feel comfortable talking about any of my issues or reservations with the leadership because I KNEW without a doubt that they would report what I said back to her. I saw them do that exact thing to other employees. Unfortunately, the above listed issues are just SOME of the ways Amanda Parker makes working at Collective Alternative unbearable. You may ask, “How is this possible? How could a boss treat her employees like this and still be in business?” Well, that is simple. First of all, there is no HR department. And she has assembled a team of 3 young women on her leadership. To me, these women are in an abusive work relationship. Not only does Amanda provide these employees with paychecks, she also has manipulated each of them in different ways into thinking they owe her their undivided devotion. This leadership team will agree with anything Amanda says, they will fire people for Amanda, they will defend her and take the blame for her. They are all talented individuals that would thrive at other companies but are under the heavy hand of Amanda Parker. There was no one on the leadership team that I felt comfortable confiding in about some of the issues I had at CA. I witnessed, myself, all the members of the leadership team tattle-telling on other employees for things they had said or mistakes they had made. These women also get blamed and yelled at by Amanda, but she feels like that is just what being part of a "family" is all about. I would highly recommend not working with this “family”. My life has dramatically improved since leaving this toxic workplace.

This job was quite an experience to say the least. Looking back at my time there, a few memories stick out to me that I have to share. Early in the year, we learned that we had just lost a large client. A new hire at the time had been working on that client, putting in hours of overtime that went unnoticed. Understandably, the employee was disappointed by the news and said they were sad the work they had put in had been for nothing. We saw nothing wrong with that comment, but the president of CA, Amanda Parker, apparently did. Her reaction shocked everyone, and quickly showed all the new hires who they were dealing with. She cursed and screamed at the employee in front of everyone, calling them incredibly degrading names. Senior management watched and said nothing, as is very common there. We never saw an apology for the behavior. From then on, everything myself and my other co-workers did was out of fear that we would be humiliated next, and we were all correct. I watched every single one of my coworkers cry multiple times while being degraded in front of others over the months. Even senior management members, who I imagine are used to it by now. I have countless stories of employees being fired in front of others to be made an example of, "unprofessional" behavior from a member of the senior management team that I would prefer to be vague about, and times when Amanda Parker would lie to employees' faces and say they were doing great, only to turn around and fire them without telling them why. I haven't even mentioned the racist and extremist remarks I have heard from Amanda and a member of senior management, because frankly, they are difficult to hear. In my opinion, employees should be free to have whatever political or religious beliefs they want if the work is not affected. Amanda would disagree. During my interview for the job, she had the audacity to ask me who I would vote for. It turns out, I had it easy. There were countless times I watched her vet other job applicants' social media accounts and say we could not hire them because they "look like a liberal", "are wearing a mask in their photos", or even because of their race. I was appalled at many of these comments, and am ashamed that I didn't take a stand and walk out the door sooner, and I know the co-workers that stayed did not last much longer than I did. While there were good days at CA, I would not recommend it to anyone who favors their mental health or has any sort of self-respect.