Pros
They don’t literally kill you, though I can only assume that they would if they could judging by the treatment of most lower-level staff.
Cons
I’d like to sing the praises of this place. I really would. Unfortunately, it’s just genuinely awful.
The shifts are long and gruelling in winter, often times fast paced and other times so incredibly boring that you’ll be wondering why you applied in the first place.
They enforce a uniform policy. Sure, understandable, if you’re at the very least allowed your own jacket or coat. You’re not even allowed to wear unbranded jackets or coats (or so I was told). They do provide their own, but you need to specifically request a jacket or coat and that is limited to supply so the people who started half an hour before you can just take all of the clothing and you’ll be left with naught, something I will explain happened to me further on. It seems that this place has a very odd case of double standards where it genuinely seems like the more intimidating you look, the more likely you are to get away with uniform policy violations. They also want everyone to wear blue jeans and black shoes. I saw multiple people wearing ripped skinny jeans and whatever shoes they wanted without so much as a word. I was also left outside completely alone with no jumper or coat on a 8 hour shift in the middle of November at (iirc) -1°c temperature. I couldn’t leave my post or radio to anybody because they only provide a limited amount of radios and nobody else was around so I had to put up with being outside in the cold with nothing more than a t-shirt and my determination to get through it.
Let’s get into a rundown of all of the facility-specific issues. There were light fixtures that hadn’t even been fitted in employee areas that hung precariously from the ceiling, there were loose cables on the stairs, there were cables hanging from the ceiling, some of the floor wasn’t able to hold weight for most if not all of my time there on the top floor, it’s very difficult to find any supervisors because the coordinators for events for some reason REALLY love putting all of them in one place, you’re not allowed to buy food or drinks of any kind from the venue (NOT EVEN WATER DURING THE SUMMER), a lot of the exterior doors only open from one side, which would require a long walk around the entire building to the opposite side to gain access if the guy there goes anywhere at any point, stewards were forced to bare the brunt of the public outcry during multiple event delays and cancellations, I was often stationed outside near street access with no way to contact anybody if a dangerous situation occurred, break was 15 minutes for some people and 30 minutes for others with a clear bias for some people and my favourite one of all was the AC unit falling straight to the floor.
Shifts were completely impossible to get for most employees months after opening due to their genius scheme of hiring everyone on zero hour contracts and just letting people go if they didn’t apply to shifts regularly, resulting in what I can only describe as a conveyor belt of meat and flesh to be positioned at various points and left there to waste time doing literally nothing. There was a promise of full training during the application and interview phase. The only training provided was virtual and very brief. Stewards were made to fill in for security officers when they lacked the manpower resulting in the venue’s safety being compromised completely or at least massively degraded.
This job pushed me to my absolute limit, and resulted in me having a mental breakdown and turning to abusing prescription drugs to cope.