Good Place - QA Associate Joydrop Employee Review

- Beautiful products - A business model that helped (some) local artists - Allowed the opportunity to personally interact with customers and build connection

- Unethical hiring practices. This one deserves a direct anecdote… The business prides itself as being a feminist haven, a storefront run by women for women to empower women. However, when I worked there, I saw a stack of resumes that had been given to our store from people who wanted to work there. These resumes had been vetted by some of the team members and were waiting for manager approval before any of them were chosen for interviews. You had individuals in this stack of applications that were wayyyy overqualified to be working a retail job— people who were registered nurses or had masters degrees etc., however I believe they were immigrating from other countries so were having a hard time entering the professional sphere. You also had people who seemed like regular candidates, individuals like myself at the time who’d had several years of retail experience and were looking to get through school and stuff. Anyways, on these resumes, people from the Joydrop team had literally stuck POST IT NOTES to the resumes, which GRADED the applicants in the most demeaning ways. I kid you not, there was literally a note on every resume that said “STYLE: B-“ or something, ranging anywhere from F to A like it was highschool. Beyond that, comments like “stuttered too much”, and “I don’t even know why she bothered to apply” were added below the grade. I was shocked and appalled. This was the only retail business I’d ever worked at that had the associates even commenting on the resumes before the manager saw them… It made me wonder what my grade was, before they decided to hire me. :( Like what is this, highschool? Felt like I had just found the Mean Girls burn book. - Extremely disorganized business practices - Outdated and difficult retail software - An entire binder full of closing procedures that are entirely too poorly laid out for individuals who have 15 minutes to get everything done - Lack of respect amongst team members due to isolating nature of job - “You don’t hear from me unless you’ve done something wrong” management style - Toxic gossiping and bullying of other team members and other people - Schedules are not shared with team members effectively resulting in missed shifts - Communication from management is very poor - Incorrect(?) training methods. Individual who trained me right before quitting impressed upon me that certain behaviours were acceptable for the store (though she did not speak highly of the company itself so that should’ve been a red flag as well) which ended up getting me reprimanded (ie; sitting on a chair or leaning on a wall) - Will not accommodate employees who require health modifications. I was severely injured in an accident a few months prior to being employed and while recovering, I found it very difficult to either sit or stand for long periods of time. I told the manager this when I was hired, and in training was told sitting was allowed— in fact I was encouraged to do so. The individual who trained me was very empathetic to my circumstances, which was really lovely. However, when an associate from a different store in the city walked in to drop something off and saw me sitting, she told the manager who then (days later) told me that was unacceptable. I spoke with her again about my injury and she told me that the only accommodation she would be able to make would be to cut my hours. Which, obviously, as someone who still had bills to pay and wanted to work, was not going to work for me. It appeared to me a weird power struggle, to demand I stand when nobody was in the store. There was no logical reasoning behind this rule. It was very dehumanizing.