Pros
I learned to be extremely detailed through working with CAF which is something that I have carried on to my other opportunities.
Cons
I have been debating if I wanted to share my thoughts about CAF for a while. In the end I know it won’t make a difference one way or another, because at the end of the day CAF will still be a company and still run their company the way they want to. However, I have decided to at least speak my mind. CAF is, for lack of better words, just the Mean Girls movie live. I was with CAF for a long time and I witnessed this very clearly. The popular girls are the upper management and you have to conform to their ways of doing things for them to accept you. When you have that moment of acceptance, you feel validated and as if you're doing a great job, but the second something slightly negative happens you're at the bottom of the totem pole. Feeling like an absolute failure and honestly, crying yourself to sleep at night. Sure, this company does promote within and you'll see expediate advancements, job opportunities, and even more money. But the truth of the matter is, it's all a front. They want you to believe it's like a giant family and they are there for you, but in reality, they are not. They care only about their investors and not about the people running their investments. The clearest way to see this is through their mission statement, it puts investors first, residents second and employees last. At first, I understood it, it made sense to me, but over time I looked at it with a different approach. Their employees are who will make the residents happy and happy residents means more money for your investors. So, this means it should be employees first, residents second and investors last. Not to mention that there is absolutely no work life balance. Your personal life means absolutely nothing to them. I had to have surgery one day and was made to come into work afterwards (literally on the same day.) I can count on one hand the amount of days I missed work through all the years working for them, but when I was extremely sick and was still working from home, I was constantly getting emails, phone calls, and texts to see when I could come back to the office. (I was only out for 3 days.) Another employee had to have a medical procedure and was asked to change the date of it because it was a conflict with upper managements schedule. I can understand how I may sound like a bitter ex-employee, but the sad truth is, I’ve been gone for a little bit and I have received so many resumes from their current employees who are begging to leave. I have heard all the same stories from their other employees about how they long for that acceptance because like any abusive relationship their words talk up your self esteem and is the only thing you hold on to when they rip you apart, but at some point, it just isn’t enough anymore. CAF is a lot of broken promises and a false sense of security. There is not training department and live based off of a “trial and error” mindset; however, if that error is too large then it’s all on you. There is absolutely no communication, they will schedule things on your property, not tell you about it and then get mad at you when you didn’t tell the residents. I stayed with CAF for far too long especially with a company that provides so many headaches, late nights, and many tears with no 401K.
