Experience as Front Desk Associate / Assistant Manager
Pros
-Tips -Experience and work for creatives (at high cost to emotional well-being). -Opportunity to apprentice if you can stay long enough. However, they do not seem to want to be very uplifting mentors.
Cons
-Does not pay full OT and does not seem to honor sick pay (* illegal *) Extremely underpaid for amount of responsibilities. No insurance. -Seems to historically target young people with little experience or knowledge of industry for "Front Desk Assistant Manager". Usually there is 2-4 employees filling this role, and everyone is required to be cross-trained on everything- assigning specific positions within the group is not wanted. This position has a huge set of responsibilities beyond any entry level designer. -Huge amount of duties with more work continuously added. Occasionally personal tasks of owners are hoisted onto employees as well. Everything is expected to be done by yesterday. -High turn-over with long training stage, so training seems to become a continuous part of the job in addition to usual duties -Owners/ Artists almost always late (1-4 hours) and take personal days/trips with little to no notice. As balancing the schedule is a responsibility of Front Desk Associate, this adds work and angry customers to the plate. -I and other staff experienced prejudiced comments about clientele from all 3 family members/owners. -Staff have to endure regular tirades from managing owner of this family business on top of everything else. Experience specifically with main owner / manager: -insulting, dishonest, and even attempts to be physically intimidating on occasion. -gas-lighting and manipulative. -Lashes out periodically with extreme anger or paranoia for no apparent reason. Corners staff to do this but also acts horribly during team meetings. -Tries to make front desk staff feel worthless even though they carry the majority of shop responsibilities. -Unsavory, greedy business practices that hurt clientele and employees. -Verbally flogs staff in front of clientele. -Parades young, female staff in front of male clientele, sometimes within minutes of verbal tirades. -All problems / misunderstandings / shortcomings blamed on front desk staff. Gas-lights heavily after emotional blow-ups. This is an extremely toxic work environment where front desk staff serve as emotional punching bags in addition to the workload. You can Google what this is if you are unaware: 1. Tension building 2. Verbal Incident 3. Calm 4. Repeat. This was my experience working here. Everyone would feel it when the manager was getting mad about something so there was always a lot of tension. The owners seem to try to indoctrinate staff into prejudiced, hateful ways of thinking by way of saying "That's how the industry is". In fact, that seems to be their excuse for almost all of their behavior and unprofessional business practices. It is truly devastating that the young, creative community of Seattle are vulnerable to businesses like this.
