Ocean State Job Lot reviews

So here is the story about OSJL: This is a company run by a group of people who have no professional regard for the people that work for them. In every aspect, their lack of business-labor acumen is on display. For example, they've got cameras everywhere in the store and a team of people at home office just watching employees. They will call the store and report people for the most minor of issues. Management from store through RM is trained to be as unethical and backstabbing as possible. In fact, it is my belief that the only way to survive for any length of time in the company is to become absolutely Machiavellian as possible, not only with other managers but with associates as well. I worked in more than one store and watched it happen EVERYDAY in EVERY STORE. Managers when faced with challenges will immediately turn to bad mouthing everything and everyone from the lowest associate to the company in general. I worked with two assistant managers who would walk around the store complaining and laughing as they mocked the company's motto of being "employer of choice". In my book, that's a cancer on any team, especially from management, and it doesn't provide a good work environment. This attitude has been witnessed at all the stores I worked in. Employees are either great or as twisted as management, mostly to try to curry favor for a promotion. The facilities are not only horrible, but dangerous. In one store I worked at for almost two months, there was nearly zero heat in the middle of a New England winter. Several associates had pneumonia, and I got sick as well. However, calling off for being sick is frowned on and thus the team continued to infect and reinfect themselves all winter long. When heat was finally repaired, it was only in the warehouse, not the main store. The shelving units are so old and rusty, I had to make sure I had my tetanus shot because I would come home with cuts all over from ragged, sharp, rusty edges which I was suppose to work with. Step stools were half broken but never thrown out. Safety stair ladders were few and far between and when in use, management would always come over and give a lecture on keeping them off the floor, despite having product that weighed a lot and was dangerous to life without stair ladders. It got to the point where we just avoided using them. More than once I have seen employees be shunned and then conveniently fired for just speaking out about the conditions of work. One manager I worked with would scream and dress employees down on the floor in front of customers and other associates, completely unethical. When he was reported and then the issues were corroborated by other employees, he wasn't fired but moved to another store to continue that behavior. I know, I ended up speaking to associates from that store as well. I am pretty sure the entire HR department is untrained. One employee reported that her 'mental health' was brought up in an HR meeting about performance. Totally unacceptable. Unethical and perpetrated by that HR department, not their untrained managers. Whatever promises are made, are never kept, unless it's made by the bottom level associates and when they are not kept the employee is fired. This is not a level work space at all and thus it leads to employees who have been with the company for any length of time behaving like lifeless, joyless automatons. Business wise, the company sits on so much product that is worthless, either broken or old or damaged, but refuses to damage it out so stores are amazingly packed to the gills with boxes of stuff in the warehouse. This is dangerous, both a fire hazard and a trip hazard for working freight. I've literally opened boxes of freight to find product with sku codes that date back YEARS sitting forgotten in back corners. Bad business? Absolutely and that's the start. Their buyers are untrained and mostly are culled from family relations or friends of the family that owns the business. While some are great, most are terrible and all of them via for shelf space for their own project products. Nobody at corporate moderates this thunder of voices from the buyers down at the retail level which creates a confusing scene where emails or status updates on displays are constantly being sent down without regard for space or other pet product projects of other buyers. I spent a lot of time just wandering my stores wondering where I'm going to set the newest 'visual' without losing another. This is made more difficult since the company ranks stores performance on how many visual buyers products are set in front locations.You can't squeeze blood from a stone and you can't place 100 products in front locations when you only have 10 endcaps or locations to use. It's horrifying for a person of experience to see a business run in this way. Customers are sold products that are expired, often. Product is mislabeled often. Product is received damaged and then sold to customers without much notice to them. I was told that the company plan was a successful one because they are turning a profit. Fair enough. However, if you consider the current economic climate, a junk shop or dollar store has to be making a profit right now... if the economy turns and people have more spending dollars, they would abandon OSJL. It's not an adventure to shop in these conditions, it's just annoying to most people. Finally, don't bother trying to nail down your job or even the description of your job. Nothing at OSJL is ever set in stone. You will be trained one way and then another manager will tell you that it's wrong. If you put three managers in a room, you'll get 7 opinions and somebody is going to be dragged by the other two. I literally worked for 6 months and never got one full impression of what my job was suppose to be, just a series of very forceful opinions that never seemed to work in any situation I applied it. Freight workers are the least respected people in the company and they do the most work at the earliest hours. Department heads are asked to keep several aisles neat and orderly, but then are forced to run to the registers every minute to help cashiers that they are unable to do their job. I've witnessed several employees just break down in tears over this impossible situation of unknowing work expectations and complete lack of time to do it. Nobody should cry about a retail job, nobody... but at OSJL it seemed common and it didn't matter the position or rank. Moreover, the company doesn't appreciate good work at all which doesn't bode well for motivation. It's a company with an all or nothing motto on correcting bad behavior (when one associate does something wrong, everyone gets yelled at) and that totally kills morale for everyone. Once again, I witnessed this at several stores. That being said, there were some good managers who just made sure their employees were happy and basically just felt the rest of the company should screw off. There were no good motivating managers with kind hearts. Mostly, the advice for all associates is two fold, "it is what it is" and "suck it up".