Spoonflower reviews

Spoonflower is an insidiously toxic work environment, primarily because it heavily markets the work culture as “positive”, “inclusive”, and “creative”. All of these things are systemically fraudulent. While you will be able to find these values within your coworkers, it is in no way supported or inspired by the efforts of management and leadership. You are expected to fully buy into the company culture or face being ostracized and demonized by leadership. Favoritism is rampant and obvious, while retaliation is common. Management “positivity” is toxic and completely blind to flaws and issues, and makes absolutely no effort to improve morale, working conditions, or efficacy of the team. “Inclusion” is performative, and is often forced by intentionally singling out people of color or marginalized groups to be in media releases while in no way listening to their feedback or including them in the marketing team or leadership. “Creativity” within the team is almost always squashed in favor of supervisors taking on a “do it this way even though it is inefficient and dangerous because that’s how I always did it” attitude. Even if a suggestion is taken to heart, supervisors will take the credit for their team making efficiency innovations even when it is very clear to the rest of the team that the supervisor did not do a single bit of legwork, leading to several members of the management team being promoted not due to their knowledge, talent, or work ethic but because of favoritism. Leadership is bloated, refuses to delegate out tasks even within other rungs of leadership, and then fails to address known issues because they “do not have time” even if other, lower-level leaders are eager to come up with action plans. Work-life balance is severely lacking. Employees have been punished for deaths in their families, the needs of their children, illness, or generally needing time off. All PTO is scrutinized and questioned. Employees are expected to be constantly checking and reading an endless barrage of largely pointless emails, even when at home, but are not allowed to have their phones on them on the factory floor – unless permitted by the supervisors. So of course, all the supervisors carry and check their own phones. Leadership will leave you hanging on important issues for days on end, but reprimand employees if they take more than an hour to respond to an “urgent” email. The mentality of how the company is run is incredibly fundamentally flawed in that it sets up anyone on the operations team for failure. The only way to succeed in this company is to keep your head down and do exactly what you are told, and never question it or show ambition. Don’t dare breathe the word “union”. Unfortunately, the job attracts a lot of driven creatives who see issues and care about the success of their jobs and attempt to problem solve only to be shut down and treated poorly for questioning authority. Training is poorly designed and outdated because those who write the training have not worked full shifts on the machines in years, leading them to make decisions not based on reality. The viewpoint has strayed away from training operators technical skills to the point that many do not know how to troubleshoot problems, and instead treat the symptoms of issues rather than the root cause – like going to the doctor and getting cold medicine for a sinus infection. This lack of knowledge on how to understand the machinery and address the issues from a technical perspective leads to increased downtime and machine disrepair, as well as low morale. If an employee does not feel like they are trusted to learn their job with competency, and the company treats them as if any warm body can just “push buttons” and get the job done, and requires absolutely no skill, why should the employee value learning any skills? Why should this job matter to them over any other? This causes a feedback loop of diminishing returns. The management doesn’t trust the employees to be technically proficient and actively voices that to their faces, often accusing the workers of being “lazy”. Comfortable office chairs were removed from the print room because it “looked bad” for operators to relax for a moment, even if they were working on computer tasks at the time. Reviews and supervisor feedback are often not specific or actionable, so even employees who want to try out of love for the job are railroaded into eventually not caring. As a result, staffing is so low that people have to be trained quickly to replace the intense turnover, and with each new generation of operators, less and less technical information is relayed and fewer and fewer veteran employees remain to effectively mentor. This causes an increase in the speed of turnover that has led to a severe staffing crisis. All of these problems are further exacerbated by the management being physically removed from the factory floor, as they spend all of their time in a quiet, cool, cushioned office away from the machinery and staff in such a way that they have no concept of the day-to-day anymore because they no longer see it. They still refuse to adequately delegate factory-immediate tasks to the team leaders actively spending their day on the factory floor. Those who take initiative risk being reprimanded for acting outside their rank. There is a lot of internal upper management bragging about upward mobility within the company, but sought-after higher paying jobs hire extremely rarely, and are outside of the factory tasks entirely. All upward mobility within the factory is marginal and poorly defined. Even in the fleeting moments that higher paying jobs are open, factory employees are often left behind in favor of hiring externally because the operations turnover is so bad that it is critical to keep factory employees where they are, regardless of their skill or credentials. Sustainability is a joke; huge dumpsters of fabric are thrown away daily. Because employees are not trained in technical skills, a lot of unnecessary waste occurs that could be otherwise avoided. Quality control has also declined drastically since the pandemic due to demand way outpacing the realistic capacity given the current staffing and machine issues. Safety has always been a major issue, because no one in training positions is adequately prepared to safely instruct new hires on lifting techniques for machines designed without ergonomics in mind. Injuries are common and not always reported, even if brought to the attention of supervisors. Even when safety issues are known, shortcuts are often taken either by the company, or supervisors encouraging staff to be faster get more product out the door. Overworking yourself to burnout is both expected and glorified. Precautions for covid were touted as being well enforced, but in many instances machines or tasks would necessitate consistently being less than six feet from a coworker. Noisy conditions in the new factory make it impossible to communicate without being less than three feet away from a partner and still speaking very loudly. Hazard pay was discontinued at the same time that shifts were being cancelled so the team could get tested, as active covid cases were discovered in the factory. Employees have been told on a few occasions to ignore the smell of gas in the building by the supervisors. Do not expect help from HR, either, as they are prone to gaslight the employees or give complete non-answers. All of these issues have been brought up time and time again for at least the past five years, and no real effort has been made to actually make positive changes. A lot of employees hoped for better with the new factory and restructuring of operations, as well as the hiring of a Safety Officer and Sustainability and Inclusion Officer, but neither have demonstrably improved working conditions. A lot of minor things are being picked at to pay lip service to the fact that improvements are being made without any acknowledgement of overarching systemic issues. No ill will towards these newcomers; they joined an already broken system and cannot put out the fire from inside the house.