PLEASE take the reviews of this company seriously!! I know they sound extreme, but they are all true and not exaggerated at all. I learned that the hard way. I have 5 years of experience in the events industry and have worked for large corporate tech companies. I wanted a chance to plan creative and unique events. I knew there were red flags about this company before accepting an offer, but I decided to give them a chance, and they turned out to be 100x worse than I could ever imagine. Here are the facts:
- 4 people left within a few weeks of each other. 3 out of 4 people from my onboarding group left within 2.5 months. That tells you all you need to know, really.
- My first week working here I spoke with the manager about the PTO I needed to take. He approved all the days I gave him and had no problems with it. Then, after I took 2 days off, money was missing from my paycheck. When questioned, the HR person said I wasn’t allowed to take PTO before 90 days of employment and refused to pay me for those days. This was not mentioned in the offer letter or when I originally spoke with the manager to get my PTO days approved. If the manager did not have the authority to approve my PTO, he should have mentioned that from the beginning and been truthful about the policies instead of being misleading. If my manager is the one that made the decision to approve my PTO against company policy, they should have still paid me for those days and updated their practices moving forward instead of punishing me for the manager’s wrongdoing.
- When I was interviewing, I specifically asked them how many hours a week I was expected to work. The manager stated via email this direct quote: “when you are pre-planning your programs that you can keep it to 40 hour weeks, some weeks may take more and could be a 50 hour week if you are really busy.” Once I was assigned programs, I was working 10-14 hour days and also working weekends, even when not operating programs. I was told by another employee that I need to work more hours, because she “worked 96 hours last week” and I saw first-hand the rest of the company doing the same. The manager told me I need to work until midnight every night and weekends indefinitely like everyone else. I’m all about hard work, but this is not sustainable and not a moral way to treat employees. People legitimately work 100 hour weeks every week, never have a day off, and are insanely stressed all the time. So many people cried at their desks. It’s a systematic problem that derives from management assigning an impossible amount of duties to each person, accepting new business when they can’t physically keep up with the demands, and not hiring enough people. They did not pay anyone any bonuses or compensate for overtime. They didn’t even thank people or show appreciation for how hard everyone was working. Instead, they told them to work even more. At that rate, salaried employees were making less than minimum wage per hour.
- They refused to pay me the commissions that I earned. CA law states that companies must pay employees for all commissions earned while employed, unless the contract states otherwise. Their contract did not state that there were any reasons an employee would not receive their commissions. Their commission policy is extremely vague, and they make Account Managers decide amongst themselves how to split commission. This means it is very arbitrary on how much you are paid and is unfair. They purposefully don’t have any documents available that clearly list out how commissions are calculated, so they can do whatever they want and underpay you.
- It took them over 3 months to give me a reimbursement check for expenses I paid for personally.
- During the interview process, they told me this was a hybrid role and emphasized how flexible they are with schedules and working in the office. However, once I started, the manager repeatedly asked everyone to be in the office as much as possible, even though all work was completed on the computer and meetings were virtual with fully remote employees. They paint you a great picture during the interviews but it is all a scheme to hook you in and then not hold up their end of the deal.
- When people resign, they genuinely try everything they can do take you down and they want to see you suffer. They do not handle anything with grace and there is no such thing as leaving on good terms based on how they treat every person who leaves. They try to take advantage of people by using legal jargon to scare you into doing what they want, but it is all unfounded. I was astonished that the so many people on the management team could rally against someone just for resigning and want to tear them down so badly.
- They have Account Managers, Account Facilitators, and Account Coordinators all doing the exact same tasks. They have Facilitators training Managers even though Managers are more senior. This is intentional so they can underpay you.
- During the hiring process, they did not mention anything about a “90 day trial period.” They basically hire you as temp-to-perm without mentioning it at all before you start, which is very manipulative. As soon as I started, I was hit with them saying until 90 days I wouldn’t have a credit card, wouldn’t have a key to the building, certain benefits wouldn’t begin, and more restrictions. None of this was mentioned in the offer letter or contract.
- They do not set you up for success. The training process was a complete joke. The trainings I had took up 3x more time than they needed to because everyone rambled so much and were so unorganized. Then, they threw Account Managers into operating their own events without having the proper training for their internal processes. Multiple Account Managers, including myself continuously asked for additional trainings on certain processes and they refused to schedule them.
TLDR: Do NOT work for this company. They take advantage of their employees, do not pay you what you are legally owed, immensely overwork you, lie to you during the interview process, have horrible turnover due to horrible treatment of employees, and genuinely try to take you down if you make any suggestions or ask questions. This is NOT an exaggeration. The majority of people have had similar experiences. Everyone else is just not talking about it.
