-Promised salary is a lie
-Hours are longer than stated
-Poor treatment of staff -pressure tactics employed
I worked briefly at Bamboosh not too long ago and to say it was one of the worst jobs I have ever had is no exaggeration. Starting with the interview process, I was given the job almost straight away which at the time seemed great but this was to detract from the fact that it isn't this glossy marketing job that they seemed to be advertising in the preliminary interview. I had to come back for an observation day which would be the final 'test' to see if I was the right fit for the job but the adjective 'observational' is honestly a joke. They had me sit in a costa writing reams about marketing terminology and answering rather personal questions about myself. It was an intense procedure as the individual who I was meant to be observing but most of the time was hidden round the corner so that I wouldn't be able to tell the job was handing leaflets from a charity stall liked to keep reminding me through the day that only the most hardworking and best people get the job and that I was lucky to be there as most people where sent home after the first hour. This was frankly a brainwashing tactic to guilt you in staying there and due to the nature of the questions they made you feel weak and lazy if you wanted to leave. I ended up sitting in this costa for 8 hours and due to the amount of writing I had to do I had no time for lunch or even a bathroom break. Also they promised me a salary of £90 per day with commissions working 9am-6pm but this is a complete lie.
Which brings me on to my next issue, the working conditions and false promises. Despite originally applying for part-time work due to dependents I have at home the person who interviewed me was also to be my team leader and changed my status to full-time saying that the CEO wouldn't hire me if I was part time and he was only looking for eager individuals -in other words I took the job because I believed that I would be able to work part time and the next thing I know I'm required to work 6 X 12 hour shifts a week despite being 'self employed.' Being self employed usually means you have some control over the hours you work but at Bamboosh it's a con so that they can't be charged with criminal activity for making you work more than 40 hours a week. Even on Sunday, which is your one day a week off, your team leader phones you to have a 30 minute discussion about your goals for the week which I had to spend two hours at home waiting around for because they never called on time which ruins the one day a week off you get. Not to mention the amount of calls and text you get from management after the day is finished and morning of which is borderline harassment and breaks so many boundaries. I feel the intensity of the communication is not to foster good relationships with co-workers but rather to confirm and pressurise you into work the next day.
Moving on to pay -you don't get any-at least no where near the amount you are promised in the interviews. There was no salary and the job is commission only, something that they leave out on their online job advertisements. Commissions that mainly get reclaimed due to the nature of the work- you stop people in the streets to sign them up to pay £10 a month to a charity using hard sales techniques not to unlike the ones they use in the interview process and most of them as result only sign up so that they can be left alone and then they decline sale later meaning you will get no money for the day despite working practically 12 hours. I felt really exploited from this especially knowing that the reason the CEO pushes us to work 6 days a week is so that he can earn money off our backs - ironic considering he claims its a lazy mentality to not want to work 6, 12 hour shifts yet he spend most of his time in the office claiming our residual income.
What really took the biscuit was when I was sent to a random place in England, a place where I still don't know where to this day and I had to travel in the car with a colleague I hadn't met till that day which was very uncomfortable-not that the person was unsavoury just that they were a stranger and the whole situation of not knowing where I was going made me uncomfortable. It was on this drive that I found that the CEO had been sending me out to work but had not finalised my login details so all work and sales completed had to be done by the others meaning there was no way I could claim the commission I had earned-the shifts I worked were all for nought. This is completely irresponsible of the CEO and frankly unacceptable to allow employees out on the field knowing there is no way they can even earn money especially because of the expense of getting to the office and the fuel I had to pay to get to said random place.
During breaks in the work day we are told not to sit down, not that anyone want to go on breaks because they are all so desperate to make sales which do not come so they can make even the tiniest bit of money that day. This fact also makes them very intense sales people and I often saw them practically harass people who already said no which was very uncomfortable to be around.
The treatment of staff here is laughable because while we struggle the CEO brags about how rich he is and brainwashes the others that they are all going to be earning mega money in less than 10 months. This is the only reason anyone stays because they believe this false promise.
Lastly, and I'm only including this because I don't want anyone to go to an observation day and this to happen, one of the days we were in said place in England they took an interviewee with us, they were about 19 ish I would say and decided after about four hour they didn't want him and left him stranded in this place and there were no local transport links to Cardiff. Me and another person who was working at the stall wasn't even informed of this decision until we were leaving and obviously we didn't see this happen because they hide you away in a corner somewhere. I can only hope that this poor chap had enough money to get home and I still think about it to this day-it was awful treatment and I think that Bamboosh should have a duty of care to all the people that work and interview for them.
On the day I decided to leave they followed me out the building to try and convince me to come back the next day- even though they knew my details wouldn't be ready and I wouldn't be able to earn anything . They were really pushy and intense and even after I finally made my way to the train station to get home I had been texted a lot again trying to get me to come back in. They even had the cheek to call me lazy for not wanting to work another week of 12 hour shifts without pay.
