Great people bad company - Brand Ambassador ARK Promotions Employee Review

Long work Hours/ No work-life balance so let me break it down, the day would go something like this, you were "expected" to arrive at work at 10:30 am spend 30 mins practising your pitch with a "leader" and then you would have a morning meeting at 11 am where the Boss would give a speech about how the job gives everyone an "opportunity" and how you could be earning six figures if you work hard enough (i'll get into that later) you would then leave around 12-1pm you would have to pay for transportation (not in your first few weeks) you also have to bring or buy food for lunch around 2 pm you are on "field" now this is the metaphorical hell on earth, you are to pitch people as a door to door salesmen from 2-8 pm, some people work later than 8 pm and push to 9 pm, this is often encouraged in the morning meetings. You then go home and collapse on your couch exhausted and the cycle goes on for 5 days (on Saturday too but we work fewer hours on Saturday and it's optional). I worked a total of 60.5hrs. The legal limit is 48hrs, you may ask how come I worked those hours surely that's illegal. Well, my friend in this job you are "self-employed" meaning you get to decide your hours and when you can come in. However, that's not the case. If you miss a few days without reason, you will get a stern talking-to about you not taking the job seriously. Or you consistently leave early, eventually you will be asked to leave if you don't get any sales. And you have to attend the morning meeting despite you being "your own boss". so technically you work for yourself so you can work ungodly hours but you get none of the privileges. As you can imagine work-life balance goes right out the window and you get sucked into the job more and more as your life becomes the job (I'll touch on this later). Now the main reason why I called the field hell on earth, is because you are taught that the field is where you get your skills and just like the hunger games you have to work hard to ensure your spot as a six-figure earner through that hard work. No one likes the field, some may say I like the field because they are confident in their sales. But deep down no one likes it. You work rain or shine, hot or cold outside with customers who are sometimes nice and other times not so nice. You will get a lot of no's which they tell you upfront. However, the supposed cure for this is the god that is the "system" that everyone worships. Have a bad day it's not the territory or that it was raining or that no one wants to listen to you pitch them. It's because YOU didn't follow the " systems." Got no sales You are the cause and You need to fix yourself so you can follow the "systems". Training and management sucks The reason why I say training sucks is that your mentor/leader is supposed to train you and everyone trains differently to the point that there is no structure, some mentors are controlling and micro-manage everything you do, others are more relaxed but they don't know how to teach. For example, a common exercise is "pen throwing" the mentor writes on the board what you are practising in a group of 3 or more. They will then chuck the pen at someone and have them practise what's on the board and then this is repeated for everyone in the circle. Sounds good right? WRONG. This process is so slow that it takes ages to learn anything which YOU WILL NEED. This is also not mentioning that people often will get left behind and are left to fend for themselves. The sentence that you will hear Ad nauseam is "there is no seniority" this is a lie. You will see seniority everywhere you go in the office. And its currency is sales. Get 5 sales in a day you are a legend get one a week and you are laughed at. Seniority is so deep-rooted that you will see it no matter what anyone says. This is seen even more clearly with "stages" the stages are from 1-5. With stage 1 being beginner and stage 5 is an expert, theoretically, everyone should be treated the same. But that's not the case for example if you are promoted to stage 3 you can't compare yourself to someone who has been in stage 3 for a few months. It's considered taboo because they have more experience than you but there is no seniority. This sentence is one of the many contradictions in the job. And I'm not going to list them all. Another example of bad management is that boss plays favourites (I'll get into why later) for example the boss recruited "dave" and "ben" ben has a rough past and is pulling sales however dave has been carried through is first week and is praised like he's the second coming for his efforts. Do you know why? Because dave is a part of the boss's team and ben isn't, ben is on someone else's team and isn't treated the same because of it. But you must of thought teams? Aren't we on the same team. Workplace culture is toxic Remember I mentioned the hunger games? Well, this is why. when you hit stage 3 you are then allowed to recruit more people and build a team, however, there is a couple of problems the first one is that you have to basically do this on your own with no help despite the resources the job has (indeed cv's and cv library database access) the second one is that everyone is cut-throat when it comes to teams because without a team you can't progress to the higher stages if you want to swap teams. No can do, you need a good reason to or the boss will fire you. So what does this lead to over-dependence on the boss for everything team-related making him judge, jury and executioner when it comes to who gets new starts. He says this is performance-based but in reality, its who he favours, so everyone is trying to be the best so they can get his recognition to build a team to then go up a level couple that with the fact that some people are controlling and the seniority structure and you get a toxic place to work. Rumours are spread about people and aren't stomped put out, sly people underhand and undermine their competition and worst of all people are left behind and the leaders are waiting for them to be sick of it and leave or tell them to leave themselves. But that's not all. False opportunity one of the first things that they tell you is the "opportunity" that you get at stage 5 you get the option to create your own office. The boss often holds speeches about how successful he is and how the job is an opportunity to reach six figures never mind the fact that his business has been making 3k profit for three years! This is something that no one will tell you and its a sad reality, most people in the office makes less than minimum wage, the top earners make £350 quid a week which is minimum wage or slightly higher. In order to get to the top you have to knowingly lie to people about the opportunity they have, you have to look them in the eye and tell them they can be a six-figure earner when 98% won't and you need those people so you can make money off of them when you hit stage 5. Are you prepared for that?