Nice place to work - Anonymous employee Bears Ice Cream Employee Review

No pros unless you consider moving to North Korea, then this might be a good preparation for it - although you'll be better off there than working for Bears Ice Cream Company

Management - the owner is an obnoxious, vulgar, and overall horrible human being. The insults he distributed towards the staff verbally and in writing were shocking. Greedy and selfish - when the site water was being tested following safety concerns, staff were told to buy overpriced water bottles or go thirsty. Rude to customers, sloppy and constantly drinking on the job. You are expected to work without a break, won’t be paid a penny above the minimum wage (which is borderline criminal in this time and age) and will be guilt-tripped to staying extra and taking on more shifts because “we are a family”. With a family like this one would actively search to change identity and move across the world to stay away from the most toxic place I had the displeasure to work at. Their poor planning and high turnover resulted in complete burnout and I left this bottom-of-a-barrel of a hospitality sector ecstaticly happy never to see them again. Bonus for masochists: Micromanagement that will make you lose your will to live and ongoing pestering when you are off duty over WhatsApp are a daily occurrence. A mess of biblical proportions, stay away at all costs!

The job is entry level so can be accessed by anyone.

The pay is very low. The job is made of last minute shifts, tasks ranging from food preparation to cleaning of toilets, customers can be demanding and since you often work alone, there is no protection against verbally abusing customers or difficult situations. Management was strict about behaviour, dress code, break length and promulgated a cheesy rhetoric along the lines of ‘we are a family here’. Yet, it was not. It was in fact a workplace were employees are held to a high standard but management is not. Concerns cannot be exposed as it is immediately evident who they would be coming from, and thus retaliation possible. They offer short-term contracts and emotionally manipulate you into accepting last minute shifts or working back-to-back because ‘you care’ and ‘we’re family’. When it was time to leave, I was treated with utmost disrespect by the company owner, who said to me that was the wrong thing to do, both professionally and personally, and used the relations forged with my coworkers against me to manipulate me. I never received any gratitude for my work, which was paid at the bare legal minimum and did not come with any pros whatsoever. Finally, although promised possible career opportunities, I was then denied any such thing without a satisfying feedback being provided.