Deceptive, unprofessional, stay away! - Anonymous employee Marcella (Bulgaria) Employee Review

As one of America's fastest-growing female founded and led companies, we're saddened by this review, which we consider intentionally misleading. While everyone experiences workplaces differently, what they write re: our company is literally not what our company is or does. We have escalated our concern to Glassdoor of the extreme factual inaccuracies contained but have been told "Glassdoor does not take sides in factual disputes." Despite the reviewer choosing to remain anonymous, we would kindly request anyone reading this review to ignore it as we do know who wrote it. The review comes from a former assistant manager in our U.S. office who worked on our team for a few short months during COVID. This individual struggled from the start with basic professionalism on the job – both as it related to performance of duties as well as with being supportive of the team around her. Initially impressed by her during interviewing, our management team was pleased to offer her a job opportunity after she'd cycled through a series of previous jobs but, one day, she "ghosted" the company and never showed up again for work. From Linkedin, we observe that she continues to cycle through jobs post-Marcella and we regret that she feels the need to attack us and several other previous employers in multiple venues. While we hesitate to validate what we consider a defamatory and fabricated review, we will nevertheless address the comments made here for the avoidance of any doubt. We are a 66 person global company with 62 female employees (94% female workforce). The picture painted here ("They hire young professionals who do not have enough experience to understand their rights") is entirely fabricated. Of our overall workforce, more than half have an average (median) age above 30 years old (including on our U.S. team). Our overall management team consists of 5 company leaders in our C-Suite, four of whom are highly empathetic and professionally seasoned female executives educated at universities like Harvard, Emory, Duke, and Parsons. The other management executive is a similarly highly empathetic and professionally seasoned male veteran of the economic development space, educated at Columbia, who created the female empowerment-focused social impact pillar of our company. Rather than engaging in "ethics and legal violations all over the place," these are thoughtful management types who only step up for their colleagues but take pride in actively supporting and mentoring the company's employees. The comments re: our company environment are frankly so awful, extreme and out of line with how Marcella operates that we will not choose to address them. We will simply point out that, if true, they would in no way correlate with a company like ours that actually enjoys best in class metrics regarding employee retention with an average (median) employee tenure of 4+ years in our 7 year-old company (even as we've expanded staffing dramatically during those 7 years). 33 employees have been with Marcella for more than 4 years - more than half of the time that the company has existed and note that the company had only 38 employees four years ago. The reviewer writes "during my short time there were multiple people were fired." More context is required here. Yes, two people were terminated during her time with the company. Both were found to be engaging in illegal activity (company credit card fraud and abuse of hybrid working arrangements, respectively). Rather than being "praised as amazing employees," they were both relatively new to the company, having been in their roles for a matter of 2 - 4 months, and were each terminated immediately upon the company discovering their unethical behavior (although terminated "not for cause" so that they could still collect unemployment benefits, if they so chose. Also, as we've communicated to Glassdoor, unlike what the reviewer falsely claims here about these two employees and herself, we have the payroll records to prove that we have and will ALWAYS pay out all employees fully for time worked, as obviously required by law and any basic code of professionalism). Overall, the two individuals the reviewer mentions were the first two employees who were ever terminated by our company for illegal activity and, including them, Marcella has terminated all of 4 employees in the U.S. in 7 years of being in business. The idea that "employees are dismissed as being an issue...if they speak up" is fabricated and out of line with the uplifting efforts of a close-knit 66 person global team that has come together to create and grow over several years a social impact-driven brand recognized by national media like Inc. Magazine, NBC and Fortune Magazine for orienting every aspect of our company towards advancing women and girls globally, starting with our internal working environment.