Words of caution — for current employees, future applicants, and employer awards - Marketing O2E Brands Employee Review

It’s hard to emphasize the severe hit on my mental health and well-being that I experienced during these final months working at the 1-800-GOT-JUNK?/O2E Brands head office. Like many, I had a smooth-sailing hiring process and was 100% sold on the brand from day one. There was an overwhelming amount of positivity from management — about my work, my insight, and my leadership. I felt appreciated and was oblivious until the final few months of my employment. I noticed some sudden departures here and there throughout my tenure, but I had great confidence in the brand. As many do, I learned a lot too late. I am sharing the below opinions to either help you protect yourself and/or avoid a similar situation. 1. Like other reviews note, it feels like there is a high degree of favouritism and a tight inner circle with some unexpected, bad apples. There are always going to be some untrustworthy people in a company but, in GOTJUNK/O2E’s case, it seems they are in senior leadership positions and HR. They seemed to be the people who are the most vocal about culture/the divides and that I least expected. 2. It seemed to me that restructuring and flippantly voiding certain roles/positions was a constant at this company. It’s 2023, so we all know that layoffs are an unfortunate but fair business response for managing bad financial years. All that said, I believe that GOTJUNK/O2E is not always forthright with this. In my experience, it seemed the business would freeze people out until they quit and/or it seemed they conducted quiet terminations over several months. I felt like the business treated me and others like expendable sales staff contrary to their starkly different narrative around an ‘All About People’ philosophy (and that I wasn’t hired in a sales capacity). 3. I felt their termination approach in 2023 was unnecessarily personal. Terminations are always tough. That said, it is simple to do it in a way that lets people leave with their dignity and confidence — through transparency (“we need to trim back”) and empathy (“we appreciate all the work you did, and we wish you well”). Senior leaders at GOTJUNK/O2E seemed to isolate and belittle, leaving the employee to feel like the problem. As someone who experienced this firsthand, it’s done in a way that makes the individual bear an immense weight of confusion, embarrassment, and shame. There was a sudden restructuring that brought with it a new manager and what felt like a wave of trivial, convoluted, and contradictory new expectations. I felt there was an increasing degree of underhanded passive aggressive comments, vague directives, and work that was not expected of my peers. Despite rising to every new expectation and jumping through numerous hoops, I felt there was zero positivity or feedback. As a person who cares deeply about my career, I started to work significant overtime, struggled to sleep more than a few hours each night, and sensed I had no control over the fate of my employment. I felt alone and like I couldn’t trust speaking to anyone about my concerns. After a few months, most of us had a surprise meeting with HR, where we were terminated under a newfound reason: “performance” (despite annual reviews that documented otherwise). I felt I was provided the minimum legal severance and asked to sign a release form that forbid me from filing for unfair dismissal (or writing a review like this one) in return for several thousands of dollars. I imagine this would be hard for most to turn down. I believe these are not the actions of a company that cares about their people. 4. It seemed I was incentivized to post on LikedIn about O2E in return for extra vacation, and it felt like the company strongly encouraged employees to post on Glassdoor. This didn’t feel strange in the moment, but in hindsight I can now personally attest to how isolating it feels when your personal experience differs so much from the flood of positivity on social media.