Constant turnover, bare minimum employee "support" - Anonymous employee Pittock Mansion Employee Review

The job descriptions were frequently misleading, and they were constantly understaffed due to employees becoming fed up with promises by upper-level staff not being kept. During my time with this employer 15 staff members holding various positions left. This is not a large organization, with only 20 employees or so in times of normal operations. That's 75% turnover in only a few years. If you want to truly see how people like working at an employer, keep track of how often they have a hiring announcement. Despite the high turnover rate, internal promotions were exceedingly rare and done in highly inequitable and inconsistent ways. It is uncertain if there was even a formal written organization policy about internal promotion, since every employee that attempted a promotion was treated in a different manner. Part-time employees that had been hired within 4 months of the vacation of a full-time or higher-wage position were sometimes (but apparently not always???) asked to resubmit their resume and cover letters, in order to "compare apples-to-apples with outside applicants." Many staff found this frustrating and insulting, as it demonstrated that management staff did not care about employee advancement, that they were always looking for employees to take advantage of and who were desparate enough to tolerate these practices, and that it signalled they were somehow not satisfied enough with your work to advance you but never gave any opportunities to improve. This organization absolutely relied upon people quitting in order to not have to actually solve any of the incredible diversity of glaring issues with honesty, integrity, and ethics, as well as employee satisfaction, advancement, health and safety, fair payment and hour offerings, etc. etc. Almost exclusively would they hire extremely overqualified applicants, only to never use the variety of skills these applicants and employees posessed and were eager to offer. Part-time positions of 24 hours per week were filled by individuals currently holding or pursuing master's degrees. An employee with a degree in history AND pursuing their teaching certificate in history was never once asked to apply their degree beyond basic factual information. Another employee who had graduate-level research experience on World Fairs was not allowed to participate in an exhibit about the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition--a world fair--despite offering their knowledge and eagerness to contribute upon hearing the plans for the exhibit. Yet another employee was never allowed the initially-promised opportunities to develop interpretation experiences despite enthusiastic and repeated attempts to offer the result of years of experience in historical resource interpretation. One has to wonder why an organization would go to so much trouble to hire highly skilled and educated employees they know will be dissatisfied in a position that ends up being one someone with two months of cashiering experience or door greeting could perform easily. One of the biggest issues was having to constantly fight for acceptable and healthy workstations. A number of, if not all, frontline employees were constantly experiencing physical discomfort and pain as workstation setups aggravated existing injuries and even caused new ones to develop due to the strain and lack of ergonomic equipment. Despite repeated assurances that the organization was in "good financial shape," there never seemed to be the budget to provide basic workplace necessities to frontline staff, like chairs, proper monitor adjustment systems, suitable desks or counters, computer mice, or enough fans or spaceheaters for all stations. As a specific example, at one point an upper-level management employee removed the chair from the museum store cashiering station without consultation with frontline employees or immediately replacing with an ergonomic standing mat despite the job description--under which all current frontline staff were hired--not including any requirements for extended periods of standing. Employees who had documented existing spinal or knee/ankle injuries would attempt to replace the chair for their shifts only to result in a petty and silent power struggle on the part of the aforementioned manager, who ended up keeping the chair supervised in their office. The manager's lack of maturity or professional courtesy in that instance was absurd nearly to the point of hilarity, if it hadn't been so frustrating and unnecessary. There were many stories from employees about past changes occurring to stations with no consideration of the frontline staff's needs or basic comfort. An additional illustration of this is the entrance ticket booth being open to the air year-round, requiring employees to sit at a desk in winter temperatures with ineffective space heaters, clutching pocket warmers to try to keep their fingers flexible enough to count money and operate a keyboard, or during summer heat without air conditioning and exposed to mosquitoes, wasps, a recurring infestation of ants, and frequent rodent activity. Breaks and lunch time felt insufficient and awkardly scheduled, so that an employee may have a break only 45 minutes before their lunchtime, or have a 2 or more hour difference between lunch times on subsequent days. There were hardly ever enough staff to allow for bathroom breaks during shifts, or support if an employee was having a sudden health issue. Overall employee support by upper management felt extremely paltry. You could tell they were doing only the bare minimum of what the law required, and in some cases were ethically wrong if not outright acting against Oregon employment law, operating under the confidence that many of their staff are low-income and desperate enough for a job to keep them from pursuing legal action. Nonprofits are supposed to be a higher standard of employer, and the Pittock Mansion falls so short of that it is honestly shocking. There are so many other issues I could mention here if I had the energy to do so. Major reorganization is required to bring this nonprofit up to the expectations many of us would have from an employer.