An Honest Review: Overall Toxic Work Environment
Pros
Liteline makes a quality line of products, but they have a long way to go when it comes to employee retention and respect. This review is based solely on my opinion from having worked there for a number of years. - If this is your first job (or first job in an office), you’ll get to learn basic skills that will be valuable as you progress in your career. You’ll also get to deal with many complex characters and interactions, which is also valuable in a way. - They’re pretty good about providing product and industry training. - They occasionally had company BBQs and other events for staff appreciation. - The best part of the job is your co-workers. Most are very talented, down to earth and have similar feelings about the toxic environment. Many deserve better.
Cons
- LOW pay in most positions. Not even sure that students fresh out of school would accept it these days. Minimal increases. - MINIMAL job security. I witnessed an abnormal amount of terminations here. - HIGH level of turn-over. It would be strange to go a month (or less) without hearing gossip of someone “no-longer with the company”. - NO-ROOM for growth. They rarely promoted internally, and mostly went external. - They aren’t “progressive” when it comes to trends in work (compounded by a lack of trust). So, if you’re thinking of working from home from time to time…forget about it. - Most things need to be approved by ownership (family-run business). Due to this, it ends up taking FOREVER to complete projects. - Ownership also changes their mind many times during said approval process. What they said was “ok” today is absolutely “unacceptable” tomorrow, so you’ll likely need to re-do your work an unreasonable amount of times. - Ownership sets aggressive deadlines for big projects, i.e. “I need this in an hour” or similar, regularly. This combined with the lengthy approval process and frequent “changing of minds” results in incredible stress to employees and missed deadlines. - It’s expected that your job description can have some variance. Though get ready to do many “executive-assistant” type tasks for ownership. - A “thank-you” or recognition is SO RARE. Considering the insane work to pay ratio. - Ownership will be excited about you when you first start, but within a few weeks, you’ll be old news, and they’ll think they’re better at your job than you are. - Ownership is overall passive-aggressive and lacking respect when it comes to communication with its employees. Some of the conversations by phone and email were so rude that its downright comical looking back at it. Their replies are often vague and lacking direction. - When you’ve finally had enough, and you decide it’s time to resign (sigh of relief), don’t expect a thank you/good luck, but rather expect to either be walked out immediately or for ownership to avoid you for the remainder of your stay. Ownership is oblivious to the fact that they have created a toxic work environment driven by “fear”. My experience here handed me many interactions that were made more complex than they needed to be. Although unpleasant in the moment, you will likely look back and have a really good laugh about it all once you move on.