Pros
There are some really cool people who work on the production floor.
Cons
I worked at Pacha Soap for a year and a half and was chewed up and spit out by the company. At first, I loved my job and thought I had found a place where I could really make a difference and do good in the world. “Do good feel good”, right? But as time went on, the facade of an eco-conscious, “dirty hippie” force for good wore off. And the true colors of a millennial start-up that can’t manage growth without exploitation showed through. I met amazing people and made great friends working for this company, but unfortunately, these people are all taken advantage of, overworked, and underpaid. Below are just a few examples of where the company falls short. - mismanagement Employees are left in the dark about anything regarding the mission work Pacha does, and management is constantly making large-scale mistakes leaving the mess for the lower-level employees to clean up. There is no organization and even less communication. The company also has a habit of hiring temp employees, neglecting to train them, and letting them go randomly with no notice. And with this lack of training, hundreds of pounds of product is messed up and thrown away causing an incredible amount of waste. - wage issues When I started to work full time, my wage was not increased from the part-time wage of $11 to the full-time starting wage of $13, and I, being young and naive, had not double-checked. That made me the lowest paid employee in the entire company for about two and a half months. When I finally noticed the discrepancy in my paychecks, I was given a “raise” to the starting full-time wage, without the ~$1200 in backpay. Since then, HR has refused to provide me with my time cards during that period, so I have no way of getting restitution. - racism For a company that uses the image of black women to promote their products, in my time there, there was only one black woman employed there, and she was mistreated horribly. There were also incidences of harassment targeted towards the Latinx employees that went on for months before management decided to do anything about it. After months of frustration and disappointment in the unethical reality of Pacha, I prepared a statement on behalf of the employees expressing concern about what was going on within the company and where the company was headed, highlighting the issues in which we collectively held concern. I presented my statement at a full company meeting, and the executives and upper-level management were NOT happy, despite the round of applause from the production workers. The next day, I was called into a meeting where I was pressured to quit, and that afternoon got a call that I had been terminated, with no reason given. This in turn made it impossible for me to advocate for myself. I had given my all to this company. I was pushed to my physical limits at this job and I had done it with a smile, I had covered up a SA I experienced as I didn’t want it to reflect poorly on the company. I spent time in the hospital and went to work the next day because I thought my work mattered. But in the end, I was used and cast to the side and left with no way to advocate for myself.