An real review of what its like to work for this company - Associate Buyer bei Focus Camera: Mitarbeiterbewertung

-Health insurance is not subsidized. Employees pay 540$ for health insurance. -There is no 401k. However there was talks of implementing one when I left. -Everyone clocks in and out into a time tracking system using a fingerprint scanner. No exception to this, unless you are the owners of the company. -You are paid based on how many hours you work, even if you are a salaried employee. Hence if you work less than 40 hours, you will not receive a full pay check. -Lunch is scheduled. Employees are not allowed to take lunch whenever they like. -Being late is not tolerated at all. -Stepping out of the office to take a personal call without clocking out is not tolerated. You will be reprimanded for stealing company time. -Lunches are no longer than 1 hour. -Employees accrue very few sick/personal days. More on this later. -If you take too many personal (unpaid) days, you will be reprimanded by the CEO. I took 3 personal days in a month, and had it pointed out to me by leadership. -The company observes jewish holidays and is closed during a number of them. This is totally fine. However, employees are NOT paid for a large number of these holidays. Combine this with the fact that there isn't a real salary payment structure here and you end up making less money than you expected since you simply worked less hours (since the company is closed for many jewish holidays). The company "mitigates" this by forcing employees to use their own accrued personal/sick time during these holidays. That means that an employee will get paid for that holiday, but at the expense of their accrued personal/sick time. Employees are forced to sign waivers allowing the company to do this. If an employee does not have the accrued sick/personal time to cover this involuntary holiday closure, they will not be paid for it. How this is legal is beyond me. -Often times, when a paid holiday occurs during a weekday, it is mandatory to come in on the Sunday prior to that holiday. -The company solicits employees to post reviews on Glassdoor. I was asked to post a review on Glassdoor within my first 4 weeks. -The vast majority of the positive reviews here are fake, often times they are solicited in exchange for cash, or simply from kind-hearted employees who have worked there for a long time and dont mind posting a fake review. -There is an office intercom through which the CEO will call people and ask them to go to his office. This happens constantly. -Office moral is very poor. The CEO of the company is the top contributor to this. He routinely berates people, talks down to them as if they were children, and chastises them infront of others. This is inappropriate conduct for leadership. I have heard him referred to as a bully by many people. -I had the experience of being short paid on my paycheck twice. I very politely brought it to the attention of HR both times and clearly stated "if there is something that I am not understanding how I am being paid, please explain it to me so I can understand". Both times the company wrote me a check for the difference that they owed me, however on the second time they changed my payment structor to be hourly, instead of salaried. This was done as a way to "avoid any confusion in the future" I was also verbally talked down to during this meeting. This could have been avoided if they explained their payment structor more clearly. It was at this point that I lost all respect for the company. -For all the reasons above, and many more, the turnover at this company is very high.