Altar'd State is a company that says that they "stand out for good." While it may appear that they stand out for good from the outside, it holds no place regarding the internal workings of the company. They treat their employees terribly and they do not pay them nearly enough for the work that they expect. They do not care for or look out for the wellbeing of their employees at all. They frequently overwork their managers, which causes a high rate of turnover for managers. This creates a problem of untrained and understaffed management teams. In addition, the team does anything and everything to get out of their work and shovel it onto somebody else. It constantly seems as if the management team is "too good" to take out the trash, sweep the floors, straighten the store, or generally do anything more than paperwork. Of course there is paperwork to be done, but it does not take two hours to fill out a one page form.
Furthermore, the company frequently asks their employees to do risky things that could end in a lawsuit if anything went wrong. For example, the managers forced employees to come in to work during ice storms even when they themselves could not get out of their own driveways to come in for work. They also ask employees to do things strictly against the ladder safety policies.
On the more day-to-day side of things, the training program at Altar'd State is a joke. Everyone is extraordinarily untrained, from management down. Half of the time the managers have no idea what they are supposed to be doing and the other half of the time they do not know how to do the things they are supposed to be doing. This led to a constant power-struggle between the managers. They constantly tried to assert their dominance over the others because they were never given specific roles or tasks to manage. Even the district managers were unhelpful at best. They would come in to "help out" around the store, however, their help simply caused more work for the employees after they left. They typically had bad attitude, snide comments, and generally talked down to everyone around them. They did not embodied the concept of "standing out for good."
Finally, management would frequently schedule associates for certain shifts, let’s say a 10-2 shift, then once they got there, inform them that they were "not allowed" to leave until they got such and such task done, regardless of how long it took. That often meant staying hours after your shift had actually ended.
This company claims to be this great Christian company that has this great positive impact on its community, and they do a good job of external service, but when it comes to serving their employees, they are thousands of miles away from doing anything even decent for their employees. As a company, their mission statement is to "stand out for good," if you ask me, that should start at home first. Take care of your family, the people that support the company's income and growth, then take care of the community around you. If you can't keep your staff, how do you expect to be successful?
