Pros
I truly looked forward to working in this industry and making a career with this company. Interviews went amazing, were very responsive. Coming in as the manager, I looked forward to serving my team and community and growing the business. An opportunity to change the stigma of cannabis. Retail with great operating hours Knowledgeable staff Great patients If you like retail, it’s just like any other!! Amazing learning opportunity especially for an emerging market.
Cons
I don’t want to make this personal like a lot of people. As a business, this was an absolute nightmare. When I was hired, within 2 weeks my district manager left, and a week later my asst. manager was fired. What I was being “trained “ on by the asst manager, was exactly the reason for her being let go in terms of operations. In other words, my leadership left and my support was fired...trial by fire situation. Besides 1-2 days of “classroom” training, there was no training or preparation for what I was hired to do. Throughout my first month, I had seen more turnover than any company I had ever been with. My team was absolutely amazing, but, it was obvious they were numb to the turnover they had witnessed, And so were patients. I will not even begin to discuss the situations I was put in by leadership to simply “do the job” that put my life, team and business at risk, multiple times. There is no clear direction where they wanted to go, too many jobs for too few people. At the end of the day, I was let go before my benefits kicked in. By state law, which they can do, told me i “was not a good fit”, although I had never received any write up or disciplinary action. I was not terminated by performance or any other HR issue. I received no performance improvement plan or anything. I had increased the stores average sales transaction, promoted a few team members and basically did what I was signed to do. It is a shame moreso because of the team I had built and the attitude in which everyone had obtained was from a sense of stability, and yet again they will have the 4th manager in 18 months. There is no “diversity” in leadership. I will just leave that for your speculation. Oh yea, did I say I also had my own department with the Better Business Bureau....trust me, while this review may have some personal/emotional tone, my experience, as a businessman and someone who has a 10+ year career in management, this was by far my worst employment experience ever, from communication to structure to direction to retention to operations...across the board...a mess.
