Pros
- In my case, the people are good and fun to work with - Interacting with customers and providing them with the best experience is rewarding, so I enjoy that part of the job as well - My general manager genuinely works hard to make sure things are taken care of, so I feel looked after
Cons
There is only the barest semblance of organization within the company. Something breaks in one of the rooms? We have little to no information on how the room is built, no documentation. GMs are expected to know how to fix everything with little or no technical support. GMs are effectively owner operators of company venues, but without the pay. Mine is expected to be able to do all of the above, AND go out and do physical marketing with local businesses and raise venue revenue. All this and there's supposedly a marketing department, but what do we all know? Need support from HR? As far as I can tell, it's one guy, and he likely won't message you back. If he does, it's weeks later. Have an issue with payroll or PTO? Your message goes to HR, the same guy. Expect that to take weeks as well to get resolved. On top of all of these points, the uppermost leadership has bought into AI replacing the creative processes behind creating compelling rooms and developing lore around the venue, something literally everyone in the room groaned at when we were shown a bunch of new generated content that will be shown to trainees. Some rooms already have videos that are mostly AI generated. Sad. The original passion is being sapped from the company in the name of optimization, like we're seeing with so many other companies that value the product but none of the work that goes into creating good experiences that people will enjoy. They've lost the plot, and the last I saw this was with my previous company in a creative field, currently crashing and burning as they continue to layoff staff. I expect Escapology will do whatever they can to further embrace AI and get rid of whomever they can in the name of profit. These cons leave me with the conclusion that there is maybe 1 level of career opportunity for any entry level hires to pursue, and that's to become a Manager. Anything higher than that and you're expected to do everything else that there is to do within the venue as I cited at the beginning of this blurb. It's a decent minimum wage job, and that's it.