Where do I begin? - Anonymous employee The Escape Game Employee Review

In order to have any sort of success outside of being a team leader, you have to fall into this almost cult-ish way of thinking and acting, and it is very inauthentic. They want you to radiate positivity in every aspect of everything going on, no matter the circumstances, and it isn't realistic. If you say ONE thing that could be misconstrued as negative in any way, it could come back and "limit your growth" in the company. And growth is the one thing that the company preaches more than anything. Their twisted version of growth means dropping everything and moving from store to store or city to city or state to state. They move and shuffle people around more than any company I have ever seen, which on the surface is a good testament to their growth value, but in reality is because of one of two things. 1. They are opening stores at a more accelerated pace than they can handle, or 2. Replace people that they have lost due to the way they treat their managers and team members. With the openings of new stores at the rate they are, the opening process of a store would have time to be molded and perfected. It does not seem like that is the case. I saw firsthand how the disorganization and lack of leadership during the opening process hurt all of the bosses in my store. They never got a chance to rest. There was never any clear outline for training and learning things, so we all felt very unprepared on opening day. I have heard first and second hand that managers in the company will get promoted before they are ready to be managers just as long as they have the TEG mindset and attitude. The justification they have for that is "as long as you have the attitude, we can teach you to be a manager." The reality is, you can't. Sure, you can teach someone how to do the behind the scenes things I'm sure managers have to deal with, but you cannot teach someone how to be a leader. You can't teach someone how to command respect. You can't teach someone how to give respect. You can't teach someone how to have empathy and understanding for a team they are leading. You can teach someone to be a "manager", but you can't teach someone how to be a "leader". Communication is lacking at every level. From the headquarters to the managers, and from the managers to the team. The words growth and change are used interchangeably and the change isn't always communicated. There could be huge changes happening in the store, and you have 1 day to make that change happen completely. There could be other changes in the store that happen that you do not know about until it inevitably happens, and you are stuck running around stressed and struggling to make things happen because you didn't know a change was implemented. Then managers say that they want an open line of communication and honesty when things happen, but if you try to talk to your leaders about it, they can construe what you're saying as being negative or being a personal attack and you end up getting reprimanded for it somehow. Another really weird thing about this company is how they treat relationships between managers and team members. I will start with this: it isn't listed anywhere that managers and team members cannot be in a relationship. It is treated in such a weird fashion. Sometimes it is ok, sometimes it isn't. It really seems like it is based on how it will affect the store. If the store is in a place where they need people because they are understaffed, management will turn a blind eye on it until they are in a better place in the store and then start enforcing this "rule". Which, one of the values is integrity, and NOTHING about that is integrous. Sometimes they never say anything about it at all, sometimes they immediately shut it down and move people to other stores or departments or they make a manager step down. But then you have managers that have their boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, or husband, working underneath their significant other that is the GM. It is such a weird double standard that makes no sense at all to me. I am not saying there is favoritism either way because I do not know, but just make it consistent across the board. It isn't that hard. The work life balance is absolutely unmanageable for any position for team leader and above. They make it justified because in order to be in those positions you need to have "passion". Passion to them means being a puppet for TEG and will do whatever they need you to do. As a team leader, if you are unwilling to help out and go the extra mile at every step, it is looked at as a lack of passion and ultimately hurts you. You just can't be all TEG all the time. There has to be some sort of separation. I have seen managers give 75% of their waking time in a week to working in a store and doing what needs to be done, but then they get reprimanded for not being 110% positive all the time, and it is an unrealistic expectation to expect that from people. It drains both their physical and mental health at such a dramatic rate that I saw. They talk so much about how they care for their "guest, team and brand" but it's hard to see how they truly care for their team, because it seems like they expect too much from the team on the basis of "passion". They do not care. I truly loved this company at one point. It was a shame to see what happened to it in such a short amount of time. It went from caring so much about people, to caring about profit. Which is fine, just don't claim to care about both.