The company spends a lot of time paying lip-service to customers about their values but very little effort on actually following through on the things it purports to care about.
I learned after a short time there that we may not actually recycle (sometimes a garbage truck would pick up the recycling bins, which may be a problem with the company that picks up the trash, rather than HPB). The company also sells a number of toys, memorabilia, and knick-knacks that are made in China (which are clearly not fair trade or environmentally conscious in construction) to the point that the toys are beginning to overshadow the books).
It's much more corporate in structure than one would initially assume for the type of business it is, which practically translates to: under-payed, over-worked, under-insured, employees who are often treated unfairly and not promoted on merit.
My assistant manager admitted to me that she was initially hire because she was told explicitly that she was the only Latina who applied after another Latina had left at the Chicago store she started at.
She was the only manager who was a minority at the company that I met.
I visited each of the stores in my city and at each of them, the store manager was either a white woman or a white man, minority "shift leaders " were promoted but (at the location I worked at) this was a 25 cent increase in pay with the addition of trash duty. In addition, an employee who got hired because he was friends with another employee (which, in and of itself is not entirely inappropriate) was quickly promoted to shift leader after a month after another employee was demoted, seemingly without reason.
It was clear to everyone that he was demoted to pay the new hire more money, and no one felt comfortable applying for his position. He was the least qualified and experienced of a store staffed with people who had been their upwards of 5+ years in many cases. It was nepotism, plain and simple, which I think must be systemic to the company.
Benefits were slashed while I was there, and it was clear upward mobility did not exist.
