They call it an 'employee-owned' company, which sounds pleasant, doesnt it? As if it was a team, all pulling together, all looking out for our fellow employees. NOTHING could be further from the truth.
The truth is Lifetouch is a monster, an octopus with many arms and divisions, all seemingly at odds with itself like a feudal state. For example: if a customer in our territory has to call the national not-so-helpful customer service center? We get billed by our own company.
Seriously. One department charges another for use of equipment, and so on and so on.
So you have these petty feudal office lords all in competition with each other, and at the very bottom of the food chain are the serfs--the photographers who actually DO the work.
You'd think that a 'photography company' would treat the employees who actually PRODUCE the product the best, but they see photographers as a dime a dozen, all interchangeable cogs to be exploited and discarded when used up, replaced by some other young naive naif for minimum wage or close to.
There's little or no advancement. When they want someone for an upper level position, they are more apt to find someone outside of the company with no photographic background rather than throw one of the photo serfs a bone.
Our territory currently 'owes' corporate an ungodly sum of money because of mismanagement by the previous territory manager, not to mention a few big purchases--rather than compete with another, smaller company or studio, Lifetouch prefers to buy them outright.
So the territory owes money to corporate...for the mistakes and misdeeds of a territory manager not even THERE any longer. The employees left behind are being 'punished' until the debt is paid off to corporate by having budgets slashed to the bone. So where does this money come from? NOT from taking pictures.
By cutting labor cost. IE, the hours us poor serfs at the bottom need to stay alive. During the off-season you are either unemployed or getting 10-15 hours a week for 4-5 months straight. Oh, you COULD in theory work all year round and go from department to department with the rotating seasons but as I said, these are feudal lords who do not cooperate with each other.
Its no longer about photography. We are actually being told to shoot LESS, just so they can squeeze in more appointments. Here is where the customer suffers, as the customer is getting very few pictures, done by a depressed, stressed, and overworked employee who KNOWS that even if he takes the most beautiful, award-winning portraits on the planet he is STILL going to get cut loose at the end of the season so there is ZERO motivation to do more than just the minimum effort needed to not get fired.
So no. Don't work here. Find something you can make a living at.
