I’m not quite sure where to start. Over the past 3.5 years, I’ve seen the company transition quite a bit. (Tl;dr- the company has changed for the worse. If you are able to be on call every day to maintain a livable number of working hours, are ok with responsibilities above and beyond your pay, don’t need any transparency or consistency from higher ups, have no worries about covid and will never utilize your HR department, you’ll be just fine).
In the beginning, the “small Business” mindset was preached from every corner of the company. They were proud to operate under the “Good Jobs Strategy” by Zeynep Ton. (The premise of the book is to invest in your employees to lower costs and boost profits).
While I can appreciate that mud bay invested in PPE, copious amounts of sanitizer and hand washing stations- messaging and use of the hand washing supplies is spotty to say the least. When there is an outbreak of COVID in a cluster of stores, staff from other locations are told to fill in those shifts without warning. Staff have been told that we are now “the new mud bay and operate as one company instead of separate stores”. This means that the expectation of cleanliness and asking customers to sanitize their hands and wear masks correctly would be the same in all locations. However, that is absolutely not the case. Customers who complain or berate staff over these practices (or anything else) are rewarded for their bad behavior, or at least the teams are scolded for not being “gracious”. One of Mud Bay’s pillars is to educate customers so they can make informed decisions on their pet’s health. Apparently that doesn’t carry over to their staff regarding their own health and safety.
At one point, the company decided to start a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion cohort. Intentions at the beginning were great. Mud bay does a great job at showing up for Pride and hopefully will continue to do so. However, throughout the summer and throughout this past fall and winter, it was clear that other messages for support of the communities was performative. Many stores put up hand drawn signs in support of Black Lives Matter and letting customers know that we are asking everyone in our stores to wear masks. Most stores were told to take it down, and that was met with backlash. Managers of those stores were essentially told that they aren’t getting much support in lieu of backlash from angry customers if they chose to keep that messaging up. DEI work has also been put on hold due to budget constraints and a new HR Information System, designed to “tell us who we are actually representing”. Isn’t the point of a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion cohort to make sure all demographics get equal representation?
In regards to scheduling, many people who have been with the company joined because of the flexibility that was allowed. It’s understandable that with reduction in open hours, some of that flexibility goes away. Non key holders are expected to work at multiple locations in order to work 15-30 hours a week. Don’t expect to be able to work two jobs; if you do not have open availability, you will not get hours. If you have any preferences for scheduling, don’t expect that your manager will be able to honor them. We have been told that this scheduling system will be “temporary”, but it seems as though control of scheduling will be taken away from managers.
For an “employee owned” company, the employees don’t get much of a say at all. Employees don’t know how much of the company they own. To learn the value of their shares of the company, employees need to go through the C- level executive who contacts the financial institution, instead of going directly to that company or having accurate information readily available. If an employee contracts COVID and exhausts their week of covid benefit, you are out of luck. Don’t expect to utilize sick time, it is not offered by the company. (Keep in mind that if you are a store staff, 8-10 hours of PTO is accrued PER YEAR and it is expected that you apply it to days you are sick. Any time you do not/ cannot apply pto to a sick day, expect that to be a performance issue). Companies are asking their employees to go above and beyond; Mud bay is asking their employees for this and just “a little more to make sure we will remain profitable”.
Lastly, mud bay touts an open door policy. Do not expect any confidentiality from HR; if you directly send them an email, they will make sure to CC their response to whomever they see fit without your consent. Going to a manager or district manager is a gamble based on who you work with, as resolving similar issues can have vastly different results. There is also a lack of communication from home office to stores, so any answer to your questions can change from day to day. Rest assured though, getting fired from this company is very hard. Which is great for inconsistent employees but an absolute killer of morale for those who show up and put in the work everyday.
Mud Bay was a great company to work for. They truly invested in the education that employees received. Understandably, COVID has thrown everyone and everything off. However, the promise was made that the company would adapt to COVID with Mud Bay’s mission and values in mind. Unfortunately, that was not what happened and the company is now facing high turnover because of it.
