-Pay is far from livable if you're not a manager or working in Home Office. The wage gap from a store level to H.O. is palpable and a complete disgrace to the employees actually interacting with the community. Raises are annual, only mere cents and bonuses cease to exist at a store level.
-Ignore any "Employee Owned" claims. This really only has to do with you investing in Mud Bay stock, which only benefits you if you're eligible. Stores are a strict & structured breeding ground for corporate standards and visions ranging from your behavior to merchandising. Creatives will find themselves oppressed, risk takers penalized, and whistleblowers terminated.
-Supervisors WILL fully allow customers to be verbally abusive to their employees. Bosses will preach about independent operating and offer "development plans" on how to feel empowered to have "tough conversations" with both customers and colleagues, only to write you up at any given opportunity for engaging in these skill sets. You must instead, always walk on eggshells, and will be treated as if you are responsible for other peoples' emotional reactions. You will be expected to "de-escalate" or placate volatile customers, even if it means risking your own physical safety.
-Mud Bay does not take action against any of their own racist, sexist, homophobic, thieving or otherwise grossly problematic employees. 100% of the time- it's your own supervisor. Will only ever spontaneously relocate them to other stores to be someone else's problem, assuming that the store they were at was the reason behind why they were not flourishing as a person. Nepotism does often find it's the reason behind various Home Office terminations over time, but runs even further rampant at a store-to-store level.
-PTO is accrued at a criminally low rate, with no differentiating between sick or vacation leave. This company will emphasize "protecting your mental health" but know that you WILL be punished with documented write ups resulting in an expedited termination if you do not have PTO to protect emergencies of any severity to you or your family. This company will show your loyalty, no loyalty.
-Mainly promotes from external sources, looks to bring in more people instead of investing in their own. Should you ever wish to collect 200 as you pass GO, you must first appease the corporate gods and absolutely sell your soul over many years to achieve this. The $1 more per hour never seemed worth it to me.
-Leadership often fosters a toxic high school "cliquey" culture against regular staff members. The favoritism and exclusive friendships being the most glaring issue, accompanied by the secret email chains that are *only* privileged if they're exclusively between leadership members. Bullying plays no small part, overall the environment can feel very othering.
-Morally folded and no longer allows any signage, advertising, flags or visual support regarding topics such as supporting Black Lives Matter, Pride (unless it's June, you know, because Rainbow Capitalism), Supporting Ukraine, etc. in an effort to not irritate or provoke customers. Mud Bay continuously boasts about embracing culture, promoting diversity and spreading awareness. Only practices the opposite. Ever growing "cUsToMeR iS kInG" attitude, ready to reprimand anyone who dares speaks out against injustices.
-Did not enforce customers to wear masks during covid. Knowingly allowed store employees to forge vaccination cards so they also did not have to wear masks. Any inquiries made to investigating this were immediately shut down.
