The culture is incredibly dysfunctional. For starters, there are almost no women or African Americans in positions of leadership. That was my first red flag. Second, they don’t let there employees eat unless it’s approved REEF food (meaning you bought it from a vendor attached to REEF). For a while, employees weren’t even allowed to bring in their own food from home. This policy changed towards the end of my time but we still couldn’t bring in a salad or granola bar from even a grocery store without hiding it in another container from home. They pay most of their staff low salaries and then expect them to order $15 lunches every day. It was insane and borderline unethical in my opinion. On top of that, we were expected to work 12 hours a day and sometimes on weekends. It was frowned upon to take your two weeks of paid vacation. Departments were competitive with each other instead of collaborative. Management didn’t speak to each other or about each other with any respect. While I’d love to see many of the ideas at REEF brought to life, the cultural dysfunction there made it not worth it for me.
