My biggest issue lies with the way the COVID lay offs happened. Stores were shut down across the US on March 16th and within a week or two after (rough estimate since this happened nearing a year ago) all non-management emails were shut down and most staff had NO idea what was happening. With the emails being removed this also removed everyone remaining in the company Slack which was the ONLY place we were getting updates. There is no US headquarters or even offices which means there is absolutely no phone number for staff to call and you relied purely off of emails to connect and figure out what happened. BUT, since upper management was also furloughed none of them TOUCHED email. So we had no communication and no way to even know if we had a job still. After a lot of digging and asking around to other staff I finally got a personal cell number to call and was told since management was also furloughed that they couldn't contact us hence why none of us heard anything. With this being a start up that was just mind boggling to hear that new upper management basically became ghosts to us when retail staff had connected together as much as we could just to try and keep each other as up to date as possible when someone would hear a rumor or whisper of anything company related. This is so unbelievably unacceptable and disrespectful to staff, some of which had been there since the first store popup launch, that had bent over backwards to support this company even before the shut downs officially happened.
Now this silence continued all the way until July when out of the absolute blue everyone receives a phone call from someone claiming to be Sandbox VR HR, a person we had never heard of, and lets everyone go. After discussing with others it turns out someone discovered this person had been hired a mere few days prior and, unsurprisingly, was another handpicked person of the new upper management who had been already been replacing people with their friends prior to the shut down. This was a massive slap to the face to not even be called by someone the staff actually associated and knew within the company.
