So, so many.
Metrics that are not grounded in business management, so misguided that it led Spreetail to get rescued by a private equity firm in 2019 and forced mass layoffs in Lincoln, Omaha, and a closing of the e-commerce Spreetail team in Austin, TX. I’m sure Spreefail.com still exists. Do you think any of those former Spreetail folks were offered employment with this latest hiring spree? No. They treat people like garbage.
Warehouses don’t conform to OSHA standards. They don’t even require steel-toed shoes, being around stacks of racks with 500 lb+ items. Many crushed toes and injuries go unreported.
No radios or safety procedures in warehouse. If there’s a fire, the team leads only have Microsoft Teams to message around the warehouse. Maybe that’s changed since 2019, but back then, management tried to scrimp on safety to the point where they were contradicting their own mantras and “care” for people.
Be prepared to have to spend Fridays and quarterly meetings at bars with 20-somethings, with late 30-something leadership kids trying to relive their glory days down at Brewskys.
Be prepared for insane work hours not rooted in progress or meaningful metrics, just repeating the same, stupid processes. They actually wanted their vendors to have paid terms at 6 months, when common is net 30-90 DAYS. Try being successful when you’re constantly borrowing money from clients that you have to cultivate and build relationships.
Have fun every Wednesday morning, getting the fake culture shoved down your throats. You’ll start to realize that the metrics are very focused on positive news and nothing negative or transparent about the business (such as a statement of cash flows) is ever shown to Spreefolk.
Being paid monthly is also lame and horrendous for budgeting. Folks that were laid off in 2019 actually were fired a week before end of month, and they had the audacity to hold that last week of pay from those folks while still offering only a month’s severance. Folks moving to Nebraska, sold their houses, and were completely blindsided and left out in the cold when this mass layoff happened.
It’s so sad, really. This place could be competitive within the hot e-commerce space. But like any home-grown Nebraska business, they are content to do the bare minimum, hire industry experts for a few months (looking at you, former heads of Chewy, Amazon, and others that tried to inject some sense into this company), then fire them, and basically pump up their OG team as they secretly benefit from all of this nonsense.
