Pros
I had the opportunity to travel, but it evolved into "working at the airport during return trips and dedicating 15 hours on weekends just to keep up with the absurd quantity of work assigned to individual employees."
Kontras
I found myself in a situation where, as a salaried worker, I ended up doing work that, on the lower end, amounted to approximately $18,000 worth of overtime (prior to any time and a half compensation for overtime). However, due to my exempt status, I received no overtime pay. Part of this was due to my naivety, part of this is due to management having no respect for worker time, and intending things to work in this manner. When I expressed my concerns about taking on more work during the holidays and mentioned that most weeks, I was working over 50 hours, I was met with a response of "that's the way it is." I was consistently told that I was expected to work weekends, even though my average workload was already exceeding 55 hours per week. When this concern was raised with my supervisor, the response was less than reassuring. There was a dismissive attitude that seemed to trivialize the issue. One response was, "We expected you to work on weekends when we hired you," as if it were an inherent and unalterable part of the job description. Additionally, the issue was blatantly ignored on one occasion, further exacerbating my frustration. Another response was, "Maybe later in the year," indicating a lack of immediate willingness to address the problem. Moreover, I was told, "You'll do fun stuff on the weekends," which seemed to disregard the fact that working weekends was not only physically taxing but also emotionally draining, leaving little room for personal time or activities outside of work. The situation became so overwhelming that my fiancé had to bring me meals during the day because I would forget to eat, often working from 7 am to around 8 pm every weekday with minimal breaks. At a certain point, realizing that I was at risk of being perpetually taken advantage of, I had to scale back my efforts to avoid further physical consequences and burnout. Here is a laundry list of tasks I was responsible for until I realized I would never be compensated for the vast majority of them: Managing social media platforms (Discord, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter), which often involved creating daily posts. Handling inventory management, including ordering and updating inventory for multiple locations. Daily mass tagging of products. Writing Python scripts to streamline inventory management. Providing customer support to assist an overloaded customer support employee. Restocking various 'kits' of beer styles available for purchase, which was challenging due to inefficient software. Spending several hours each week in meetings with warehouses, potential customers, app companies, and more. Managing email and SMS marketing campaigns 7 days a week, which demanded a significant amount of time, given the frequency of campaigns management wanted. Handling copyright registration for images on a monthly basis, a task I was able to partially automate using Python. Providing support to warehouses facing issues with the technology we provided for order fulfillment, including printer problems, stock checks, inventory updates for offline sales, and resolving complaints about malfunctioning systems. Planning inventory management for rare items, collaborations, and more. This workload became unsustainable, and I felt undervalued and overburdened without proper compensation. One of my bosses tried to incorporate complex tasks like website testing and development and other things that were in my skillset, but were going unused, and had zero understanding of project and time management and was basically insinuating that I should spend 20 hours a week on top of the 55 I was working on these items as well. Attempting to implement new solutions and resolve code-related issues in this environment was often a challenging experience. My boss frequently insisted on joining me in Zoom calls, where he would essentially watch over my shoulder as I worked on code-related tasks. There was an expectation that these problems should be solved instantly without taking into account the intricacies of software development, implementation considerations, and the need for thoughtful analysis. This constant scrutiny and pressure to deliver immediate results not only hindered the quality of my work but also created a stressful and unproductive atmosphere. At a certain juncture, following my development of Python solutions that effectively managed order routing to different warehouses, resulting in processing a substantial five-digit dollar($) sum of orders within approximately a month and a half of implementation, I found myself in a distressing situation. I was compelled to send degrading and humiliating messages about myself to external vendors, as my boss insisted that it was necessary to align both himself and me. This experience was not only demoralizing but also reflected a troubling management approach that undermined my professional integrity. During our conversation, he repeatedly emphasized a particular point more than ten times, seemingly with the intention to provoke. In response, I interjected (admittedly rudely, for which I apologize) and said, "I've already agreed to this several times. Can we please move on from this point?" (verbatim). Subsequently, he sent an "employee realignment email" claiming that I had raised my voice at him and that this incident would be recorded on my permanent company record. Moreover, coming from someone who clearly lacks respect for their employees, I find it hard to accept the statement made after that encounter: "you have to respect me." Respect is something earned through respectful treatment of others, and in this case, it was not warranted due to the disrespectful behavior displayed. My upbringing taught me that respect is a two-way street, and it cannot be demanded when one's actions do not align with it. I have never experienced a job that brought me as much unhappiness as this one. Never. It sucks losing out on $27000 USD of overtime because management does not acknowledge those kinds of contributions from salaried workers. (I acknowledge that I was considered salary exempt, but that does not justify the extent of mismanagement and mistreatment I endured.)