The compensation for this position was not sufficient for the demands of the role. There was also very limited opportunity to be promoted or gain increases in salary. Employees were explicitly and repeatedly told we would not get pay increases, and later found out this rule was seemingly limited to our department while other departments did get yearly increases. We were told this was due to the bonus structure, but in the years I worked here I did not ever receive a bonus. So after several years of very hard work and providing reliably high-quality customer experiences that increased our business - I did not receive an increase in my wages. When things in the industry went into a downturn recently, we were told we would need to work in a 'do more with less' mindset and this was really disappointing after already outperforming my rate of pay for several years.
There were continuous limitations on personal time off which caused difficulty for a healthy work/life balance. This, coupled with the uncompetitive compensation, meant that job satisfaction was highly reliant on the job itself and the work culture. The company did not always utilize my department to its fullest potential and it often felt like we were a forgotten side dish. When we were often the most knowledgeable customer-facing employees in their toolkit.
I was laid off, after several rounds of company lay-offs, and this process was handled very poorly. They pulled me and several of my teammates into the same zoom call to let us go at the same time. Forcing us to experience each other's reactions without any thoughtful time to discuss our feelings or effectively ask questions about the process before they immediately launched into making sure they collected a list of our company-issued technology (as if they didn't have this list already). This experience really sealed the entire experience working for Lakeshore to me - they used my skills for their benefit for years acting like I was part of their 'family' and treated me like a total stranger on the way out. I've been laid off before, but this was truly the worst I've been treated and I'll never forgive this company for being so cold and heartless after years of my dedication. And this failure is theirs to own due to poor business decisions. The PDS department continued to out perform our expectations year-over-year and yet they gutted the department to save money company-wide.
