The company provides a fair amount of time off, but only for Jewish holidays. You'll be working on all those Monday holidays, such as Martin Luther King Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, et al, when your friends and family have the days off. Bid those three-day holiday weekends adieu.
Middle managers are those who tend to fail upward and have little or no experience, no competence, and no clue regarding what it takes to do the job. They are just placed into those positions without regard for qualifications, kind of like the current Administration's Cabinet in Washington.
In all my years with the company, I had about ten managers, most of whom were half my age and knew 10% of what I know about publishing. One of them was in possession of the worst people skills I had ever experienced in a manager and was a textbook bully who vaped clandestinely at his desk and watched movies on his phone. I was passed over for promotion more times than the homes of the Israelites in Egypt. Many middle managers there are promoted because they are "yes" men and don't push back against management. Those who do push back are disciplined with reassignment and demotions.
Nepotism and cronyism galore. If you're not a member of the Orthodox community, or have ideas with which management doesn't agree, you can kiss major promotion opportunities good-bye, no matter how qualified and experienced you are or how innovative your ideas. If you sit beside the right person in synagogue on the Sabbath, or spend your days at the office kissing up, however, your chances increase.
Awful, dirty office environment with tiny (not even) cubicles—a three-foot-wide desk with a small three-drawer file under it, outdated PCs, bad cable management, recirculated air, and more people per floor than this building was designed to sustain, row upon row upon row. You can reach out and touch the person at the next desk on either side of yours. Except for managers with offices (and they are enclosed by glass, not unlike a tropical fish aquarium), personal space doesn't exist. By 4:00 pm you're feeling drowsy because of the lack of fresh air.
Bad, headache-inducing fluorescent lighting. Some employees would unscrew a couple of the bulbs in fixtures above their desks to save their eyesight and make it easier to view their monitors, and maintenance workers would come and screw them back in. Continuously. Cardboard shanty towns above desks, designed to shield their occupants from the brilliant lighting, sprang up as a result.
The lunchroom is a gross mess by midday. Although there are signs over the sinks that ask employees not to dump food in the sinks, there is always food in the sinks. The cereal dispensers have been described as containing small insects. Day-old bread from a Williamsburg bakery, left on a table, is felt up for freshness by many employees (inside the wrappers!), often after leaving the men's room without washing their hands. No one pays attention to the clearly marked bins for garbage, paper, and plastic/glass recycling. Most employees don't bother to clean their crumbs and other leavings from the tables when they finish breakfast or lunch, even the ones who spend most of their day in the lunchroom doing nothing.
The men's room often has puddles on the floor, wads of tissue around the toilet bowls, and plastic cups of water left on the toilets. The toilet tissue is about as soft as 200-grit sandpaper. I always brought my own.
The HR department is staffed by a bunch of cutthroats who are there to represent management, not to help employees—unless they are helping them out the door. During the early days of the Black Lives Matter movement, one member of HR posted his racist thoughts on Facebook. Many customers and fellow employees called for his termination from the job. He was subsequently transferred to the warehouse, but not sacked. His was one of two such incidents. The second employee was untouched and as far as anyone knew, received no discipline from management.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. If you're thinking of seeking employment at this company, you have an advanced degree, you have experience, and you don't qualify for nepotism or cronyism to secure a promotion, think twice. Look elsewhere and save your career.
