They bombard you nonstop with Goodwill propaganda about how they 'help strengthen families and build stronger communities by providing jobs', claiming that their mission is to 'cure poverty through the power of work'. They claim to be a charity, but all profit from the sales goes directly into expansion/funding the opening of other Goodwills - it is growth for growth's sake. How do they even call themselves a charity, then, one might ask? Well, ya see, what they do is they put their front end team members in the awkward position of, at the end of every transaction, begging for donations for the 'career center' that is run by Goodwill. And these donations are the only thing that go towards these career centers! The company has one other program which is aimed at people getting their high school diplomas, but other than these two very minor parts of the operation, all of the rest of the money from the business is going directly toward starting more Goodwills, which they insist is its own kind of charity, since making more retail locations means hiring more people, and they're fully convinced that 'providing jobs' is charity, despite every employer 'providing jobs', and the people working for their company are not charity-cases.
The company is absolutely obsessed with making as much money as humanly possible and pays their employees poverty-wages. Half of the people working under me had to have more than one job to get by, and this is something that is actually glorified within the company in their internal propaganda.
There was a woman working on my team who had been with the company for 6 years and was only making less than a dollar over minimum wage, and she was one of only two people in non-leadership positions on my team who was making above minimum wage. She'd been given that raise after being there for five years (imagine being at a company and not getting a raise for five years, and then when you do it's less than a dollar!), and when I brought up the wages of my staff to HR in a meeting, they argued that not everyone was making minimum wage, and this woman was their example of the company 'being fair'. The gall of this shocked me.
Why was I even in a meeting with HR, you might be wondering? The reason I was in a meeting discussing wages with HR is because an employee on the staff said the word "union" in a meeting that upper-management was present at. Did the employees start a union? No. Did they have any sense of organization at all? No. Did the man seem like he'd even thought about it before saying the word? No. But boy, for a country in which union-busting is against the law, they sure did freak out as though the man had done something wrong. They sure did seem spooked by the whole "ordeal", as if someone saying the word "union" was gonna cast a communist spell.
As someone in lower management, I was also not being paid a living wage. I was originally up for the ASM position, as that is where my experience is and the level of management which I am qualified for. I was instead offered a position that I was over-qualified for (the CSM position - basically manages the front-end operation, similar to a shift-lead position at other companies) due to my lack of availability on the Shabbat. This is, of course, religious discrimination. Not that I have the resources to take any action against this.
Story time, to give an idea of the company: an employee had tickets to see family overseas, but had to postpone the trip due to COVID. Management was made aware that once boarders were to reopen, the employee would go visit her family. So, boarders reopen, she says 'see ya boss, I've got to go see my family'. Boss says 'awesome, we'll see you when you get back'. Employee leaves, and upon returning finds that she needs to reapply for her own job. She finds this odd, but is assured that it's perfectly normal and not to fret, because the job is still hers. So, she gets her job back. She finds out that her sick time which she'd accumulated (per Arizona law) is no longer there. She approaches me about this (who wasn't there at the beginning of this story, but is always there to help). Of course, I think this is weird: surely, if she wasn't paid out that money in her last paycheck, then the sick time should still be on her account - after-all, that would be wage-theft otherwise, wouldn't it? But upon doing some digging, I discovered that that's not true! Apparently, it is legal in Arizona for an employer to not pay out unused sick time. Which I find mind-boggling! (And they say there's no reason to unionize - ha!) But it's very telling of the kind of company this is: they will only treat you as humanely and fairly as they're legally required to. If it was legal to pay you nothing, they would gladly have you as a slave. Their entire mantra is essentially 'work brings freedom' - the same sentiment expressed on the gate entering Auschwitz.
It's a fascist company that exists to propagandize on behalf of capitalism, and largely functions in its current form to enable over-consumptive behavior.
Atop all of this, I had an absolutely insane experience navigating within a hostile workplace while working at Goodwill. I had transferred to another store within the company and found myself in the graces of one of the most grossly incompetent managers I've ever worked for (which, hey, doesn't have to be that big of a deal if they're willing to learn and grow as a leader - but this man was unwilling to admit that he was driving his store into the ground), whom other employees of his described as the 'least approachable manager they'd ever had'. The man was constantly five seconds away from having a temper-tantrum. He had his wife call the store on a night that I was closing by myself, demanding that I tell her why I was 'stressing her husband out at work', wanting to have this conversation which I was in front of customers. Easily one of the least professional environments I've had in retail. The whole company ought to be embarrassed that so many people have had such awful experiences working for them.
