Jon Rodriguez

The Most Toxic Workplace I've Ever Experienced As the headline reads, Anchor QEA was the most toxic workplace I have experienced thus far in my career. Every day brought new stress and drama due to lack of communication and transparency, incompetence, poor management, and disrespect. Shortly after I was hired, 30% of our local office left the company, citing one or more of the above reasons for their departure. Management and Human Resources consciously ignored the causes for these departures and did nothing to address or reconcile the unhappiness of those who remained but had voiced similar complaints. Over the course of about a year, outspoken employees (including myself) regularly submitted peer feedback about colleagues who were violating ethics, displaying sexist and/or unprofessional behaviors, and displaying poor staff and project management skills. Despite meticulous documentation, concerns unfortunately fell on deaf ears. Even though the proper feedback channels provided by the company were being utilized, there was zero accountability or change observed. In fact, these deep-seeded issues were only exacerbated when a regional manager hired one of his friends to head our local office. Eventually, Human Resources made a rare in-person appearance at our office. The same concerns (along with new examples) that had been previously documented and submitted to HR were once again brought up for discussion by employees. Instead of acting on these concerns, they rounded up every single female in the office into a small conference room to be berated for a satirical book found in the office titled "How to Succeed Without Hurting Men's Feelings". A direct quote from Human Resources-- "If I could burn this book, I would". Employees with terrible social and project management skills continued to be offered additional responsibilities. Employees with no staff management experience or guidance continued to manage employees. Sexism, favoritism and general disrespect continued to be perpetuated in office decisions and employee interactions. Communication between management and non-management was virtually nonexistent. And management, particularly the new office manager, continued to display an embarrassing lack of knowledge about our business and the employees. I can't quite express in words how continually disappointing and emotionally taxing it was to work at Anchor QEA, but I hope that the above accounts help inform and deter prospective employees from accepting an offer. Mental health and self worth are not worth sacrificing for employment in this firm.