For the last year I worked for a tour operator that is known for its ethical approach to travel and has a charismatic leader-type that founded the company and whose philosophy is widely celebrated by the company. He has written books, directed a documentary, and has a Ted talk. Everyone who works here knows his name before they start, and he kinda has a cult following.
I was excited at first. The company has some great perks, like work from home, a yearly allowance for travel on their tours. Benefits. A ball pit, a slide, and a beer fridge in the head office in Toronto. The pay was just okay, but I was excited to work somewhere that seemed much more tolerable than many other work environments. I was enthusiastic, and I was a top performer in sales and earned a promotion into a more administrative role after 6 months.
I still wasn't making a lot of money, and the demands of the job started to grow and grow. I performed a growing number of administration tasks, and that's when the company decided to organize a world summit in Peru. A group of chosen few along with the higher ups and the founder himself would gather for a 5-day gala of sorts, with guest speakers (including the founder), the works. Me and my team had to help administrate all the bookings required for the event, getting staffers from all over the world to/from, organizing extensions and the like.
The head organizer for this event was contracted from the outside and has no idea how anything works internally. She'd have an idea, and it would be up to me and my team to implement it regardless of how contradictory it was to our systems. She was a poor communicator and kept making changes to what was and wasn't allowed, causing us to take on a great deal of extra work going back and adjusting things that were previously completed — all on top of our regular full time tasks. We were not invited to the event, nor would we be receiving a bonus for the extra project. My team started to call out often – lots of people were talking about being burned out. I brought these concerns to a manager and was brushed off in a meeting where she implied that I needed to buck up and stop causing problems, or be taken off the project altogether.
I also started to notice things that were contradictory to the ethics the company was so proud of. One of the core values is “do the right thing”. During the Lahaina fires, some staff members raised concerns about us continuing to operate tours to Hawaii due to the detrimental impact on locals, and the fact that locals have been calling for tourists to stay home. This too was brushed off and ignored, and the company continues to operate tours there.
I also found out that our tour guides, were contracted employees so that the company didn't need to offer them stability or benefits. Many tour guides have worked for the company for over 10 years and return fantastic results in terms of customer satisfaction, but they are not granted permanent employment status, so they never receive the benefits or perks that I was receiving. I was really surprised by this because the company is always praising the tour guides and saying they are the most important.
Additionally, the charismatic leader of the company started to show his true colors. He was rude and unprofessional over Slack, he called people “bitches” as a joke. Part of my job involved arranging his personal flights, and he regularly spent $25,000 of company money to fly business class very least minute — often to and from his second home in Barbados — all while telling employees that raises, bonuses, etc. Were not in the budget, blaming the impact of Covid.
In regards to salaries, I found out that my direct manager works 80-90 hour weeks and makes much less than 100k — so the opportunities for growth within the company started to be less and less appealing.
My husband was hired by the same company six months ago. He was looking for a career change, and he started in sales. His customer service surveys always came back eith excellent scores, and his bookings were clean and well administered. However, his manager kept hounding him about his sales. His sales were okay, but he wasn't hitting any targets that would get him a bonus. My husband is a people person and spent a lot of time helping callers troubleshoot the website or figure out a country's visa requirements. The company felt he should be spending more effort into sales and put him on a performance improvement plan. They assured him verbally that they had no plans to fire him, and that they just wanted to get him on track to be earning bonuses. We thought this was fair enough, and he started working hard to improve his numbers. Many other employees have very similar numbers/performance, and have been there longer, so I was fairly confident he wouldn't be fired. Very shortly after he was put on this plan, he was fired by a random HR rep. The rep said she didn't know why, and that an email would follow to explain. The email said he was fired for “reasons discussed”, so we still don't know — we can only assume it was because of his numbers. My husband had been an excellent team player, participating regularly in the company culture, engaging with staff, and even lent a helping hand to the new staffers that were hired after him. I heard him on the phone often and he was always kind, knowledgeable, and professional — just not a sales shark. I know that getting fired in this impersonal and harsh way has really hurt him.
So I quit. Logical or not, I felt I could no longer stand by a company that is so… fake. So unreliable. They say one thing and do another. Furthermore, many of my coworkers were such believers in the ethics of the company that they weren't open to criticizing the company — even when many of them are struggling to pay rent, they expressed gratitude to work there because of its ethical practices. I feel like the company uses ideology to control people, and it's all just a front. I felt disillusioned and betrayed and like a big dummy. Of course it is just another company funneling money into one guy's wallet. I announced that I quit, and my reasons for it, in a very public slack channel for all my coworkers to see. After that I was shortly booted.
A friend from the inside showed me a screenshot of the founder's post, which went up shortly after mine was deleted. It read “Well she had everything figured out in her mind! That was exciting for a minute.” I am positive he has no idea who I am or what role I was in. And this facetious response kinda makes me feel like I made the right decision.
So my family is jobless and searching for the next thing to pay rent. It's depressing and sad. I feel so anxious and angry, but I don't regret leaving. Watch out for those jobs that say you are a family, that they do the right thing, that they take care of people. It's just another tactic. Thanks for reading my little story.