Has anyone else repeatedly heard about how horrible this place is and toxic? Because I took a risk despite hearing that and found out there corporate culture (buying especially handbags and women/children’s ) was even worse than I expected. Is there a way to know which places have toxic cultures and which places have good ones? Glassdoor isn’t always verifiable.
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The worst companies I Have worked for were connected to Kering (previously and currently connected). When I say worse, I mean hostile (including physically violent) colleagues, inept management, indifferent HR, and ZERO work-life balance.
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Unfortunately there’s no real way of knowing what companies are toxic or not. Speak to friends in the industry and always go for the interview. Listen to your gut, if you get a bad vibe from the interview, don’t move forward. Or if you didn’t have that “feeling” until an offer was made, don’t take it. Most people only write reviews when they have a bad experience so I agree you can’t always go by Glassdoor. Speaking of, what my company did was send out a mandatory email and made every single person write a “good review” on Glassdoor. People still spoke the truth of how they felt but not into detail but gave 4-5 stars for the company. Anyway, always speak to the company and go for the interviews because your experience can be 100% different from someone else depending on your division and team.
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…and eventually, people will be able to check The Schmatte for dish on toxic companies. 
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Avoid: Most contemporary brands I think, also ! Anyone know anything about working for H & M ? Or any of their brands?
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Unfortunately, I tend to get tricked by the nice face they put on in interviews.
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The worst! But listen carefully to keywords they may use like “working late”. Yeah most people do work late but pay attention to how they phrase it. Or if your team is small, find out what happened to the person before you or why they created a new position. When I interviewed for my company they told me they never leave before 7:30pm and they start at 8:45/9am. Is your boss located in the office or out of state? Mine was located in a different state that’s 3 hours behind. Which ended up meaning I worked 15 hour days, 5 days a week (no exaggeration). These were phrases I should have paid attention to but didn’t. I was laid off from my previous job at that time and needed something. They were giving me the salary I wanted plus enticed me with travels to Europe (which was brutal and not glamours lol). Very few friends knew of my company and it was mixed reviews. I’m now no longer under my first boss but still under a horrible one and it’s been 4 years 
Things have gotten easier but still in a bad situation. It’s just all about chance!
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I network and read everything to learn about potential employers. In spite of my due diligence, I too have been ensnared by companies with toxic cultures. Recently, a colleague was a long term employee at a company I interviewed with. Instead of reaching out to my colleague, I assumed her lengthy stay implied that the company was stellar and accepted the position. I quickly realized my mistake and this same colleague never failed to share her complaints about working there.
In this Covid climate, I anticipate: reduced salaries and more corporate toxicity.
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H&M is run by a bunch of Neo-Nazi born-Americans that are traitors to this country. They are garbage and I haven’t supported them since this new management of Nazi’s took control!
One of the companies that I worked for, the owner went around the company and pressured people to write fake good reviews on Glassdoor to bump up the review score. It’s important to ask specific questions that speak to the culture in the interview. Their responses will give a glimpse into how things operate on a daily basis.
A company I worked for did this as well.
Me as well. It was a smaller company. HR was run by one of the most hateful, vindictive people I have ever met. Someone wrote a bad review, and she stormed through the office, threatening to have IT check computer histories to find out who did it. I have not worked there for years, but I still have nightmares about that woman, and still have not written an honest review of that company, for fear she is an actual demon who will track me down and haunt me until the end of days.
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Good reminder to be careful what you do with your work computer - they have the right to look into our histories…
Yeah your better of writing the review on a personal computer at home where they cant see that.