Seeing awful online reviews - what do you do?

Not that company, but yes, def. heard that there was also a lot of nepotism there. Sadly (?) the owner died last year, but I think his sister took over.

A few times in my career I’ve been the only goy employee at Jewish-owned companies. I’ve also called on a lot of Jewish-owned companies as a sales person. No problems, great people. Some religious differences? Sure. As a protestant from the South were these differences odd to me at first? Sure. If we are being fair-minded, these are only differences; not good or bad, just different.

To be honest, the first time I saw people with ash on their foreheads at work (Ash Wednesday), I thought that was odd too. Again, not good or bad but different from my own personal norm.

Its not a good strategy to stereotype all Jewish-owned companies. The same would go for Catholic, Protestant, Hindi, etc… companies. You really need to evaluate each company on their own merits.

Most of the idiosyncrasies that people experience at smaller companies tend to be more in line with the issues at ANY family-owned business regardless of religion.

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@grandpoobah

I’m sure no one is stereotyping every Jewish person who walks on the planet…or even ones who own businesses…I will however speak on the particular ones where either I have had negative experiences with, in addition to people I know. If the majority of family-owned fashion companies were run by Latino catholics or Blacks baptists, for example…I’m sure people would have no issue discussing any negative experiences, and rightfully so. I honestly could give a rat’s behind what ethnicity, religion, or even political affiliation a business owner is a member of. I come from a multi-ethnic/multi-religious family…I’ve dated both Christian and Jewish men…so I can say for me, the statements that I’ve made on here have nothing to do about being against people of a particular faith. All I want to do is have a career where I am doing what I’m passionate about and contributing to something great…all while being paid fairly as my co-workers and predecessors who have the same job, workload, education, etc…and treated like a human being.

The only reason why it isn’t uncommon for people within this industry to bring up places that happen to be toxic religious companies, it’s because there have been so many situations over the years…and again, I’m not saying 100% of the companies are negative environments…but if it wasn’t at least a significant amount, do you think I would hear the same types of stories that I’ve heard from the time I moved to NYC after university to present?? Hearing negative things about particular toxic companies (whether they are family-owned or not) is like listening to a broken record. I literally hear the same stuff about particular companies from people of all demographics who work within the industry…and that’s not even counting the comments you see on the various company review sites. And not every family-owned business is small…they come in all sizes.

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I probably wasn’t clear enough in my response BUT the stereotyping comment wasn’t about your post but rather, a recommendation for all fashion industry professionals. I apologize for not being more direct about that comment. :slight_smile:

Your post was flagged by another user for antisemitism. Personally, I didn’t see it that way; it seemed you were describing a situation and not disparaging a group of people.
Rather than take the post down (and no one see it), I thought it was better to share my experiences with Jewish owned companies in the garment center to provide a little balance.

Ultimately, it is better to discuss these things than ignore them.

As for religion, Thankfully Ash Wednesday is a once a year thing that labels people by religion on their foreheads clearly and visually. That’s not what the online reviews are saying and complaining about or raving about as good/bad reasons to work at a company. Oh my gosh, they celebrate Ash Wednesday. How will I ever survive that one day where my boss comes in late that morning while acting like it’s perfectly fine to be late?

Thoroughly and heavily embracing Jewish culture in the workplace daily and bringing religion into play daily in the workplace, where employees become irritated is an actual issue. When religion goes a step too far and gets either too much praise or too much disgust. I mean great, go ahead, be whoever you want in a professional environment, but don’t give special treatment on a management level to people under you based off religious beliefs. That would be the same as discriminating against race, gender, clothing, where you live…none of that should matter though. But it does. You get judged by what you wear, how you talk, and again, what you wear.

The point I wanted to get across is that it seems to be a very repetitive subject across a majority of workplaces that I do research. So it’s not my opinion per se but the collaborative opinions of other anonymous people - many of whom may be in this forum, anonymously.

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@grandpoobah

Thanks for your further explanation…and for not removing my posted comment. :blush::+1:. Nothing I said in that post was anti-semitic…it makes me wonder if it was flagged because I asked the person I was replying to if they were referring to a particular company, and I mentioned a name…which actually is the first time I have EVER mentioned a particular name of a company on this site…let’s just say I’ve found sometimes in life, people tell on themselves by their actions in a way…even if they are in stealth mode!

I’m smart enough to know there are more than likely people who are members of this site who are either in the inner circle at some of the companies people are discussing…could also possibly be HR or TA folks on here too :thinking: :eyes:. Again, I would never make anti-semitic comments as that’s not what I stand for.

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I worked for a high end company that has a public face that is all about warmth, kindness and community. Very preppy, customers are wealthy and sophisticated.

Management all looked like a Ralph Lauren ad. In fact, most of the employees looked the same. There is a manager who has multiple substantial complaints lodged against him, from several people, and a continuous turnover in their department. This person was scheduled for a review that would almost certainly have resulted in dismissal. Covid hit, company closed, they fired those who complained, fired those who were over 45, fired all those who made reasonable salaries, kept all the managers and a few young, very inexpensive employees who are paid hourly.
They have many glassdoor reviews that are not favorable, HR merely submits more reviews that are eerily, artificially, positive to bury the bad reviews.
It is by far, the most abusive environment I have worked in, and it wasn’t a family owned company, there was no religious affiliation, and they are expert at concealing the toxic environment.
It’s really unfortunate, if upper management wasn’t concerned solely with money, and cared about the employees in the company, they would not be struggling to survive now. Everytime you lose talented, competent people, you only strengthen the competition.

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…and that’s why we don’t take down flagged posts. It is better to discuss (civilly) than to cancel/ignore. :slight_smile:

@Designmaven

What you described totally sucks…and the sad part is because so many people who aren’t within the “inner circle” of these toxic environments, they get sh!tted on…but they STILL hang in there because they are passionate about working in the fashion industry :pensive:.

I’ve noticed with a couple of companies I’ve worked for is eventually, even the “inner circle” of people within a company can burst as well/turn on one another whenever the company isn’t in a good place…almost reminds me of those MTV reality shows circa 2008 when people formed fake alliances…only to go on to stabbed those same people in the back :woman_shrugging:.

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WHAT THE F CHRIS??? Are you STILL allowing this anti-jewish rhetoric on here???

@Leavingfashion, Please flag the comments you find offensive so that we can review them. There is no budget for a full time moderator. These things need to be policed by the community.

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No- you have a whole section about Syrians followed by a string of comments that are anti Jewish. You need to take the section down it is disgusting. I’m not flagging all of it. Do you have no judgment??

I’m really pissed about this now.

No offense, but just search for the companies online…it’s nothing new here. Flag the comments you don’t like, but these people commenting will be around on glassdoor, indeed, and those sites continuing the anti-Jewish conversation…I just pointed it out as an example, because there were overwhelmingly a ton of those comments, company review after company review.

@Leavingfashion. What, specifically, is anti-Semitic on this string? -not the string about Syrian companies but specifically on this string?

Also, did you read my comments on stereotyping? If not, please take a look.