Employees are Down and Out at Outlook Amusements, Inc. Where Dishonesty, Greed, and Hypocrisy are the Corporate Culture.
Employee retention is a competitive advantage to most companies but not for Outlook Amusements, Inc., the company that owns and operates California Psychics, 1-800-Predict and californiapsychics.com. As an employee of this company, I can personally attest to the countless atrocities and the dehumanization of most of its staff.
Every story should start at the beginning however, Outlook Amusements history of disengaging its employees and habitual mismanagement of talent would be quite lengthy for this website so perhaps I should start with the last 3-8 months. In each department you can find evidence of employee abuse, hostility in the workplace or overall corporate malfeasance. Here are just a few recent examples. We can begin with the General Manager (referred to as the GM through the rest of this entry). Every employee that has reported to the GM has been fired or left under suspicious circumstances. The GM has perfected the art of finger-pointing and laying blame. Unfortunately, in the bitter end, it is the ones the GM should have been protecting who ultimately pay the price with their livelihoods. Here is an incomplete account of the GMs fallen and/or fired direct reports. There was a Business Intelligence Director who was hired about 5 years too early for a company that is unsophisticated at data and not able to support such a position. There was the loyal VP of Technology who had helped build the company from nothing but mysteriously tendered his resignation. There was a beloved VP of Marketing who built an entire Marketing team, after the previous team had attrited; this VP pushed to institute positive change but ultimately took the fall for numerous decisions that the GM was championing and had approved. There was a tenured VP of Customer Service, with numerous complaints against him, which the GM turned a blind eye to until a performance cover-up broke the proverbially camel's back and this VP was abruptly pushed out. And then there was the SEO Director who was tending to his ailing mother, out of state, when he was asked to return to his job only to be let go from his responsibilities, that very same day — this is perhaps the epitome of corporate disgracefulness. People are merely collateral damage in the course of daily operations at Outlook Amusements Inc./California Psychics in Burbank, CA. Two more great examples of this would be a Customer Service representative, an employee on the team of the VP of Customer Service (the one from above) who was let go as the fall guy for what would eventually trickle upward, as part of a bigger issue, la VP of CS getting fired. There was also a Content Marketing Manager who was fired for lodging a complaint against her direct supervisor; a complaint that the HR Director turned into a witch hunt.in the end, both the manager and supervisor were fired about 5 weeks apart. I hope this is painting the picture of a hostile work environment one where dispute resolution comes in one flavor: FIRED! If you still are not convincedlets move on to the employees that were abused in plain sight for all to witness. There are the select few that left on their own volition — the ones that were lied to about promotions, worked to the brink of impropriety, slowly marginalized, some developed health issues, and when Outlook Amusements finally crushed their can-do American spirit; they quit either with or without another job. These individuals deserve a few lines of text. There was a loyal Product Manager, of 5 plus years, who had the promise of moving up the corporate ladder dangled in front of her for years but alas this person ended up reporting to an outside contractor. That contractor later was named the new Director of the department. You can imagine how difficult this would be for anyone to accept especially given the fact that this Product Manager had to watch several changing of the guards, within the department, despite being amply qualified to head the department. She eventually quit and I hope the company knows how much knowledge she held; knowledge lost due to their lack of recognizing hard-working, loyal, employees. They would much rather hire from the outside than promote from within. Then there was an Acquisition Marketing Manager one that did the work of three people. I know she did the work of three people because that is exactly how many people it took to replace her but at a subpar level. This Marketing Manager moved from out of state, was promised a promotion if goals were met (little did she know these goals would never be met), was berated by the Co-founder and GM for poor Marketing plans, was worked (or abused) until she couldnt give anymore and when all was said and done it was not her plans that were terrible but rather the online checkout process and television ads, both of which the Co-founder had a hand in creating. This Marketing Managers job was marginalized by a new hire, who knows next to nothing, and then the manager ultimately quit but not before she ended up with high blood pressure. If you need more proof of my claims; how about a Fraud Prevention Manager that quit because she couldnt take the poor decisions that were happening at the senior level? That action spoke volumes to the horrible work atmosphere that exists at Outlook Amusements. In the last year, the only people that were promoted, internally, to Director's were men even though there were women who were just as competent. Outlook Amusements is a good ole boys club that is walking a thin, discriminatory, line. I write this as a warning to future employees — please proceed to this company with extreme caution. The words in this complaint are not the exception but the norm. There is a running joke: when someone makes a mistake, someone is getting fired... A sad but true statement and the antithesis of its corporate mission to be a "positive force in people's lives." The owners operate this business with a strategy that has less validity than a ouija board. Profit above people in their mantra — hypocrisy thy name is Outlook Amusements. I also write this for the current employees so they know that they do have rights. You do not have to accept psychological warfare as part of your daily responsibilities. It is sometimes hard to stand-up against corporate misconduct for fear of losing a job but if there were ever a case for a class action lawsuit, this company is it!
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