I would like to be the whistleblower to stop my company from abusing labour.
It is a modern employee abuse in a golden cage. A lot of broken promises which makes them in breach of contract.
Please read my resignation letter below.
To Management, HR and all Designers
I have now decided to turn in my resignation and part ways with Wren due to a number of reasons all of you are aware of.
Wren has failed to fulfill his promises to me and therefore it became impossible for me to survive at his horrible workplace any longer.
Since accepting the job offer from Wren my life has taken a sharp turn downwards. I depleted over £10,000 in my savings and now in a financial crisis because Wren did not deliver what he promised.
I am not quitting my job because I am unable to sell kitchens or I am a loser. I am quitting Wren because I am tired of all the BS and lies. At the time of my writing this letter I was at the top three in my store with over £240k net in sales since December 13th, 2019. A period covering little over 2 months.
Please note below to see why I don’t feel like being part of Wren.
- WREN IS NOT THE #1 PLACE TO WORK IN THE UK
- How do you explain the highest employer turn over ?
- How do you explain 2 years probation period?
- How do you explain people getting sacked left and right including managers and even regional managers?
- How do you explain training 50 people every week at the Nest? The Nest is a factory for pumping new designers to the circulation who have a life span of maximum 6 months. Enough time to suck the expenses out from the threshold in place.
- I witnessed an employee get sacked just because he had a bad attitude towards workplace. Who can blame him?
- We are treated like cheap labour trying to get leads to be fed to certain few people in the stores. There are 15-20 designers in each showroom only 2-3 of which will earn the money Wren brags about at the hiring.
- All the reviews on the internet are placed by people finishing off their training on the Nest with a sneaky trick that redirects a training feedback to a website where we review our employer Wren without knowing what we are getting into.
WREN IS NOT #1 RETAILER IN THE UK
I don’t feel comfortable about lying to customers about the quality of our kitchens.
We show our customer premium plus ranges in our showroom and in our comparison bays but end up quoting for the basic range which is inferior in quality and restricted in colors and sizes.
We are not cheaper than the competition even in the basic range.
Our sale period does not end like we advertise.
Working at Wren is almost like a slavery in a golden cage.
The pay here at Wren is a joke : I get paid minimum wage for a highly skilled employee like myself with over 8 years of experience.
The threshold seemed not important when I was promised that I would be selling over a million pound in a year but if you look at it closely on 40 hours contract my wage is £17,750 per annum.
To make this salary I am supposed to sell £15000 net £18000 gross each month. If the company is working on a 20% margin Wren is making £3000 each month from my threshold without paying me anything. In reality I am paying my own wages and being treated like a child. Wren is making me work for free and he does not care what happens to me.
Work at Wren is like we are still in kindergarten.
The briefings and lectures every morning that we don’t get paid for and
speaking about the same stuff over and over at these briefings like we did not hear it the first time.
Get a second degree look or get written up when you are running a minute late to your unnecessary briefing that you don’t even get paid for.
I have a camera right behind my desk and Wren is actually paying someone to watch me to see if I left my screen on
The FREE ISSUE MATTER.
Wren is very sneaky in how it deals with free issues. Free issues should be covered by Wren from the savings they make by hiring inexperienced designers.
Wren does not offer any training to design kitchens and show them how kitchens work. Wren hires people from all backgrounds with no kitchen experience. The mistakes made by these designers is probably very normal and expected. That is why Wren has compliance officers and plan checks in place only to penalize the designer for the mistakes and cover it’s own shortcomings. Mistakes do happen even with these checks in place. Wren offers customers a peace of mind by solving their problems and make the designer and managers pay for it.
I was told free issue was 50% of the cost to the designer at the time of hiring. Please look at order no and how it is possible to charge £3300 just to change the doors of a kitchen when the fully built kitchen itself cost . Wren is charging the designer full price of the kitchen and probably a little bit profit on top.
Also WREN deducts FREE ISSUE from designer’s pay cheque in one go like he does not care about how the designer will pay the bills and feed the family that month instead of making small deductions or including it in their expenses like all the other kitchen retailers do.
WREN IS IN BREACH OF CONTRACT WITH ME BECAUSE THEY DID NOT HOLD ANY OF THE PROMISES IT MADE TO ME WHEN I WAS HIRED. I AM SURE A LOT OF YOU SHARE THE SAME DISAPPOINTMENT.
I applied for work with Wren in July having heard that they were opening a new showroom next to my work place in October 2019. When I was offered the position in July 18th 2019 they told me they wanted me to start working immediately. I asked the recruiting team what I would be doing till the store opened in October. I was told I would be training for a month and then start working for a showroom immediately. They said they would place me in a hotel and pay for my meals.
I asked my GM to see if I could negotiate my salary at least in the beginning because I was previously making a lot of money and needed to survive until I started selling. HE TOLD ME WREN DOES NOT DO THAT.
I turned in my notice with my previous employer where I was earning over £50k per annum.
I started working for Wren in August 19th and finished my training in a month’s time and started in Cambridge Store September 16th.
I FOUND OUT THAT OPENING OF MY STORE WAS DELAYED TILL MID DECEMBER
Cambridge is 1.5 hours each way from my home. I saw a hotel room only one or two nights during the two months I worked in Cambridge.
I drove 3 hours every day to go to work and come back home. This time on the road was away from my children and my social life which Wren is to be blamed for.
After I started working for Wren in Cambridge, I soon found out that you have to fight for your own leads in a store where there is another 15-20 designers. Of course labor comes very cheap for Wren.
Wren does not care about the livelihood of its employees.
Because I am good at what I do I was able to start selling in no time but all my earning in the first month went to my threshold for the two pay periods. WREN DOES NOT GIVE ANY GRACE PERIOD TO ITS NEW STARTERS. SO BE PREPARED TO WORK AT MINIMUM WAGE FOR A FEW MONTHS IF YOU CAN SURVIVE.
Soon after I started working at Cambridge we found out that our REGIONAL MANAGER got SACKED and we were told that I could not sell at Cambridge anymore. I was told to come to Enfield and start passing out fliers in the cold before the store opening.
I wrote to my GM to see if we could arrange a guaranteed commission until I started earning something because I had a family to feed and all these things happening was not my fault. He told me that he would look into it. HE NEVER DID ANYTHING ABOUT IT UNTIL I WROTE TO WREN RECRUITMENT TEAM AND COMPLAINED ABOUT IT.
We were stuffed in a mobile VAN outside the showroom more than two months before the opening. I find this highly inhuman and treating us like small animals. The weather is not very nice, cold and raining most of the time right before Winter. There was 15 designers at the time trying to pass flyers to people shopping groceries.
WREN PROMISED ME TO START EARNING MONEY RIGHT AFTER TRAINING NOT STUFF ME IN A VAN TO PASS FLYERS.
I hung in there during all this because I was promised that I was the top designer in our store and will be making a lot of money.
IF ALL THESE NOT ENOUGH, A NEW DESIGNER WAS PUT IN STORE FROM ANOTHER SHOWROOM THE DAY WE OPENED. I managed to be in the top two designers in the store.
A MONTH LATER ANOTHER DESIGNER WAS PUT IN STORE FROM ANOTHER SHOWROOM. I dropped down to number three in the store second month. Because all the leads started to be fed to the other designer.
THE 40 HOUR DESIGNER PROMISE NOT KEPT BY MANAGERS. I was sitting in the store with no appointment even on the weekends. I only relied on my own leads while a few people were being fed by the managers for the wrong merits. GM gives all the appointments he takes to his favourite in the store. Also our AGM started buddy buddy with another part time designer who had no experience in kitchens before and started giving him a lot of leads while I was sitting with no appointments. This designer from nowhere became the top seller in the store last month. Our store became a store where it it not important how much you know about kitchens or what experience you have.
I DID NOT RECEIVE SUPPORT FROM MY GM
I always felt like he was out to get me. When I opened my mouth it was me being argumentative. He made statements like management talked bad about my attitude which was not the case when I enquired with the AGMs. On my first review he dwelled on my performance being poor even though i was the second in the store. or my lack of lead taking even though i was top lead taker in the store. He drained me down every day. I asked him about not having any appointments and he told me I should get my own. He hired me as a 40 hours designer reluctantly and he made that obvious to me all the time. Every store I been to 40 hours designers sit in their desks with appointments because company relies on their experience and knowledge. But this was not the case for me.
I DON’T WANT ANY PART OF THIS COMPANY ANYMORE AND WOULD LIKE WREN TO COMPENSATE ME FOR MY LOSS OF INCOME AND STRUGGLES DURING MY TIME OF EMPLOYMENT.
I ALSO WOULD LIKE MY UNPAID HOLIDAYS PAID TO ME ON MY LAST CHECK ALONG WITH MY P45.
RIGHT BEFORE I TURNED MY RESIGNATION I GOT A LETTER FOR FREE ISSUE. I CONTESTED THIS FREE ISSUE SO NO DEDUCTIONS SHOULD BE MADE FROM MY SALARY OTHERWISE I WILL INCLUDE THIS IN MY CASE AGAINST WREN.
I am the first one to leave my store and I will not be the last one. I only hope WREN will evolve to make the place a better place to work.
I am turning my resignation in a manner to raise some questions so that things will change for my good colleagues I leave behind.
FAIRWELL
