Singapore—A former employee at Spotlight Plaza Singapura outlet took to Reddit to air grievances about delayed salaries and a poor working environment on Monday (Feb 22).
Reddit user ghoulninjaband wrote about the ill-treatment of the staff, adding that “the condition of the workplace is super toxic,” with random pricing and lack of organisation.
“Please do not shop at spotlight. there has been many bad reviews about them and the customer service,” the Redditor wrote.
However, shortly after 11am the following day, ghoulninjaband edited the post to say that they and their friend had received their salaries.
And while they thanked commenters “for your help,” nevertheless, they added, “I still stand by my words about the environment and team leaders. thank you!”
According to the “ex part-time worker,” what made the environment toxic was that “the supervisors and team leaders are CRAY CRAY. other than pushing the blame to you when customers complain, they dont want to pay you your salary!”
They claimed that neither they nor their friends had received their salary for December yet.
“they claimed to have forgotten to pay him during the month of january and said will pay us on february. fast forward to feb now, my friend texted the DTL (department team leader) that if his pay is not credited, he will report it to MOM.
needless to say, our DTL was super rude to him and taunted him to proceed and go ahead, while she will report it to the HR too.”
Furthermore, ghoulninjaband said that they were both blocked by the DTL so that they could not even text her. She said she would just get in touch when the pay was credited.
As for prices in the store changing randomly, they wrote, “every week the “sale” and prices are changing. some weeks they can have a 20% sale, then the next week they can have a 50% sale, then the next week they can have a discounted price for the SAME ITEM.”
Since customers were being made to pay different prices at different times, they called this a “sort of a ‘scam.’”
And if ever a customer wanted something from the store, they wrote, “EVERYTHING IS EVERYWHERE. we, staff, dont even know where things are either. they move the damn things TO DIFFERENT PLACES like almost every week.”
Spotlight is an Australian store for Fabric, Craft, Party and Home Interiors products with branches in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia.
In an article in Coconuts Singapore, Richard Mayne, the manager of Spotlight Singapore manager refuted the claim that the store has a toxic work culture.
In a written message he wrote, “[W]e reject their accusations in regards to a toxic work culture as we always strive constantly to please our employees and customers here in Singapore.”
Mr Mayne added that the salaries had only been delayed for a week because of an “error” in its payroll system, and not a month, as ghoulninjaband had written. Moreover, the former employee was only owed a few hours of pay.
“The individual behind this post, we believe, was an employee who worked with us for a short period and abandoned employment without notice in January. We acknowledged that we owe this ex-employee not more than 5hours pay which should be paid by today, or latest by 26th as stated in the union agreement,” he wrote.
The former employee answered this in a comment to his Reddit post.
/TISG
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