Corporations are Joy Sucking Vampires

I just quit my Job at a country club that is run by Invited. Invited was once know as Club Corp. They run sort of the Walmart of Country Clubs. They don’t have the best reputation. Lots of turn over and they don’t seem to care.

I knew it going in, but I needed the job as I was relocating from California.

As it turned out this facility was my dream location, we had an amazing team and we killed it in creating programs that created
revenue and they were program that we were excited to run. We were in the top in revenue and other KPIs of all their 200 clubs.

Long story shot. Invited didn’t bother asking us how we were so successful and had such a positive team. They instead told us to stop what we were doing and implement their programming.

I tried to work with them, but they were so far disconnected from anything relevant to our clubs needs. We already had successful programs. Their programs when we tried did nothing to move the needle. Yet we had to track all our performance and make sure we met all the required indicators if we wanted to keep our jobs. We were just checking boxes so that we would look good on some idiots dashboard at corporate headquarters.

I began dreading going to work. Complaining to my wife when I’d get home. Oh and Invited owns most of the clubs that had job opportunities so I was not going to leave this job just to have the same problem.

Invited had sucked out the joy of working, and I was stuck. I kept thinking it was my fault, i just need a better attitude, I should just buckle down and work through it. I learned that cooping behavior from my parents who didn’t understand why I didn’t like school.

I understand now how well public education has embedded compliance into our psyche. Break free if you can.

Well, here I am. I found a small location that will let me work as an independent contractor. It is already proving successful. I still have a lot of work to do, But it’s fruitful work. Not pointless busy work to appease some nob.

I shared a bit of my struggles with others and they give me, “well that’s corporate for you” line. It gave me pause to think that many many more are tied up to disconnected corporations. I’m grateful I had an opportunity to escape. But I’m saddened that my friends in the industry are having to endure this.

Please avoid Invited if you can. If you work for them or are a member at one of their clubs now, you either already have or will have more stories like mine. Best of luck.

I won’t answer any specifics to my location or position. I just wanted to get this off my chest and warn others.
Feel free to share your own corporate vampire stories.

Ha, an example of how disfuncional they are, they don’t even have an Invited Wiki they only have their old Club Corp wiki. Here, if anyone cares to look them up. Club Corp

a reply to: Observationalist

Times are definitely changing, and so are the people running corporate America. Im showing 182 'clubs run by Invited are there more? FWIW it still could just be the personalities involved here

Regardless this is one industry I could definitely see, some wanting to transition

a reply to: Observationalist

I work retail so I have tons of these types of experiences. It seems to have gotten worse over the years. I don't even want to go into whats going on right now at my job but I have honestly never seen such out of touch, lazy, condescending people at the corporate level and my job works backward so upper management at store level starts out at corporate instead of the other way around so now what is happening is these out of touch corporate people who have never actually worked in a store or usually they don't even have store level retail experience at all because they got out of college and went straight to corporate level and then filter into store management.

They have no clue. They say stuff like "it isn't the department manager's job to stock" which it actually is, because when you have only two people in a department, a stocker and a dept. manager and then you have a truckload that is forecasted to take 17 hours and has to be done the same day, who else is supposed to stock it? But of course newbies listen to this and end up being a dept. Manager who spends their entire shift just straightening up the sales floor and then upper management gets mad and writes those same dept. Managers up because not only does their backroom look terrible because the trucks aren't getting fully stocked before the next truck shows up, which messes up all the on hand amounts of merchandise but also the sales floor might be straightened up but there are a ton of outs because again, the entire shipments aren't getting stocked and if we have something in the back, you'd never know because it is such a disorganized mess. AND THERE IS LITERALLY NOTHING FOR THE DEPARTMENT MANAGER TO DO IF THEY'RE NOT STOCKING. They definitely shouldn't be ordering or changing on hands when they have live unworked freight from several days just sitting around everywhere totally unorganized.

That is why I got out of management. I was getting bullied by upper management for stocking even though they admitted my backroom was the best in the district, my onhands were the most accurate and the trucks were actually getting done same day. Because "dept. Managers aren't supposed to stock. You are supposed to delegate" lol. Delegate what? And then what will I be doing or am I just delegating myself out of a job ultimately?

End of delegating means an end to your employment in many cases.

a reply to: Antimony

Oh wow, that sucks. Delegate is more than telling someone else’s to do it. It’s training and follow up. You have to embed the same passion you have for your work so that the person you pass it on to will do it at the same level. That is a higher pay grade as it sounds like you have much bigger expectations and pride in your work to just let go. Right on, good for you.