Warner Bros. Reviews

Cons

Salaries are below market but you do get a lot of time off especially at the end of the year and great work- life balance.

Cons

There is no cons -

Cons

Being a temp sucks, because you don't get the perks and benefits of attending events (including networking events) that could boost your chances of success. People tend to shy from building a relationship with you because you are here today gone tomorrow.

Cons

• I encountered far more cons than pros while working at Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood and this cons list could be much longer than it already is. I wanted to give the department a higher rating but the cons far outweighed the pros. First of all the Studio Tour Department is NOT a page program like NBCUniversal or CBS. Don’t kid yourself and don’t let HR recruiters fool you by implying something that isn’t true.

• You have to pay a $250 union initiation fee for the privilege of working at a seasonal part time job that pays $11 plus ($12 plus if you actually give tours) per hour. The fee was not taken out of your pay every month, you had to give the union the entire amount and they won’t take installments for it either.

• You have to pay a monthly union fee of $55 plus, which is taken out of your weekly pay.

• The union doesn’t care about the Clerk Floaters because they may only be there for a season so why bother listening to their complaints when they will be gone in a few months or less.

• You have to pay healthcare fees even though you aren’t actually getting healthcare. For example In order to get healthcare you have to basically work more than a season to earn enough hours. Once you earn enough hours you then qualify to pick a plan. So, if you leave before earning enough hours you don’t get those paid fees back.

• Human resources implies that working for the Studio Tour is a gateway job for other Warner Bros/Warner Media positions. First you are told that you are not allowed to approach people in other departments to try and make connections to land a better job. You are also told about a few token Tour employees who got lucky and were able to get some position on “Conan” or “Ellen.” What they don’t tell you is that those people were probably General Clerks who were leads and got to interact directly with production staff on a daily basis regarding the coordination of the studio audiences. There is probably a 99 percent chance that you will never get an interview with any other Warner Bros/Warner Media department and or division unless you get lucky and make a connection or know someone.

• Seasonal position. The Clerk Floater position is considered seasonal, and you aren’t guaranteed an extension past the season that you are currently working. Even if you are extended into the off season, your hours will get cut.

• Rumors/gossip galore! Once you leave the brake room your fellow coworkers will start to talk smack about you and just plain gossip about you! You will also hear constant rumors about Tour Department employees going on strike or that certain managers are going to get fired etc., but it never happens.

• Favoritism is rampant. It seemed like the same 3-to-5 people always had their shift trades or days off approved even if they weren’t General Clerks while others hardly or just flat out never got approved. Co-workers who started working in the tour department after your start date getting one of the few full time General Clerk slots even though the department is unionized. Supervisors marking you tardy because you were a minute late vs other employees who were also a minute plus late. Management reprimanding you because your uniform wasn’t perfect but letting others get away with wearing cheap worn out shoes that are not fully black such as having a big white Nike swoosh logo on them. Management or Scheduling sticking you in one place such as Stage 48 and not allowing you to do other things such as working on “Conan” or “Ellen” but allowing newer employees to leapfrog you and assigning them those coveted schedules.

• Even though you are a Clerk Floater (part timer) you can’t have a set schedule because you have another job. You have to work the hours and days that scheduling makes for you, which can change from week to week.

• Clerk Floaters (part timers) are at the bottom of the barrel while General Clerks (full timers) are above you. General Clerks will constantly whine about Clerk Floaters claiming that things are being taken away from them and being given to the Floaters. General Clerks will even whine and complain to supervisors about petty little things such as the way someone new opens a door. Some of them will also whine about not receiving tips from customers after the tour is over. You work an hourly position, don’t expect a tip so don’t whine about it. A lot of the General Clerks are really petty and bitter that they are still stuck working in the Tour Department instead of making it big and you as a Clerk Floater have to deal with this negativity on a daily basis.

• Horrible uniforms! Ill-fitting uniform with pants and shirts that never quite fit, which also make you look like a buffoon. If you want to avoid looking like a buffoon, you would have to take the uniforms to a tailor to get them custom fitted.

• Hollywood Stereotypes. You get to work with negative Hollywood stereotypes. Basically you have prima donna co-workers who already think that they have made it big and that you should act accordingly towards them. You also have prima donnas who think that they are better than you because a relative has or currently works for Warner Bros. Studios or a Warner Media subsidiary or some other entertainment company like Disney. Prima donnas who think that they are better and far more special than you because they have YouTube channels, blogs or vlogs. You might be fooling someone lame from high school or from your hometown by constantly posting selfies of yourself on the lot or stating on your online profile that you work for Warner Bros. Entertainment but excluding any references to the Tour Department or Facilities Management. If you were better than us, you wouldn’t be working at the Tour Department. Prima donnas with already inflated egos get even bigger egos because they are working at Warner Bros. You work in the Tour Department so get over yourselves. Your position is a Universal Studio Tours/Disneyland type job without the amusement park rides. Normally when you work on a production you’ll have “Hollywood friends” but once the production is over you go your separate ways but still give each other pleasantries when you see each other socially. Not in the Tour Department. There are phonies in the department who pretend to be your friend(s) but the moment you leave Warner Bros. you become persona non grata. Since they no longer need you to potentially cover their shifts (or they just didn’t like you) they will ignore you and won’t even bother to acknowledge you if you happen to run into them.

• CLIQUES!! Remember how you thought that high school was over and so were those pesky cliques? Not so in the Tour Department. Clerk Floaters quickly form cliques or get into existing cliques and start to ostracize co-workers that they don’t like by being petty. There may be some social gatherings that everyone is invited to and then the cliques will exclude people from other get togethers. Some super petty people will actually bring in treats like baked goods and give them to people that they only like and purposely exclude those that they don’t like while they are in the SAME room. Some people will invite you to some sort of performance like their DJ, stand up or improv gig but then they won’t invite you to their party. The cliques seem to be run by the unpopular immature drama geeks from high school who are getting back at the “normal” kids. It’s just really sad.

• Rich Kids!! One of the worst things about being employed in the Tour Department is working with rich kids who like to brag about things such as how their parents are going to buy them a brand new luxury car or how they are going on vacation (again), constantly bragging about being at or having a membership at the studio gym, constantly going out and partying etc. They basically don’t have a care in the world about having to make ends meet while earning $11-$12 something per hour in the extremely overpriced Los Angeles area. They wind up outlasting you because they get to treat the Tour Department as though it were a perpetual internship in hopes of getting hired in another WB/WM department or subsidiary while others have to seek employment elsewhere or move back to their home states. They are not necessarily better or more talented than you, they can just financially outlast you.

• Annoying Shift Traders. Co-workers (usually the same 3-to-5) who are always asking for shift trades because of an audition, rehearsal, or trip. They expect you to drop everything and cover their shift. Some will even look up your schedule and physically confront you and more or less demand that you shift trade with them because you aren’t working that day or because your schedule ends early. And of course you’re a jerk if you don’t help them out. They don’t see this as being a potential inconvenience for you. There seem to be employees in the Tour Department who think that this is the stereotypical server job in a movie where everyone at the restaurant drops everything to cover for them so they can try out for that big movie part. It’s NOT!! You are out of high school and college so act like an adult.

• Co-workers who blatantly brownnose to management in front of everyone without having any shame. It’s really sad and pathetic but they are probably going to be one of the employees who gets one of the full time slots.

• Co-workers who call out often because they have an audition or want to leave early often because they have an audition or they have to pick someone up at the airport. The list of reasons goes on and on.

• Co-workers who take too long on their brakes or literally disappear and I don’t mean taking an extra five minutes. I mean 10, 15, or even 20 minutes because they are doing such things as talking on their cellphones or sleeping. Yes, I said sleeping!

• Co-workers who wear tacky makeup, tacky sunglasses and creepy facial hair. And if you don’t think that your co-workers aren’t talking smack about your creepy facial hair in the breakroom you are sadly mistaken.

• Rude Customers. A busload of the customers are just plain rude and obnoxious. Many of them will disregard the rules and basically do whatever they want and then act dumb when you catch them such as customers touching the costumes on display in the Archive building or Stage 48. Some customers will miss their designated tour time because they aren’t paying attention, smoking outside somewhere or they are stuffing their faces at Starbucks and think that they can just hop on to the next tour without a problem or they just flat out blame the Clerks claiming that their tour letter was never called. If you work in the call center you will have to deal with obnoxious “Ellen” fans calling in because the Tour Department call center phone number is the only Warner Bros. phone number that they could find on the web. They will demand to be given tickets to “Ellen’s 12 Days of Giveaways” even though the department has nothing to do with tickets to any of the productions on the lot. You will also deal with Warner Bros. employees or others claiming to know Tour Department upper management and they will demand free or discounted Tour tickets or tickets for sold out days.

Cons

no internal mobility, no internal interviews.

Cons

There is a lot of bureaucracy, leading to slow processes.

Cons

Our team is small for the large scope of our responsibilities.

Cons

Certain areas can be slower to change than others, but the effort is definitely noticed.

Cons

There can sometimes be too many layers of buy-in to get things approved. This can slow down decision-making and project progression.

Cons

Collaboration is a great thing, but can sometimes impair innovation and decision making.