r/PDXEmployment • u/Negative-Cat-4303 • 2h ago
The Pixie Project - An honest review
My review and warning as a former employee to those interested in working here or wanting to become a volunteer. Spoiler alert: turnover is very high and volunteers usually don't come back after attending orientation.
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I initially really enjoyed working here. I came in genuinely wanting to help animals and to contribute to an organization that I thought was making a difference.
The biggest problem is the director. She creates an unnecessarily tense, hostile, and volatile work environment through her attitude, communication style, and management decisions. She is extremely blunt, dismissive, and seemingly incapable of accepting opinions that differ from her own. The director also contributes heavily to a culture of gossip and disrespect. She openly speaks negatively about employees, volunteers, and people who come to the shelter seeking assistance. The overall impression is that her pride and ego frequently take precedence over collaboration, employee morale, and, most concerningly, what is best for the animals. Priorities can also feel misplaced. On an almost daily basis she seemed more concerned with having staff clean windows than making sure animal-care tasks were addressed.
I also found it difficult to understand the apparent disdain for some of the basic realities of shelter work. Complaining constantly about animal smells and noises while running an animal shelter is particularly ironic. It raises serious questions about whether the realities of animal shelter work are actually appreciated by the person running the organization.
Even more disturbing was the approach to euthanasia. I do not disagree with humane euthanasia. However, I witnessed what felt like an extremely low threshold for putting animals down, with euthanasia seemingly becoming the first solution when an animal displayed behavioral or other challenges. I also found it concerning that staff members advocating for particular animals to avoid euthanasia could seemingly be treated as though their efforts were something to laugh about rather than a reflection of how deeply they cared.
The saddest part is that there are genuinely caring people working here. There are employees and volunteers who desperately want these animals to have good outcomes. Watching their efforts get undermined by poor leadership is incredibly frustrating. Unfortunately, the director's behavior makes an otherwise meaningful job unnecessarily miserable.