Soho House: Employee Complaint File
Soho House says it's getting great member renewals this year — but snobby New York bankers are so desperate for approval that they'd pay their own mother to serve them iffy food and treat them shabbily. (To give credit, we found Soho House staff very pleasant recently as they told me I couldn't be seated for dinner before 11 p.m. It's the ultimate anorexic experience! Just keep drinking, never eat.) According to a recently-quit Soho House employee — surprise! — working in the Big House sucks. His/her report follows.
Related: Meatpacking rooftop wars! Jeffrey Chodorow and Steven Greenberg take over Hotel Gansevoort Rooftop. [Curbed]
I used to work at Soho House, but I quit recently because of bad management. The management at Soho House is abominable, especially those who work on the roof. The service on the roof is disorganized, slow, and incompetent. All of the customers complain, but the managers don't know what to do. The management recently promoted a receptionist from London (she is in New York, I believe, on a fake student visa) to be a manager, even though she has only worked as a reservationist and never on the floor. Soho House has been fairly empty all summer, and even in the late spring, it was a rare occasion for the club to be busy. The turnover rate is very high among the staff because the management expect you to work obscene hours, and since they are so short on staff, they need people to work more shifts than they want to. The two membership secretarys are having a hard time getting existing members to renew because they know that the food/service is terrible, and the people who hang out at Soho House are mainly publicists and wannabe socialites. It'll stay around because there are enough idiots in New York who long to join a members-only club. The only way people still go to Soho House is because it pretends to be exclusive, not for the food, service, or ambience.