Pros
passion from coworkers about environment, fashion, recycling, sustainability. knowledge of fabrics and fabric industries. building camaraderie from delivery drivers to clients.
Cons
when i was at fabscrap, they used an unsustainable model of growth. ironic, eh? before i joined, i was concerned with how often all the faces in the photos changed. i didn't know whether these were volunteers -- no, they were staff and turn over is significant. everyone was underpaid by at least 50%, especially considering our volume of work the first season i worked at fabscrap, another employee fainted in a warehouse. they were alone and felt they could not leave during operation hours. in my second season, management held a week of company meetings. the main goal was we radically increase our intake. since we did not radically increase our staff (see: ability to process and output) i and others were concerned to say the least. by my third season, i had back problems due to chronic overwork. after i took my doctor-ordered three days of rest, management put me back to the same tasks with the same equipment and a higher volume. our intake being radically increased, i now had no space. the majority of my day had gone from processing intake to shuffling it into weirder and weirder corners. management said much of this material would go to the new location in Pennsylvania once it opened -- but as anyone who has visited fabscrap will know, they could stop intake now and won't run out of materials to process for three years. i took time for an urgent and months-planned operation. months in advance i notified management that i would be able to do desk work only. management was agreeable. therefore i was shocked and appalled when there was no desk work for me, there was no paid leave for me, and that management blocked my unemployment claim. after a month of starving in my recovery bed, management sent me an email inquiring about my health. salt in the wound.