operations associate

retail sales associate

front of house staff

host/hostess

cook

Card Kingdom

A typical day at work for me was:

Come in, set up my station (including getting water and other quality of life things before buckling down), and get grading (appraising MtG cards and data entering them into CK's system.) Occasionally you'll be required to collaborate with your co-workers on a grade, or be pulled away from grading to support other departments like shipping or inventory. This would go on for about 4 to 5 hours, then I'd have lunch, then get back to it. At about the last 15 minutes of the day we'd wrap it up, clean our stations and have an end-of-the-day meeting so any words from on high or other changes or notifications could reach us. Any time left after that (3-5 minutes) we'd catch up with our co-workers before leaving.

What I learned was data entry, speedy appraisal, interfacing with customers in a support desk role, and other tasks outside of the dept like shipping and inventory management.

The management was alright, it had the unfortunate detachment of the corporate offices being in a whole other neighborhood; so there wasn't a sense of the corporate side of the company understanding the working day of the people on the floor, to me. In general, the management working with you on the floor would have more empathy for you, but corporate might as well have been in another state.

The workplace culture was great....for the grading department. Most of the graders were long term employees, comfortable in our job because it's skilled labor (learning to appraise and grade Magic cards has a buffer of three months when you start) and as we became proficient we could just chat or listen to whatever we wanted as long as the metrics were met.

However, the other departments seemed much more..."you're here to work"-ish. Not that they couldn't listen to what they wanted or chat, but to me, the graders had it best.

The hardest part of the job is getting trained up to meet or exceed the required metric, especially if you're not familiar with Magic before starting the job. Grading is a specific skill that won't fit for everyone; and the job is repetitive by nature. You're sitting down, flipping cardboard in your hand for 7 or so hours, 5 days a week.

The most enjoyable part of the job is the people you work with. Being part of the Grading crew was genuinely enjoyable, and as long as they're still given the freedom to chat (as long as the job gets done) you'll make some friends. 

If you can work anywhere else, do yourself the favor. It starts off alright, but essentially you work through the lairs of Dante’s Inferno and at the end you’re left with extreme burnout. You give your all, but they will definitely not return the favor. This place loves to use people up because there’s always someone else that’s so excited to work with magic cards because they’re naïve. It chews employees up and spits them out, then grabs another. Any passion and joy you feel will slowly fade away into nothingness as they grind you down completely. 
This place is becoming more and more “corporate” as well, which means it’s completely losing a lot of the culture that made it a pleasure to work at. They’re slowly sucking any sort of joy out of every aspect of the place. 
Upper management is completely out of touch and a bunch of incompetent people that likely got their experience from the effort of others rather than actual skill (plenty of failing upwards opportunity if you’re not a minority). As you can expect at most “nerdy” companies, the director/executive level of employment isn’t diverse at all, and it shows through their policies all the way down. They also won’t ever do anything that actually benefits the employees in a positive way without a ton of pressure, and rather cut corners. They only handled covid well because of a ton of employee pressure and complaints, and I know for a fact that’s fallen off considerably since. There’s also multiple instances of the upper management/directors not respecting identity and pronouns for transgender employees. 
They also think that the amount of PTO they offer is generous. One emergency and you’re out of luck essentially. It’s nowhere near what an average person needs to take care of themself, their family, and mental health. 
On their job listings, this is the biggest lie they tell: “We are a family friendly culture that supports work life balance.” 
Healthcare often changes as well (never for the better). 
It’s a soulless pit of despair and you’re honestly better off anywhere else. But hey, if you love free bedbugs and depression, who am I to stop you.


I worked at this company for a very long time, through many different positions in online operations, and have seen it attempt to maneuver through varying degrees of growth both successfully (financially) and horribly unsuccessfully (employee satisfaction and care). As it stands now, the management hierarchy is very confused as to what it wants to be and is trying to do. Much of uppermost management are from corporate giants such as Amazon or Bank of America. Much of the middling management are either people that do not have the qualifications and were internally hired through nepotism, whose job descriptions are nebulous at best and mostly serve to be busy bodies (and even joke about not knowing what their tasks are supposed to be), or outside hires that don't fully understand just how much the internal workings of the online operations department are codependent on each other and have received laughably inadequate training. The daily production is shouldered on underpaid supervisors and leads, who are under constant pressure to maintain near-perfect SLA and shipping goals, who then push that pressure to a production team whose jobs have only gotten more physically demanding and repetitive over the years. Management will praise itself for its covid safety measures in the same breath as asking for extra hours from employees due to 20% of the production workforce being out sick with covid. 

Within the work space at Card Kingdom there is a large disconnect between members of the union (L1 and L2) and workers outside of the union (L3+). Most of the upper management has existed since before the ratification of the union, and has very strong, negative opinions of the members within the union. Add that to the continuing behavior to encourage any new members of the company that are L3+ to separate themselves from union members and not create any relationship besides that of a boss. The thought of creating an atmosphere of leaders creating more leaders is something that is highly frowned upon.
The ability to move up can sometimes become available, but nothing is done to help build people for these opportunities. Direct supervisors and managers will go so far as to push people off that are looking to learn more for the chance to move up. Even in the case of just trying to  get more information to better assist the company as a whole is not supported. There is structure for regular check-ins to be put into practice, but is instead put to the side due to the "needs of the company".
The one redeeming factor this company has is its benefits structure. They have very good plans for medical, dental, and vision. A good 401k match. A great EAP with lots of assistance. Plus, the discounts on singles at Card Kingdom, and food at Mox locations is nothing to turn your nose up at.
Overall, until there is a major overhaul in positions starting at the top, this company has not enough pros to outweigh the cons. There is an obvious disconnect at the L3 level that then continues through the following levels going up. Again, the structure is there, but it needs to be applied correctly.

My job at Card Kingdom revealed to me how a team-oriented job should operate. My team was always happy to help me grow and everyone demonstrated true compassion. I was also impressed to see how many of my peers were able to be promoted to leadership or new departments within the company. The more Magic: The Gathering grows, the more room for growth you will find here.

Management will emphasize the importance of taking care of yourself, and it won't be just lip-service. Also, as an LGBTQ person, this job was very welcoming, and it was nice to have LGBTQ folks heavily represented on the team.

Benefits included health, dental, vision, a 401K, and a store discount. It was a huge relief to me to not have to pay extra for health coverage. I was used to jobs taking a huge cut of my paycheck, so it was refreshing to not have to put up with that.

The only glaring faults I noticed at Card Kingdom are mandatory overtime periods when a new Magic: The Gathering set releases and occasional coordination issues. This OT is never a surprise and always right on the calendar, but it can be brutal if WotC decides to release a bunch of new products in a short span of time. Card Kingdom recognizes this is a tough time and offsets the OT by offering catering and emphasizing that if it is tough, that rotating to a different task to ease the burden is an option. They also try their best to coordinate your OT hours the way you need them, so you can make sure it isn't too large a burden.

Overall, if you want a good team environment, have a passion for Magic, or need a job that can show understanding when you're burnt out, Card Kingdom may be a great fit. If overtime of any sort is a dealbreaker, then this job won't work out.

Most positions at this company have required (as of when I left) Standing and walking for a full shift, constant visual attention, repetitive motion and sorting at a barely achievable pace. Even the positions with nothing to do with sorting are often required to moonlight as sorters when things are busy, which happens at a minimum once per quarter for a few weeks in a row. In return, you will get a perhaps Seattle-competitive salary, basic benefits, the great privilege of being allowed to listen to podcasts and company discounts that are collectively worth as many as 3 wet paper napkins. From my time there, I can say that most of the actual people working there were friendly and pleasant to get along with, but that the work culture is only superficially decent; once you get past the tournaments and staff vending machine, you realize that the promotion system is one that rewards indoctrination over skill, talent, work ethics and time of service. At the time I left, there had been a big push for everyone lower than management to unionize, to which management had responded very poorly. While I would have liked to see where that went, I had received another offer that was much too good to refuse.

Sure, here's a more professional and constructive rewrite of your review:

---

**Challenging Work Environment with Limited Flexibility**

During my time at this company, I found the work environment to be quite rigid and not particularly supportive of employees’ well-being. Management often seemed disconnected from the day-to-day challenges employees faced. There was a strict policy regarding hours—any shortfall under 40 hours without sufficient PTO resulted in disciplinary action, even for valid reasons. Extended bathroom breaks or raising concerns with HR about safety could also result in write-ups, which felt punitive rather than productive.

There is no dedicated sick leave, so all time off, whether for illness or personal needs, must come from your PTO bank. Unpaid days off are not an option. Additionally, mandatory overtime has become increasingly frequent, sometimes occurring twice a month without much notice.

Communication about job expectations and changes is inconsistent, with updates often coming secondhand from colleagues rather than management. Overall, I would recommend exploring other opportunities if you're looking for a more flexible, communicative and caring workplace.

When I was originally hired years and years ago (pre covid) it was an awesome place to work with managers that cared and great coworkers. The culture was fun that made even the hectic times worth the already lack luster pay. Then the company started to grow and be a big player in the industry, the owners stopped working out of the main location and hired corporate managers that don't anything about Magic and couldn't care less about the community it serves besides it had money they wanted to extract. The new managers stopped caring about employees as people and instead treated them just as worker units to extract as much production out of at the smallest cost they could. Covid made everything worse as the company was down employees but up in orders, the stress destroyed any morale and the workplace culture is a pale shadow of what once was. Low level supervisors and leads generally cared when I worked there but were powerless to shift any policy higher managers put in place and were blamed when people couldn't meet new higher standards when implemented even though old standards were already hard enough to achieve. 

I really enjoyed working there for the first two years I was there. I didn't even play magic or really care to, but I enjoyed that it was a very welcoming place for people coming from all wakes of life. With that said I wish there were more diversity, but that wasn't the company's fault, they just happened to always get applicants that were.....similar types of people. The following two years went a little differently, the company was growing, I was added to leadership, and expectations were just getting higher and higher. At one point, I was capped off in pay for my level, and was unable to get a raise unless I wanted to become a supervisor, which was not something I wanted. So naturally, I thought I was wasting my time. If I was happy with my position but wanted a raise, even though I was exceeding my role, why would I stay? With that said, if you love magic and want to move up the ladder, this would be perfect for you. I just didn't want to keep moving up, I wanted flexibility and to keep doing what I knew I was good at. Side note: product release week is bonkers so if you're considering working there, prepare to work your butt off and be exhausted, but get OT also. 

This company was already in a bad state, and it has only gotten worse ever since they relocated to Monroe. Upper management does not care about the company's overall health, and most decisions are made with seemingly little to no planning. This has been an ongoing issue for over a year now, and it shows based on customer feedback and internal dialogue. The job itself is fairly easy, but questionable work policies and workplace practices make daily tasks more difficult than it needs to be. Worker shortages are being remedied through temp labor, and it has not changed within the past 5 months. As such, overall employee knowledge and skills has gone down the drain. Career advancement is mostly based on connections, and is painfully obvious based on employee metrics within specific departments. The only consistently positive aspect about this company are the people. Everyone is generally friendly and easy to get along with. Work culture here is very friendly and inclusive. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Operations associate 15 salaries reported	$22.33 per hour
Retail sales associate 6 salaries reported	$20.88 per hour
Front of house staff 5 salaries reported	$17.66 per hour
Host/hostess 9 salaries reported	$15.65 per hour
Cook 9 salaries reported	$23.03 per hour

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