Ronnie Haran Mellen Santa Barbara Location Services, www.santabarbara-locations.com, ReelTalent Casting, Dream Locations, www.dreamlocations.com Worst Employer, Narcissistic, Insulting, Abusive, Disrespectful, Neurotic, Unattentive, Liar, Ignorant. Santa Barbara, California

Ronnie Haran Mellen is unquestionably the WORST employer I have ever worked for. She consistantly abuses and mistreats her employees to the point of driving them away, thus having to constantly find new ones to abuse. Her ads are constantly on Craig's List because she can't hold on to any one, no one can put up with her. 

In my opinion, Ronnie is a complete narcissist, having no regard for anyone, and certainly no regard for how her atrocious behavior effects others. She's abusive in her demands and degrades her employees on a regular basis. It must stop! Her system is archaic at best, this is my experience:

I was made to wait over 1 hour for my scheduled interview, and later witnessed this happen to every single applicant that came through the door. She has NO respect for your time! After being hired, I was thrown into a dusty, disorganized office, with no direction, no supervision & no clear directive except for answering phones and reporting to her at home. 

When I started, the office was in shambles. Previous employees had abruptly left and I didn't have access to any of the necessary emails and websites because she didn't know any of the passwords. This caused numerous problems and much time was wasted.

She leaves numerous voice messages every night at work filled with detailed tasks for the following day. Then expects that I type them out in an email, which she could have done herself in the first place. This unproductive process ate up most of each morning. She barks at me, demanding me to fetch contact info for various people when she could easily look it up in the email herself. She certainly thinks that just because she's paying me, she can make me do anything she wants! No matter how insignificant or unproductive. She would even call me during my personal off time to make such requests. This got old quick, not to mention no other employer had ever intruded on my personal time as often as she allowed herself to. Absolutely NO consideration!

Ronnie has no clue when it comes to technology and computers, thus relying on total strangers (new employees) to effectively run her business. She conducts her business from home until about 4pm each afternoon, at which time she arrives at the office ready to work, meantime I'm exhausted and ready to leave. I was often the only one there so exiting the building for lunch was out of the question. I was regularly at the office for 9 hours, 6-7 of those hours being alone. At the end of my shift, there was always more to do and she would demand that I complete additional tasks before leaving. There were absolutely no boundaries! And no respect for personal time.

Ronnie didn't teach me anything about the business because she was rarely there, instead calling me continuously from her home with a demanding laundry list of tasks. I was doing the work of 3 people by myself for a measly $10/hr. With my skills and experience, I am easily worth double that. She recognized my competence, and complimented me accordingly. During my time there, she hired a few people who were in no way suited for the type of work at hand. These 'new' employees contributed nothing and just collected a paycheck and so the bulk of the work continued to rest on my shoulders. 

I do not exaggerate when I say that it was the most stressful environment I have ever worked in and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. She proved to be the most disgusting individual I have ever come in contact with. Lying to me about finances, claiming she has no money to pay but meanwhile I come to find that she owns 4 properties and the office rent is over $3000 each month! Which by-the-way is illegal for there to be such an office in that residential neighbourhood. 

Generally speaking, she has no problem screaming at you, insulting you, degrading you in front of others, asking you to lie to her clients and constantly making excuses to them. There is much to add here about her unscrupulous behavior and unsavory practices, but I don't care to describe everything in detail as that would take forever. It's a miracle that she's stayed in business as long as she has! Believe me, my outline here has been the short of it!

Before long, I found myself stressed out, abused, over-worked and extremely underpaid. I became extremely irritated and my respect for her diminished quickly. Here reputation in this town is absolutely deplorable. Final words of advice: Steer clear of this pitfall, your life will be much a much happier place! Good luck!