Complaint Review: Royal Imaging

Hi, I thought I would go ahead and chime in here because I take slander very seriously. These reports are not sent to us so I'm just now seeing he responded to what Jeff said. Anyway, I began working for Royal Imaging in April of 2007. It was a very exciting job that I loved and I worked hard at what I did which often meant working remotely nights, holidays and weekends...work that my employees were not even aware of.

I'm very proud of my work ethic and my accomplishments which is why I wanted to say something here. Even though this conversation is pretty old now I'm sorry it came to the point that he lost his job and decided to proceed this way because another thing I took very seriously was how I treated my employees.

I tried to keep a tight ship but I always wanted people to feel heard and appreciated so people were always welcome to come into my office to talk to me and they often did. For the first year I was working at Royal Imaging Jeff was actually seeing someone else outside of the company but after they split in 2008 he and I did start seeing each other.

I'm not sure why this person used the word "affair" because Jeff and I were dating. Neither of us were married or seeing anyone else. Anyway, sometimes you meet the love of your life at work and that's ok. I would like to ask this person, if I was sleeping my way to the top then why did I get married and leave my job?

Jeff and I have now been married 7 years with 5 beautiful children between us. He continues to work hard for Royal Imaging and I'm working hard at my own business just as I always have because that's who I am.

If Rachael Alexander did not sleep her way to her position and was an outstanding employee, why is she now Mrs. Jeff Shaabani? If the COO, Jeff Shaabani, was not having an affair with his subordinate then how did they have a baby before they were even married? This information can be verified through court records. How can favortism not be shown to someone you are having an affair with? Can this not cloud your judgement Jeff?
Sincerely,
On the right side!!!

Hello, my name is Jeff Shaabani, Chief Operating Officer of Royal Imaging. I must admit that I write this letter to our loyal customers and employees, as well as anyone else reading this report, with a variety of emotions. 

Honestly, when I first read the report by a former employee posted on this site, I felt pretty upset, betrayed, and slandered.  You may ask, betrayed? By a former employee your company terminated? What would you expect?

Truth is, I can fathom a negative reaction from a terminated employee regardless of circumstance, and I sympathize with any individual facing such a situation even if I feel it was their own actions that led to that prospect. I simply do not understand or appreciate anyone making false factual statements to tarnish the name of the organization I work for, the hard working employees I work with, or myself.

Even though he has written the report anonymously, I happen to know who this individual is. We only terminate a small handful of employees each year. That combined with details such as the office location listed, date of the report, and the mention of working for us for 7 years let me know with certainty who this individual is. I have lost much respect for this individual based on the statements made in his report, however, out of a general respect I have for any person, I will not mention his name in this letter and risk causing any hardship for him moving forward. I genuinely wish him well in his life.

My only goal in writing this letter is to be judged by the reader based on truthful facts.

To be completely transparent, I will admit that when I first read this report several months ago, my immediate reaction, even though it upset me, was not to respond.  I felt that 80-90% the statements made were completely untrue and the remaining statements were either misrepresented or exaggerated. Therefore, it was obvious to me that the report was written not truthfully but with an agenda. I originally thought that tone would resonate with anyone who read the report and really knew our organization. After having 4 employees in our company and another person I interviewed for an upper management position question me about the report, I realize that was an unfair expectation for me to place on any reader of the report, as I had much inside information on the actual dealings with this employee to accurately judge the tone of the report.

I realize now that our employees, customers, and any other readers deserve an explanation of the truth. I will not disrespect the intelligence of readers by simply saying everything said was untrue and dance around or avoid the specific topics mentioned in the report. So, I will address each topic directly and offer the truth of these matters.

1. The report alleges that we are an organization that has been sued left and right and have been involved in many lawsuits. The truth is that Royal Imaging started business in 1996 and has never been sued or even been involved in a lawsuit. Since court records are public documents, anyone can verify that my statement is true.

2.  The report alleges that a receptionist in our company "pretty much" slept with a vice president to get her position. Interesting that he didn't fully commit to that accusation. The truth is that the employee he mentions was hired at our Dallas location as an assistant production manager, not a receptionist. In addition to managing production projects and employees, she was in charge of answering the phones and doing other general office tasks such as ordering supplies since our Dallas office did not have a receptionist. After working with our company for over a year, she was promoted to production manager of our Dallas office when our then production manager stepped into another role in the company (He is

currently the production manager of our Miami location). She remained our production manager in Dallas for 4 years and produced some of the best operational results that we have seen in our company in areas such as quality of product, tenure of staff, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency. Upon  her departure from Royal Imaging to pursue another opportunity, she stayed on for 6 weeks to train her replacement who is now our current production manager in Dallas.

3. The report alleges that the production manager took bonuses away from employees. Royal Imaging simply does not offer bonuses to production employees so this occurrence would not even be possible.

4. The report  alleges that the production manager threatened to reduce this employee's pay. This is true. The quality of his work slipped well below par over a period of time. We were having to redo much of the work we had already paid him to do, in order to provide our customers with a quality product. We had raised him to a 30%+ higher wage than what he started at, over a few year period, because of his tenure and production speed, but at some point he decided to tank it in the speed and quality categories and after 2 years of working with him to get him even just back to par with the employees making less and producing better work, we finally had to approach him to lower his pay. When he argued the pay cut, we actually gave him one more chance and never followed through with the pay cut. So to be clear, the pay cut never actually happened.

5. The report alleges that the production manager tried to overcharge customers for work performed. This accusation is simply made up. Our sales team develops all pricing prior to turning any projects over to production. The production manager doesn't have any authority to set or change pricing. All invoices are generated based on the pricing the sales department agreed to and signed with the customer prior to the project starting.

6. The report alleges that we are "slave drivers" and "crooked". Out of respect for American history and courageous Americans that actually endured slavery, I can only say that I apologize for another fellow American using such terminology so loosely to create his own imagery. Our business has been the recipient of the Award of Excellence from the Better Business Bureau for the past 2 years. Furthermore, I invite anyone to visit one of our five national locations which can be found at www.royalimaging.com to witness our business practices for yourself.

7. The disgruntled former employee says in the report that he approached the EEOC with a claim as well as news media and had other employees ready to back his story. Well, he did approach the EEOC and they rejected his claim after investigating. Not surprising either, I have heard nothing from any news media or other employees with regards to his story.

8. The disgruntled former employee claims in the report that our Human Resource Director told him his records were deleted from our database. I have subsequently interviewed our HR Director and she has produced all of this former employee's records from the database, none of which were deleted or missing. She said that she never told him anything was deleted. She did say that he was trying to login to an online company portal for employees to view their pay documents, vacation time, work schedule, etc., and that we had removed him as a user to that system once terminated, which is standard protocol for any termed employee. I believe he is referring to not being able to login to this system anymore and trying to paint the false picture to the audience that we deleted his records.

9. Finally, in the rest of the report, the disgruntled former employee goes on a verbal rampage using rhetoric and tone that clearly exposes his nature and intent. One simple question to ask - If an individual truly feels they were treated so wrongly, why would he stay and endure happily for 7 years of employment and say all of these things upon being terminated?  

In closing, thank you for reading my thoughts. I have worked happily for Royal Imaging for 12 years and would not work 2 weeks for the type of organization this faulty report alludes to. I say that not just from the perspective of a COO either. I started with Royal Imaging as a junior inside sales rep and have worked every position in the company including the one this former employee worked.

Royal Imaging appreciates and respects our customers and employees and will continue to do so as we provide superior document management services to the United States of America.

Thank You,

Jeff Shaabani