Trulieve terminates dozens of employees at company call center in Clearwater

TaMaryn Waters, Tallahassee Democrat
·2 min read
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Cloned plants at the Trulieve medical marijuana facility in Quincy on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017.

Several Trulieve employees at a customer call center in Clearwater learned they were fired last week, making it the company’s latest round of layoffs and attempts to downsize.

Kelli Heist, a senior customer service agent and trainer, said April would have been her three-year anniversary at the state’s largest medical marijuana company. Heist said she “had a feeling something was up” when the company abruptly suspending its internal training classes and told employees to work from home while new training material was being created.

Within weeks, she was terminated Feb. 16.

“I had a feeling something was up when they fired the call center manager that was there when I was hired and brought in this new team,” Heist said, in an interview with the Tallahassee Democrat. “Right away, I got a feeling just by this new manager’s demeanor, he was there to shut the place down.”

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Layoffs at the call center sparked swift anger and criticism by employees on social media.

One post from Mike Crawford said the company laid off around 50 people, including “supervisors, leads and quality assurance.”

“So much for their spoke and hub strategy,” he wrote. “How can we be worse? Let’s start by firing people.”

A spokesperson for Trulieve declined comment when reached by the Tallahassee Democrat.

Headquartered in rural Quincy, Florida, the mega medical marijuana company laid off an undisclosed number of employees at its base location.

The company has been tightlipped about the number of impacted employees, some of whom were offered severance packages or an opportunity to transfer employment to another location, a company spokesperson previously told the Tallahassee Democrat.

Trulieve, which also provides recreational marijuana and CBD products, has roughly 120 locations throughout Florida and eight states, including Arizona, California, Connecticut and Georgia.

Kim Rivers, of Tallahassee, is the founder, chair and CEO of Trulieve Cannabis Corp, the state's largest medical marijuana operator.

Contact Reporter TaMaryn Waters at tlwaters@tallahassee.com and follow @TaMarynWaters on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Trulieve terminates dozens of employees at call center in Clearwater