Medieval Times should be a fun place to work.

When I worked at Medieval Times, there was a rampant culture of sexual harassment and toxicity. I went into the castle during a job fair hoping to get a job in the stables so I could work with the horses. I was told I wouldn’t be allowed to do that because I was too pretty, so they wanted me to be a bartender so I’d be seen by guests.

As a bartender, I was constantly harassed by guests including a memorable occasion in which a guest told me he wanted to chain me up in his basement and make me keep calling him my lord. When I told management what had been said to me, they cut him off from drinking, but he was allowed to remain at the show despite his vile behavior. 

Guests frequently forget that the employees are real people, and that we still deserve respect despite the costume. While calling people “my lord” and “my lady” is a fun gimmick, it was often used by guests to degrade and sexually harass employees. 

Worse still is the management. One of the managers while I was employed there attempted to rape me while I was too drunk to consent. Fortunately, he was unsuccessful, but this man is still currently employed by the company. He has been moved to three different castles now due to repeated sexual harassment claims being brought against him. 

This company rewards predatory behavior, and leaves any moral compass at the door. The employees are largely young - high school and college aged - and for many it is a first job. The company preys on those who don’t know that they deserve better, and it’s time for that to change. 

I was taking family photos when, out of nowhere, a man pressed himself against me from behind, saying, 'so we just stand wherever we want.' He then got his body off mine and went to take a photo with what I could only assume was his wife. I asked one of my shift leads if she saw that and told her that it made me really uncomfortable (not realizing the man was still there). He comes back up to me and says, 'sorry if anything I did made you feel uncomfortable.' He was then kicked out of the building, and I had left as well.  

Unfortunately, my coworkers informed me that they had seen the same man back inside the building later and if I would have stayed I would’ve had to deal with him again. To make it worse, my former manager Megan blamed me for what happened, saying that the man “had issues” so it was somehow my fault because of that? After the incident my general manager Pedro decided to share my story without my consent to everyone in the castle during a meeting about sexual harassment, a meeting in which he said we don’t get sexually harassed and that my incident was a one off. It’s not a one off, this stuff happens and worse every single day.

I was a knight for years and worked my way up to "Senior Knight" which is pretty cringe now looking back at it. I ended up getting a life changing injury that left me unable to ride anymore, due to the extent of excessive horse riding they forced us to do. The horses are also tired of it and don't want to be ridden for 4+ hours a day and also have to do shows on top of that. I was in pain basically all the time until I finally stopped. A surgeon told me to stop doing the stunts involving jumping off the horses and taking big falls, as it could worsen the damage done. I was told if I wanted the position of "Senior Knight" I had to do them anyway. After I did and got the position and finally got the raise, and upon fighting to keep my raise later, was being gaslighted and told "we never said you had to do it."

When I stopped I offered to stay as a stablehand because I like the horses. They then after having me work as a stablehand told me they were going to drop my hourly wage by $6. Despite me fighting and protesting they insisted the only reason they hadn't done it yet was because I was on "modified duties." I got notes from my doctor, a surgeon, my MRI on disc, anything I needed to make my case.

In the end they said that due to my "non workplace injury" they would hire me as stablehand full time for only $5 less per hour than what I was making (how honorable and generous of them!) Despite not signing anything they dropped my wage anyway. After all that fighting my boss told me to "stop acting like we owe you the world" and "when everyone else is done knighting they just leave." Very clear they didn't want me there anymore. They also cut my hours because I was taking too much time off (mental health sick days which were covered using my vacation/sick hours, because I had to cope with what they had done to me) and I "wasn't proving I deserved the hours." So they went to "more deserving employees." They were effectively making it more and more so that I couldn't afford to live.

Then they started gaslighting me into believing I was a toxic employee because I was telling new hires about the things they've done to me and to take care of themselves because they'll just run you into the ground. They started painting me out to be a villain, as they do with all ex-employees to brainwash new hires.

Then when unionizing started happening, they paid a guy $4000 a day and flew him out to every "castle" (also cringe) to union bust and use fear mongering lies and propaganda to dissuade anyone from unionizing. That $4000 could easily have gone to the employees. In the end, they gave the knights at my "castle" big fat raises as a bribe to not unionize and they all took the bait. Stablehands got an insulting miniscule raise (and the first one they've ever gotten in my almost 8 years total working here) when I was a "Senior Knight" (yep, still cringe) I made $24.50 Canadian, which I was fighting to keep and lost. My wage dropped down to $19.33 Canadian, which isn't really enough to be able to afford to live in the city. Low level knights now make what I made a "Senior Knight" doing irreparable damage to my body, and "Senior Knights" now make $30-34 Canadian per hour. They got $10 raises just to not unionize. It took the threat of a union to make them suddenly cough up money they could have given them all along.

In the end, those guys sold the rest of us out to get theirs. Despite what they were spreading about me, I have my last yearly review as a Knight where it says in paper, that I was a model employee and on my way to being a top performer at their location.

I could go on for a lot longer about the abuse I suffered at this place in the form of racism, actually assault, ostracizing and outright bullying. But maybe I'll make those separate posts. I will say thought that as a brown person, when I started working there I earned myself the nickname "Kebab" somehow. And I'm still there now because I can't find work anywhere else and it's still my bread and butter. 

They never let the marketing team know if they still have a job. During the pandemic, we received emails assuring us MT was doing their utmost best to continue shows, but when shows became scheduled, they never called their marketing team back and decided to let their TX team handle all their social media. This obviously proved disrespectful and disastrous since the strike, as the marketing team loved our CA show cast. MT brand clearly didn’t want want the close relationship with the MT cast to shine light to the wrong doings. 

Where to begin... Should we begin with having to stand in-place on concrete for an hour before the show so patrons can take pictures with us? Then standing in-place for two hours again with no padding or support during the show? Then doing all of that again for a second show racking up five, six, seven hours of standing in-place on concrete with no option to rest or sit? How about the horse shit river that we have to walk through in order to get to the locker room? (Genuinely - there isn't enough drainage in the concrete stalls where the horses are hosed down before the show, so the water - always filled with feces - floods down the walkway; it is unavoidable. The only way through is walking through it.) The horses bleeding from being whipped to the delighted cheers of the crowd? Said horses barely ever getting outside of their barely-horse-sized indoor enclosures? And if they do get outside, it's to walk in a circle in the small enclosure in the parking lot while being whipped? How about the drunk, rowdy patrons who sexually harass the performers, verbally and physically, while there are no prevention or reconciliation measures? Should we start with how horse riding training is handled? By 'training,' I obviously mean being yelled at for not already knowing how to ride a horse, being given no practical instruction aside from misogynistic hyper-sexualized examples of women "never complaining" about hip movement, and somehow being expected to learn how to ride to specific lighted marks in the arena in the dark. Or maybe we should start with the costuming and how it doesn't matter how many times you ask, the tunic and cape are still too long and create a tripping hazard going up and down stairs, walking through sand, maneuvering around patrons, and navigating around galloping horses.

We could start with the culture in the castle if we so chose. The in-fighting, the sniping, and the management's handling of extreme bullying by forcing participants to sit in the courtyard, in full view of every employee, to 'discuss,' rather than creating a private, safe environment?

There are so many places to start, but I think I'll stick with the horse shit river. 

Accountability - Medieval Times has a very unique view on this in the work place. They want the employees to hold each other to standard instead of the managers. However, we have been told to not manage each other as well. Medieval Times also hands out leadership roles to those who listen and obey not those who can do the job the best. We had an incident where the squires left a horse tied up in a stall at the end of the night. These were very new squires and they were still learning about the responsibility behind horse care. So two stable hands took it upon themselves to cuss out these squires and then trap them in a horse stall. What was the company’s response? A big meeting between the knight, squires, and stablehands. We talked about “accountability” and how we are a team and a family but nothing was actually done to rectify the actual situation at hand. The meeting was more of a pep talk with a football huddle at the end with one of the squires forced to be the hype man. It was awkward and those effected were mad and felt ignored. Management at MT does not want to do their job. 

Got launched off a horse during a riding lesson multiple times because of the horse trainer cracking his whip on the ramp next to where I was doing my lesson on an already startled horse. Then afterwards saying "you should have had better control of the horse" (it was one of my first lessons on any horse)

I was riding during the guards parade as the food was being served. As I was turning a corner in the Yellow section, a server had ruffled some of the tinfoil covering the chicken being served. My horse was one of the more skittish ones in the castle, and immediately seeing the foil and hearing it, he bucked me off his back into the path of the horse in front of me and began to run rampant throughout the arena. I was able to get out of the way of the horse coming towards me and managed to get backstage unscathed, same for the horse. I was out for a month with a strained deltoid, for which I was only given an x-ray, 1 session of physical therapy a week for four weeks, and limited instruction on how to do at-home PT for my shoulder. During this time, I was transferred out of the knights department into the event staff, as I was deemed not capable of taking care of myself within the knights department at that time.

I have also had the unfortunate experience of getting run into by a horse. I was to perform a fall stunt during a show, but due to the speed of my horse, how far off the rail he was because he was afraid, I realized I could not do the fall safely at that point. I rode the horse backstage, and as we had been trained, I began to run back toward the tunnel to the arena to get ready for the fight. However, as I had turned the corner, I saw a flash of brown and yellow as the other knight’s horse rammed into me. Next thing I knew, I was on my back, breath knocked out of me, whole upper body feeling weird. I was already mad that I couldn’t do the fall, and this just made things much worse. With the rage I had and the adrenaline of being hit, I was able to do the single fight I was slated to do, but once all that wore off, I was in loads of pain. It was almost like being rear-ended REALLY badly. I later found out that the knight in the arena had thought that I had already come back out and had let go of his horse early. From what other knights had seen, I had been going toward the tunnel when the horse hit me, sending me flying through the air into our dung-rakes and a trash can. I am lucky that I still had kept my helmet on when I was heading back out; my injuries could have been much worse.

When in the last show of the day, knights go upstairs to do autographs and pictures. It was on my second night doing this that I had my butt groped by a guest. I almost recoiled and jumped away, but I didn’t want to cause a scene. When I told my fellow knights about it, they told me that it was viewed almost like a right of passage of being a knight, one of them even telling me they had their front groped by a woman before up in the signing area. After that night, I had been groped a few more times, thankfully nothing in my front, but not making much of a difference in how uncomfortable it was. Why didn’t I tell the castle manager? What would he have done? In fact, with all the stories I have heard about upper management, in all departments, I wouldn’t be surprised if he would ignore it all together, or even scold me for it.

Lastly, I do want to mention a blatant example of horse abuse that I have witnessed. Me and an apprentice knight were trying to dress a horse for a show, and this particular horse was giving us a hard time. He didn’t want to be dressed; we could tell by how he had his haunch facing the door and was kicking whenever we tried to get close. His ears were flattened too, which is an almost sure fire way to tell whether a horse was upset. We asked the only person working in stables around at the time, the assistant stable manager (asm), for help. He immediately marched over, stomping on the concrete towards the horse. The horse immediately backed off away from the door and moved to the back of the stall, looking like a scolded animal. But the asm didn’t stop there. He rushed into the stall, brought his right leg back, and kicked the horse hard in the flank. He repeated this two more times before marching back out of the stall, pointing a thumb back at the horse behind him and told us to let him know if he gives us any more trouble. I had never believed I would witness something like that before, but there I was. Seeing as how those animals are treated by those that are paid to “take care” of them, no wonder they kick and bite at us, not wanting to trust anyone with their well-being.

My story isn't the worst I've heard by far, but it paints an ugly picture of how things are run in Medieval Times. At a goodbye party for a coworker from another department, his manager sent me five pages of suggestive messages begging me for sex. When I brought this up to HR and upper management, they victim blamed me, saying 'this is why we don't encourage fraternization outside of work' when the opposite is the case, and LYING that since the harassment occurred out of work hours it didn't count as workplace harassment. (I had just completed workplace harassment training, it does in fact still count.) They ended the meeting by calling me the wrong name. 

Later I found out this man had been accused of multiple far worse cases of harassment, including a possible crime. To this day he hasn't received any consequences. HR even gave him the names of the people who complained about him, which is certainly an unusual practice given the possibility he could then retaliate. Just unprofessional handling of sexual harassment all around.

The company also treats employment laws like suggestions. Mandated rest breaks are withheld, sometimes to the point of managers pressuring us to sign a break sheet even when we didn't have time for a break. People are often fired illegally due to retaliation or discrimination. It's like the cartoon stereotype of greedy bosses and evil corporations.

When I entered the gift shop, I was so excited to see there were horses. But then, every single one of them looked depressed. I've never seen horses roped up to where they cannot even sit or move their head freely. No water that I could see, and feces in the stables. One of the white horses wouldnt stand on one of its hind legs. I was disgusted. During the show, no idea if this is normal but several of the horses were foaming at the mouth. 

The break rooms are small and uncomfortable. There's one real break room in the back of the castle that has minimal seating. And if you're someone who works up at the front, to get there you have to travel outside the castle or through the kitchen area. Most of retail opts to hang out in the stock room, however this isn't much better. There are six seats and it is a fight between the 32 of us for who gets to use them, otherwise if you want to sit you have to sit on the dirty floor in this small cramped space. Knowing this corporate is choosing to take down the museum of torture and turn it into unnecessary guest seating when it could be a secondary break/storage room. Currently it's being used as storage for bar and photo and also where they are keeping the Falcons in a makeshift stable. I shouldn't be having to eat my lunch on the floor and yet that is what medieval times feels is fair and acceptable for its "valued team". 

Horses were being beat by a leash and were tied up in a cage with no water.

During the run through show for the contractors, a brand new horse, very skittish, reared and threw Victor [the corporate head horse trainer] at the start of a joust pass. The horse had not been trained to run passes and was probably some child's horse before. Victor ran into the back arena, took the dowel poles we used for Alabardas [poleax] and beat the horse until the pole broke. No one tried to stop him or said anything. 

I was jumping off horses for practice and got it safely every time. Yet, the intensity of the shock on my knees was too much. My knees felt stuck and I couldn't bend w/o pain until it popped and it didn't feel like anything. A senior knight asked if I was okay, I told him there was pain and went numb but I could move. "Atta-boy". So I performed the show twice and when I got home I laid down, but when I tried getting up I couldn't stand.

The company had me working still in event staff with a knee brace and I had to sit down a few times bc I couldn't even stand well. It took them 2 months to scan my knees with a 6 month recovery. I realized the physical therapy was bs and I took ice baths at home buying ice from my local liquor store and looking up basket ball knee recovery videos. Then I became a knight when I came back from the injuries and the risks heightened. 

I was a server for only a couple of months but I was there for the opening of the castle. I was a theater kid who had just graduated and so I felt like this was a dream job for me. There was so much sexual harassment though, from both coworkers and guests. The experience that pops into my mind is when I was doing my welcome speech to my first table. It was one of the higher up ones, as there was a table below/behind me as I was addressing them. A guest at the table below me, who was already drunk before the show even started, grabbed my skirt and threw it up while all of her friends cheered her on. They kept saying "You're a wench server, so serve us your *ss", "I'd like you to ride me like the knights ride the horses", "strip wench, you can't say no", and other disgusting things while trying to grab more of my clothes to basically strip me. Other servers and people at my table had to help me get away from them and when I told management about it, no one did anything at all. I was having to be on guard as I continued to serve my table because if I didn't, I'd get grabbed again. Half of the female workers weren't the best as well. I had people try to break into my locker, damage my belongings, and make comments about how I need to make myself look more attractive (ex. Showing my breasts, make provocative gestures, etc.) because I looked like a "tranny". Again management did nothing when I brought up these discomforts and issues. The working conditions weren't even the best when it first opened up. I dont know if it's been fixed, but we had a 3 show day on a Saturday that one of those famous Arizona monsoons hit and it knocked out the AC in the entire arena. 3 people total passed out, 1 was a guest and 2 were servers. It happened a couple more times to my knowledge, but by then I had left because I couldn't work in those toxic conditions

The sexism is revolting. While I was helping install a show in Kissimmee, the Corporate Show Manager showed me nude photos of a queen he found online that he saved to his company cell phone (she was performing the show that very night) and made lewd comments about what he would do to her. When I brought this to local management's attention, they said, "That's just *blank* being *blank*. He's retiring soon anyways, just let it go." I was fired soon after, and that corporate manager was never disciplined. MT's retaliation policy is laughable. 

I was initially hired as a food server, but moved to bar shortly after getting hired. In the 6 months I worked at the castle, I witnessed countless people stealing tips and overcharging guests for drinks.

I brought it up to my supervisor at the time, but it fell on deaf ears. No matter how many times I said something, I was told to be a team player and to quit complaining.

The final straw was when I was trying to take an order from the bar in to the arena and was tripped, on purpose, by a guest walking from his seat to the bathroom. I spilled the entire order all over the top of the green section and felt terrible because of it, however I was told I would have to cover the order myself since nobody else was around when I tripped.

I clocked out and never came back. 

Back in the 90’s @ the Schaumburg castle there was a head horse trainer named LeGrand Rhône. I was in the back arena waiting to ride out after the ambassador horse (gift horse for the king for context) came back. Apparently the horse had acted up on the trainer during the routine because when he came back in from the arena he grabbed one of the large wooden dow rods used for knight sword practice training and proceeded to beat the horse about the face and head with it. No one said anything, including myself, because everyone was afraid of losing their jobs. It broke my heart and I wish I had come forward. 

Management was a joke, they were the most unprofessional and pathetic bunch I've ever had the unpleasantness of working with. The leads for gift shop were the worst. The drama between everyone was so toxic it made Chernobyl look livable. 

Current worker- Manager sucks at his job. A lead complains about her job even though she asked to be in that position. Everything so expensive, you can find a lot of the items at the gift shop on Amazon for half the prize. We are now being forced to sell items to people, and manager doesn’t care if people don’t want to buy them. We can’t be told people are there to have fun when you want us to empty their pockets. VIP seating is a waste of money. People don’t enjoy their time their because all they can smell is horse shit. Horses are also miserable. 

Currently working at medieval times, the retail manager sucks at his job. We (the entire retail staff that does arena sales with glow toys/flags/roses) recently started having to meet a quota for the amount of things we sell. They started making us do this at every castle but it’s extremely frustrating when they get angry at us for being out there for a long period of time yet they don’t let us out the door until we meet our quota. They went cashless in the arena which also limits what we can sell and they continue to drastically increase prices, it’s actually ridiculous. Nobody wants to spend $30 on a glow toy that’s going to give out in two days. Nobody wants to spend $11 on a cheap glow light rose. Not to mention the fact that the managers always say “you can talk to me about anything,” but when people are getting sexually harassed or even just being weirded out by a guest or another coworker it’s always “we’ll talk to them.” It’s NEVER talked about and there’s no consequences to anyone’s actions. Medieval times supports and encourages harassment. 

Just a few of many reasons, I could write an entire novel. One thing that sticks out is the head falconer luring me into and then locking me in the falcon room to intimidate me about how I was going to vote in the union re vote. It was a dark day (we were the only people at the castle) other than another stable hand who doesn’t speak English. I am also a young female who weighs about100 pounds. They also haven’t paid my workman’s compensation from when the biggest horse in the stable pinned be against a wall and crushed me with his rear, I could have been killed if the other stable hand there didn’t hear me screaming for help over the loud fans. 

I remember when a manager was so mad at someone else, they threw a shot glass at me. It missed me and hit the wall just above my head. It was my first year working. 

 a typical day at work: walk in do your job wait a few hours to be micromanaged. what you believe you learned: the bigger the name of the company the more corrupt it gets the higher up the chain you go. management: Absolutely unqualified. between racism, the micromanaging, making up rules and putting a corporate label on it saying this is what they said so you HAVE to listen or il let you go. they will literally tell you to your face " the only thing that should be coming out of your mouth is YES MAAM or YES. such disgusting disrespect workplace culture: crap. if you become a legitimate (yes man) then you will SOMEWHAT get taken care of. but the second you do something she doesn't like or have a complaint of any kind about the workplace or people you work with your done. the hardest part of the job: dealing with the disgusting little insects called management the most enjoyable part of the job: the department i worked with. literally it. pay is crap. dont expect much and they are struggling recycling through staff so walking in now will be a **** show. if your thinking about applying dont. your not secure. what you should be looking for is a job that wont let you go simply because they have the power to do so. a job that can show you respect. a job that when your applying your expecting to remain there for a few years and leave on your term. not a job where you have to be smart and worry all the time while planning your next step. most people at this company feel this way. if you work here your going to be sharing the locker room with other staff members and there you will hear how much people actually hate the job and that even people who have been there for 5+ years see no security or any form of advancement. this place is run like they are still living in the medieval times. dont bother and dont waste your time. with no write ups or warning i was let go simply because they knew i was a threat to them. ***DROPPING THIS ON JOB REVIEW WEBSITES BUT EXPLAINS MOST OF WHAT GOES ON AT OUR CASTLE***