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DETROIT— My first thought when entering the Quicken Loans offices in Detroit was: “This has to be a cult.” Everyone seemed so happy and excited—manically so—to be working; not at all like I expected from standard issue mortgage firm employees. The offices were brightly colored with an open floor plan which, we were told, “encouraged creativity.” Our tour guide went on about how “fabulous” Quicken Loans was, but quite frankly, I was more than a little freaked out. Are these people on drugs? I wondered. Perhaps they’re pumping oxygen into the place, to induce a false euphoria. Our guide spoke of “the culture” Quicken Loans aggressively encourages among its employees. To my relief, a fellow tour taker leaned over to me and whispered, “They could drop the ‘ure’ and just leave it at cult.” I was not alone in my observations.
We were told about Quicken’s “isms”, their core beliefs which are hammered into each and every employee. At the end of the tour, all of us were given books, which are also given to all their employees, that teach the reader about the “isms” with bright colors and pictures; it seemed like a children’s book more than anything. In fact, our tour guide told us that he had given one of these “books” to each of his children. Well, you know what they say: get ’em young.
It was my opinion that all of this friendliness had to be a cover for a fascist state. And that it was; we were taken into the basement of one of their buildings and proudly shown their security rooms.
Quicken has cameras on every single building it owns in Detroit. Dan Gilbert, founder of Quicken, has been buying up dozens of buildings around the city, so that adds up to quite a few cameras.
Now, this isn’t the only thing they do; they also track any tweet that has the word “Quicken Loans,” “Dan Gilbert” or many other keywords.
I am aware that after publication of this article, I will almost certainly be put on some sort of Quicken Loans “blacklist;” I’m sure it’s against the “isms” to say anything bad about the “company” (or cult, depending on who you ask) or their great leader Dan Gilbert. Frankly, I’m flattered that a company as large as Quicken Loans is threatened by me, a 16 year-old-girl.
