Vantaggi
After reading through all of the reviews, I agree with the other poster that the positive ones are all lies. It starts with the interview when they ask you how you feel about OT. They don't tell you you'll be on nearly constant mandatory OT for weeks on end because of the high turn-over rate and if you don't or can't do 60 hours a week, they'll hold it against you. If a paid National Holiday happens to fall while you’re still on probation and while in mandatory OT, you’ll get the day off unpaid and then they’ll tell you that you have to sign a Traded Days form to work in order to work OT on the remaining four days of the week, but you won’t get OT pay if you do. The job asks for a bachelor’s degree, but almost no one has one. New hires come from almost every walk of life with very little to no experience in vegetation management. The training is deplorable. It starts with Orientation, which is mostly just HR stuff and has almost nothing to do with what you’ll actually be doing in the field. Once you get to your assigned location, you’ll be rushed through some more online training that’s force-fed to you so quickly, you won’t be able to retain most of it. When you’ve finished that, you’ll be paired with another CUF who had the same inadequate training as you. Don’t be fooled into thinking that this person was assigned to you because they’re experienced or know what they’re doing. The same thing happened to them, they may have had only two weeks’ worth of training themselves in the field, have no formal training to be a trainer, and were only picked because they were available. If you’re lucky, you might get to stay paired with them for a couple of weeks, the blind leading the blind. Usually, it’s five days or so and then you’re thrown out there alone before you have any of the necessary equipment to do your job other than the gear you’re required to wear. By the time you do get your hand-held computer with proprietary software, weeks and weeks later, you won’t remember how to use it and there’s no user manual to refer to, but it won’t really matter because half the time it doesn’t work properly anyway. It is true that you’ll get to see some pretty country, but the vast majority of it will be other people’s private property. You’ll be told “officially” that you’re not supposed to trespass in one breath and in the next will be told to climb through, under, or over fences despite No Trespassing signs that warn you that you’ll be shot, aggressive dogs, large livestock, marijuana grows, meth houses, irate customers, blackberry brambles as high as your head, poison oak, bears, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, and all manner of dangers. And you’ll be doing this alone without knowing what’s waiting for you on the other side of the fence, far from your vehicle, in areas with little to no cell service. Or bathroom. You’ll be doing your business on the side of the road or in the forest without any way to wash your hands before or after. Possibly for the first time in your life you’ll need to make the choice whether to risk touching those parts of your body with hands that might have touched poison oak. If you’ve ever worked in customer service, you know how horrible so many people can be. But instead of them being in your place of work, you are on THEIR property and they’re even worse. We’ve had guns pulled on us, dogs set loose on us, and threats of violence against us (remember, there’s no one around to help you or be a witness). All of that for a job that starts at $14.00/hr. They do give you a decent company vehicle that you can bring home (and a fuel card), but it's part of your compensation package and you're taxed on it, just like income. You're allowed to make quick stops on your way home from work, but nothing more than ten minutes’ drive time or so out of the way, and nothing on your days off. So, instead of getting cash as your pay that you can choose to spend however you wish, you get “paid” with a company vehicle that has restrictions on its use and will get taxed on that pay. You’ll also be responsible for keeping your vehicle clean and presentable. They allow $7.00 twice a month towards this end and you’ll be required to fill out an expense report to get compensated. Expect to wait months to get that money back. The truck comes equipped with a tracker that knows everything you do and will send a text message alert to your boss. So, no, your boss isn’t breathing down your neck physically as other people have said, but it’s just the same nonetheless. You’ll also be given an iPhone that you’re required to carry on you at all times and it too comes with a tracking device. It’s like Fitbit: it tracks every step you take by the minute and how many flights of stairs you climbed (to record elevation gain). Between the tracking on your truck and the tracking on your phone, they can easily data mine you and know your productivity better than any boss who is there to physically breath down your neck. And like any other job, there are quotas to meet. And speaking of bosses, almost none of them have any management experience. The vast majority were all CUFs just like you and each has the same varied background as the entry-level people they hire. Each is allowed to run his/her team like their own little fiefdom with no continuity between teams or departments. This makes it virtually impossible to build on your skills, because if you get reassigned to another SCUF (Supervisor CUF), you have to relearn everything all over again in the same haphazard manner with the same lack of support.
Svantaggi
They also reserve the right to assign you anywhere they want. You may think you’re applying to an office near your home only to find out that you’ve been assigned to one an hour or more away after you accept the job. I hope you like commuting. The first 30 minutes of your commute and the last 30 minutes are unpaid time. If your team finishes their assigned work for the quarter, your team could go as a group or be split up to help other teams out-of-town who are behind. Any assignment less than two hours (one-way) away and you’ll be required to drive home. If it’s more than two hours away, they’ll put you up in a hotel and you won’t be allowed to drive home except for your days off. There’s very little to no notice when this is going to happen and they won’t/can’t tell you how long you’ll be away. They do provide a boot allowance, but it doesn’t cover the cost of the quality of boots that are required for this job. They also provide Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) like a hard hat, an orange safety vest, a first-aid kit, a small can of bear spray (no other protection devices are allowed and especially not guns), a water jug (which may or may not be new and if not new, it wasn’t washed and may be full of mold or other debris), and a few other incidentals. You won’t be provided with rain or cold weather gear or snake gators. You’ll need to wear your own clothes, including a collared shirt, and will quickly discover that jeans don’t protect you from blackberry brambles. You’ll spend your days hiking in all kinds of weather all the way from triple-digit heat to freezing cold rain and snow across places that don’t have trails. When you do make it back to your truck, you’re not allowed to idle it to get warm or cool for more than a few minutes. Idle-time is also tracked. As far as career advancement, there is no education benefits other than them reimbursing you if you can afford to pay for arborist certification out of your own pocket first. And since you’ll be doing so much OT, there’s no time to go to college on your own. The vast majority of the employees are CUFs patrolling the line and very few work in the office. They say it’s a fast growing company with upward mobility, but in truth, you’ll be waiting for someone to die or retire before one of those positions opens up since there are so few of them. And if you’re “lucky” enough to get one of those positions, you’ll get the same dismal level of training for it as you got to become a CUF with the same inadequate support. They’re also overworked, but are now on salary, so whatever raise one gets becomes inconsequential when viewed at an hourly wage. You’ll be working alone most of the time and will hardly ever see your coworkers. Because of this, there’s very little knowledge sharing and no mentoring. Bosses communicate via text message most of the time instead of email, which can make it very difficult to track changes in procedure. Procedures change frequently, too, despite the fact that this company has been around for a while. It feels like they’re making it up as they go along. This is probably due to the lack of training and support and continuity between departments. The best thing I can say about this job is that it’s virtually impossible to get fired since they are chronically short-staffed due to the endless flow of people quitting. So, if you just need a job to carry you through while you look for a better job, this job does provide just enough pay to prevent homelessness.