Vantaggi
Everyone I worked with were great people, stuck in a bad situation like me, and some were thrust into roles they were not suited for, but were trying to make the most of it.
Svantaggi
The branch (local office) I was a part of was suffering the results of years of mismanagement. They had just hired a new manager who was attempting to turn the branch around and was doing a good job. But that meant all of the painful changes fell on the technicians to sort out with customers. The hardest part of working for an unorganized branch was that I could do my best to schedule my route for the following day, be diligent to stay organized, but anyone in the office could damage up my whole schedule at the click of a button, and not inform me. I was told I'd be home after 8 hours of work, but then my route was split between 3 cities that were 36 miles apart at the longest. Most of my days became 12 hour days, with several hours of unpaid traffic time. Most nights I didn't see my family until they were going to bed, or not until the weekend, but we were required to work every other weekend. Training was subpar and spotty. There were many times I looked incompetent to customers because I hadn't been trained on basic procedures (I had 10 years of professional corporate and warehouse experience prior to this job). For the better part of 5 months, a fellow technician was milking the system, so they punished the entire team to sort out who was stealing company time. They froze all of our apps (the primary way we handled all paperwork legally required by the state and dept of Agriculture for each stop) removing our control from fixing our own routes. When our routes got messed up, it impacted the customer feedback, which messed up our reviews, and in turn lowered our compensation and ability to get higher raises come evaluation time. We were expected to have full responsibility for our routes, but had no tools, means, or ability to organize our routes efficiently to manage the routes. It seemed that the harder I worked to keep my route stable, the easier things fell apart. I never had working equipment (phones, printers, apps), and corporate sat on their hands for months while I waited for my new equipment to get shipped. I understand that I had a special circumstance experience with this company, and this was all during peak cvd, but that doesn't change the fact that my young family didn't see me for 9+ months, and that my stress levels were through the roof.