Worst company I've EVER worked for. - General Clerk I PAE Employee Review

1. The pay is rapidly becoming less competitive with other entry-level positions, with many retail/customer service/call center jobs paying $12-$16/hr. Also, there are no raises in the base pay. The only way to make more money is to get a promotion. 2. Health and Welfare dollars are a JOKE. They are marketed to you by the company as extra pay the government wants to give you. In reality, the company can and does pull the company cost of your insurance from your health and welfare dollars. When I didn't have insurance through the company, the $350 or so in health and welfare I'd get with each check was split evenly between a $2/hr cash-out and deposits into my 401K. Now that I have insurance through the company, I get just $80 per check in cash-out and NOTHING for my 401K. The difference? The company is pulling the $250 or so of THEIR contribution out of my health and wellness dollars, which seemed unjust until I looked at the laws governing the health and wellness dollars. 3. Relating to the health and welfare benefits: HR did a TERRIBLE job of explaining how these worked, and when everyone's health and wellness dollars were low in the first paycheck of the year, we were referred to corporate HR, who referred us to a benefits website that didn't work, and then we were given a number to call "if we were having problems" - despite widespread confusion among my coworkers. I had to look up the law on these dollars to realize that the company was legally stiffing us. 4. HR/upper management is practically inaccessible to clerks. They give you the run-around or talk down to you when you come to them with a problem, walking in with questions is highly discouraged (not that our HR gal is even in the building that often). 5. The time off policy SUCKS. I've worked there a year and get 40 whole hours per YEAR, and because we get no separate sick time everything comes out of that 40. They also force you to use all your PTO hours before you can take unpaid time. You get three unpaid "days" each calendar year but those "days" are any length of time on a given day. Need to go to the doctor and get off a couple hours early? If you take off for a couple hours and are out of PTO, you've just used one of your unpaid "days". At most of my other jobs, you get about 80 hours paid vacation either right away or you build up time with each paycheck. Here, you have to work at the company for something like 2 to 3 years before you get 80 hours. 6. Inconsistency in the rules for our process. The government has a pretty darn specific handbook for how we do our process. However, there is still a good bit of gray area. The QC team likes to act like all of the leads, supervisors, or even the day and night QC teams are all on the same page. The reality is, they aren't, and it makes it very confusing when you have a question and get different answers depending on which person you ask. If QC gives you an error in a gray area, there isn't really anything you can do about it - while there is a dispute process, it is opaque and seems very arbitrary. 7. Mandatory overtime requires a lot of flexibility, making it hard to have a 2nd job. Management typically does not make a decision on required OT hours for the month until after the month has started. Saturdays are usually open for overtime but whether the hour between shifts is available seems to depend on the whims of management. Sometimes every day between shifts is available, sometimes only every other week is available for each shift, sometimes they don't allow the hour between shifts at ALL so you MUST come in on Saturday. Keep in mind, too, that if you work extra hours on a week that contains a holiday, you will NOT be paid the overtime rate until you have reached 40 "regular" (non-holiday) hours. 8. No appreciation from upper management when clerk performance is good, and heavy pressure on the supervisors (which trickles down to the clerks) when performance is bad. We currently have the best quality percentage as a company that we've had in MONTHS and no kudos from upper management. All we hear is "production isn't high enough", "please come in when the roads are bad", etc. 9. Catty work environment, on days especially. I had someone sticking their nose into my business so badly that I found them reading my email after letting them use my computer when theirs "wasn't working." There are a lot of cliques and unhappy/miserable people who gossip constantly. All the bosses play favorites in one way or another. 10. Only meek people/doormats get promoted. Upper management slowly crushes out even the slightest bit of backbone in the supervisors. Upper management rules with an iron fist and does not want to be challenged, so if you like to rock the boat too much your promotion chances are about 0. 11. A result of 10, and the terrible management, is that real issues like racism, sexism, bullying, harassment, etc are not address; rather, they are brushed off and swept under the rug. Ask anyone who works here and they will have stories to tell. Some of the supervisors are so conflict avoidant, they do not address even relatively small conflicts and issues that turn into much bigger conflicts and issues with time. 12. Terrible work conditions have led to a revolving door of supervisors. I've had 6 different supervisors in the space of a year. Clerks are fleeing like it's a sinking ship too, so the rest of us have been forced to work mandatory overtime for months on end to make up for the short staff.