Pros
• Free entry to the park if you are an employee (but don’t expect Front of the Line or Express privileges even though you work there. They won’t allow it unless you happen to be a Ride Operator then you can for your own ride you work at) • Comp Tickets (no sign ins for spouses or children like Disney does. You gotta use your comp tickets to get family in and they start you off with only 3 until you hit your first year) • Pretty good health/dental benefits (if you can work enough hours to have them offered to you)
Cons
• Stressful. They expect way too much of you for not a lot of pay to justify their strict expectations. • Low pay. Most positions are barely above minimum wage. And there is no compensation for company loyalty. With the minimum wage increase, I have seen employees who are newly hired make almost as much as those that have been with the company over 5 years. The pay scale is unfair. • No hours. Expect to literally battle your other employees to be scheduled. They put you against each other when you start by making you call in at 7 am to put yourself “on call” just so you can hope to snag a shift (which you probably won’t since those who are higher than you in seniority can also call in and will get dibs on any available shifts) • Favoritism. It’s everywhere here. Expect to kiss a lot of butt and if you don’t, dont expect management to give all opportunities and recognition to those that do. Many departments complained of this. • Poor management. I’ve seen and heard multiple stories of managers who sleep around with those underneath them and then promote them and managers who screw others over scheduling wise and do back handed things like scheduling you against your availability. Universal seems fond of promoting people to management who have questionable ethics and managerial skills. Probably because of the favoritism. You get ahead if you’re a favorite. Doesn’t make you qualified or good. • Scheduling is not flexible. I’ve heard that it is in some departments but for departments like retail, janitorial and ride operators (basic entry level positions). I’ve seen people scheduled against their availability. They also do a lot of “shift bidding”. Basically if you are high enough up in seniority then you can get the availability you want. If you are lower in seniority, expect to be screwed with no hours or hours that aren’t conducive to availability. If you opt out of shift bidding and opt to just be scheduled by your availability and are low in seniority, expect no hours. It’s almost like they punish you for having a life. • Full Time is nearly impossible to obtain. If you don’t keep your availability entirely open and work 5 days a week, don’t expect to obtain full-time or full-time benefits. Even if you do? If you don’t work X amount of hours in 6 months then you can be stripped of your full-time status. • Advanced scheduling. They schedule you two weeks in advance so you better know everything that is going on in your life to the point where you can request days off two weeks in advance. If you don’t and have a sudden emergency? Expect disciplinary points. Management is not lenient about giving you days off for personal emergencies. • Overly strict disciplinary point system. Even if you are in the hospital, don’t expect forgiveness. With doctor’s notes they’ll still saddle you with points, just less of them. If your points go above 8, expect a suspension. Yes, even if you were legitimately sick. • Poor Employee treatment. Employees work hard and deal with stressful situations all day but they are still treated shamefully. They make the employees park in the garages furthest away from the employee gate and do not accommodate employees with their own parking garages like Disney does. Meanwhile they let the guests get preference for the parking garage that is closest to the employee gate but still not close for the guests to the main park gate. It makes zero sense. And heaven forbid you try to park or drop another employee off. Parking staff are trained to treat employees like nazis and treat you like you a criminal if you dare try to park or drop off anywhere closer to the employee gate. I won’t even go into the hoops you need to jump through just to get a name badge that isn’t your given name (ex: If my name is Robert but I want to go by Bob. Or Elizabeth and I want to go by Beth). Oh, and if you lose your name badge three times in a year, expect to pay a fine for a new badge that probably costs them around .25 cents or less to order but you’ll pay $5.00 to replace it. • Cheap company. It doesn’t want to pay it’s employees and it wants to cut hours in every department and put way too much stress and workload on it’s current employees. But that doesn’t stop them from over hiring people who will never see hours expect for peak seasons like Summer and Christmas. Once peak is over, expect no hours and severe job performance scrutiny. Management literally looks for any reason to fire you or give you points so you can get fired in non-peak because that’s when they need to cull labor due to the over hiring they did for peak. • No Employee Protection. I’ve seen employees get shoved, spit on, groped and hit by guests and management will side with the offending guest and offer recovery instead of defending or protecting the employee. You think the Guest would be kicked out of the park for behavior of this sort but nope! Management will just offer them front of the line passes and reward them for abusing their employees. Shameful.
