Agropur reviews

To the best my knowledge, I am not aware of any downside of working with Agropur

Though on the outside, Agropur of Lake Norden appears to be a professional, organized, and caring workplace, it is far from the truth. If you are considering taking a job here, I would recommend reading my review in full, but here is the TLDR: Their hiring and resignation practices are very misleading and underhanded. There is very little communication. There is very little training, you are simply thrown into the job and expected to perform and many of the other workers are not supportive and have no patience for you. The conditions bridge on ridiculous, I would never work there in the summer. Workers more used to the heat than I, were dying of heat stroke in the fall, and there is no water allowed anywhere near your work environment. Expect to wear ear plugs full time and get wet often. Much of the equipment is faulty and rarely restored to full-working order, yet management will expect you to perform to perfection anyway. The supervisors will attempt to rush production but only slow it down with their lack of knowledge and frustrate the workers who actually know what theyre doing. Positions are almost always understaffed. There were days when we only had four people when we're supposed to have eight. There is a lot of dead weight. Other workers will take long breaks and do half the work and still get paid the same or even more. Hiring I applied to cheese rework. I had no idea what it entailed or how exactly they did things there. I had never worked a factory job. Still, I expected an in-depth job description, as you would and should get with any job, and a tour of the facilities so I could see it as well, but I got nothing of the sort. It was like it was a secret. The interviewer said something along the lines of, "Oh no, that's not what you want to do, you would rather be a cheese packager. Yes, I think you would fit there better." So I said alright, what does a cheese packager do. He said, "Oh its not that hard. Especially if youre on the new side. The machines do everything for you there. Here's what youre schedule will be like and here's what you'll be making." That of course, sidetracked me, but I somehow managed to ask more clearly what the job was and he again reiterated that it wasn’t that hard, even if I was on the old side, it would be easy. I would just have to put the cheese in by hand and seal by hand. I again tried to get more information, but again he redirected me somehow back to the pay, which was good and what I wanted, what I was there for, and he knew that. So he basically said, "Youre hired." And I was happy because I had been looking for a high paying job that wasn’t Monday through Friday. Orientation Orientation, right off the bat, was a joke. I was told to show up Monday for it, and nothing more than that. I didn’t know how long it would be, what we would be doing, or anything. But about an hour into the first day, we did finally get a schedule which was basically, watch a powerpoint about something or other, then go to work. A joke. I again had no idea what the job was, and neither did two of the people who were there for the same job as me. It didn’t help that the girl doing the 'Orientation' was either just unaware, or in on the secret. She barely knew any of the answers to the questions we asked. I finally got wind that it might be loud where we were going to work, so I asked if we would need ear plugs, and she said no, its not that loud. It was deafening. All the time. I asked her what kind of shoes we should bring, if they would get ruined and what not, because we wouldn’t get to order our boots for at least a month, because they didn’t help with that at all and that was of course the first time we had heard we would even need other shoes. And she said nope, just any old shoes, they wont get ruined or dirty. They of course got ruined and dirty and wet, very wet. And then, like on the third day or so, it was revealed that couldn’t wear contacts. This would have been a major problem for me if I hadnt just gotten lasik, but another girl had not, and she did not have glasses, never wore them, and was rather upset about it. And keep in mind, we had already signed papers. We had already gotten the whole physical and everything. Despite all this new unexpected information, none of us were just going to walk away. We also had questions about the insurance and all that, and again, this girl didn’t know anything really. The lady who was supposed to be there to help explain it and field all our questions was out, so we never even got to discuss all of the benefits with someone who actually knew what they were talking about and understood them in full. We went through all these rules, only to soon discover many of them werent followed. And the funniest part, was these SOPs, Standard Operating Procedure books that we had to read that none of us understood because we didn’t know the job, or anything about the job. But we had to read them all and it was the most pointless thing. It was two months before I even came close to understanding anything I actually read in those books. The Job On the second day of orientation, we finally got a glimpse of what the job was. We got all dressed, went in expecting to get led around and shown everything, a long day of explaining kind of like the first day of school, before we even got to touch or do anything. But nope. She just left us. Like she was dropping her kids off at daycare or something. The crew lead was basically the only one who spoke english, but she didn’t spend any time with us. She basically said, stand here and stay out of the way. So we stood behind this guy who didn’t speak english and couldn’t really explain or help us, and watched him work the station. For like an hour. Then we went to break and came back and watched this other lady who also spoke little english do her job and that was pretty much it. The crew lead didn’t try to get us involved or explain anything. She just wanted us out of the way so they could do their jobs. We died of boredom and didn’t learn anything. And that was the most we got to see the whole week, because they were down for the rest of it. I don’t know if they didn’t have milk or what, I didn’t really know what was happening or understand when they told me, but they were down and we had several breaks that were over an hour long. And when we did 'work' we just made box lids. It was riveting. But finally, the next week, we got to meet our actual crew lead. We had met every crew lead, but the one we would be working under. Finally, we got a teeny bit of training. Finally, we got some idea of what the job was. And it was not just 'packaging cheese', as my interviewer described. We had to do the whole brine room thing, which no one would expect would be included under the title of cheese packager. One would think that would just entail putting cheese in a package. Nope, you have to put it in thses grates in a brine pool then take it out, which involves a lot of salt water sloshing everywhere. Cheese Packaging, is actually an exceptionally wet job. Everyone is spraying everything all the time. Even machinery one would think shouldn’t be sprayed or wet in any fashion. There's cheese juice and milk and brine water, and you really need waterproof shoes and extra clothes. Which we of course, did not have since we were new. We only got two uniforms, and it took months before we got our full set, so we had to take home those two and wash them, sometimes every night. Which brings me to the other terrible conditions. It was hot. Sweat drenched and heat stroking hot. The water you sprayed was steaming hot, the machines were always on even when not being used, and there was very little circulating air at all, and one fan. One single fan, that was never where it was supposed to be. And you had to wear two heavy shirts, one long sleeved. Heavy pants, then of course your boots, which didn’t breathe at all. Then at most stations, long rubber gloves, plastic sleeves, and an apron. Sometimes youre at a station for five hours. Ideally, there would be someone doing rework who would go around and give you the quick bathroom or water break, but we were always understaffed so we didn’t have that--a few of the nights, we only had four people when were supposed to have eight. So you didn’t get water, you didn’t get to go to the bathroom. I don’t know why water isnt allowed behind the little partition or even in the hall, or why we werent allowed to use the closer bathroom, but had to walk all the way down the hall back to the lounge and locker room area just to go to the bathroom or get a drink, but that’s the way it was. We also had to work with broken equipment on a daily basis. Nothing ever got fixed, not fully. Our crew lead would tell the supervisor and call maintenance and they would just tell her its working fine, even though theyre not the ones working with it and they wouldn’t know. I don’t know how she hasn’t quit yet. She knows the most, has been there the longest, and yet they just dismiss her and say its working fine, or that they don’t have time, and sometimes they just wouldn’t even answer her on the radio and we would be down for minutes. She would try to fix everything on her own, and often would, but sometimes she just didn’t have the tools, or didn’t know exactly what was wrong, and at the end of the day, that’s not her job. Now for the blue shirts. Theyre the supervisors, they should know what theyre doing right? Nope. First of all, we barely ever saw our actual supervisor. We saw random ones more often than him. And they would try to help and tell you what to do, but they didn’t know what they were doing. They would just get in the way and cause production to go even slower. And more often than not, our crew lead would go to them with problems with equipment or other things, and they would just shrug her off and tell her to keep going. They were almost as frustrating as the people who just didn’t work. Which were a lot. It was astonishing what people would get away with. There were some who wouldn’t do even half the work I was doing, and they got paid the same, and never even got a talking to or anything. People would take long breaks, over 40 minutes, would take multiple bathroom breaks, wouldn’t do what little they were supposed to at their station, and nothing ever happened. It didn’t matter. Even worse, was all the stories about lazy people, taking long breaks and causing trouble, drama, and they just get moved to the newer side where they had to do less work. And I believed it, because there was this guy on our crew that basically got demoted from his old position, and we had to deal with him. He could not do a single task. Had to go to the bathroom at least five times, would always disappear when the lead wasn’t watching, was always talking and joking instead of working, but nope. Nothing happened. He still gets paid the same, and does less work. They don’t fire, they don’t discipline, and the other workers are the ones who get punished because they have to put up with them and work harder to make up for the dead weight. And if you start in cheese packaging, expect to stay there. Several girls kept asking to move, or be considered for other available jobs, but management would tell them they werent available, despite them being posted online and on the lounge bulletin. They would also have these meetings once in a while, as most companies do. But these were as much a joke as orientation. They would go through their powerpoint as fast as possible and there wouldn’t even be anyone translating for those who didn’t speak english, wouldn’t be another slide written in spanish. They didn’t care. And normally, this wouldn’t bother me. Theyre usually just rehashing what everyone already knows and most people have already decided whether theyre going to follow the rules or not, so everyone is just there because they have to be, but then there was the harassment one. I was working nights, which get a little long. Things just added up and added up. I had people talk about me in spanish while I was standing right there. I had people that needed me to look and smile at them or they would stand there staring at me for the better part of ten minutes, or even worse, people who would just stare regardless of whether I glared or smiled. I had people who would get into my personal space far more than was necessary. Follow me around, pester me with endless chatter, ask me out, bug me during my break, hide things necessary to do my job as a joke. And even this one guy who--at work--gave me a bottle of alcohol with his number on it. This harassment meeting was needed. And it was just ran through as if it was another SOP. As if it didn’t matter. And it didn’t. Not to management. Resigning I didn’t want to work there for a long time, I didn’t plan on it. And then after I discovered earplugs were necessary if you wanted to maintain even half the amount of hearing you started with, I knew I couldn't. But I thought I might want to try part time, or a different position, or something. But I told the supervisor I was giving my two weeks, and he just gave me a sheet and said alright. And that was it. No one came and talked to me, no one asked me anything more. In the handbook it said there was supposed to be an exit interview, but they didn’t care. My foreman was in tears because I was her best worker, but I didn’t get a single word from anyone in management. And then I discovered, you don’t get your PTO hours paid out to you. Theyre on your payslip, but apparently, unless you worked some amount of time only management knows, which is not stated in the handbook, you do not get them. You have to earn them with so much time worked, but again, there is no clause stating this in the handbook. And if you use too many but don’t work enough and quit, then you have to pay them those hours. It was very misleading, and like my hiring, very underhanded. Overall I would not recommend this job to anyone. I guess I don’t know about other positions, but the company itself is so unorganized and generally uncaring, that I couldn’t imagine another position being any better. They want the appearance of being professional and concerning--respectful, but I did not experience any of that from within.