Pros
Great people to work with who will actively help you learn new skills and generally everyone gets along (at the CSR level). You will learn more from some of the sales reps and fellow co-workers than management could ever train you on. You will learn enough here to take a year experience and better yourself outside of the company Cool and interesting industry where you will work with many different vendors and get a firm grasp of how the craft beer industry works from a POS standpoint as well as various marketing strategies of some of America's top breweries.
Cons
Leadership: The customer service experience leader has taken on nearly all of the customer service teams within the company (Beverage, Supply, Custom Deco (their glassware decorator) and now the graphics team as well. She has no time to handle the constant issues that plague beverage and will delegate it to her three pod leaders. There definitely is an element of micromanagement. The company implemented a pod leader management system which enables these “leaders” to micromanage a department and create a negative work environment. Aside from basically being an extension of the top Customer Service Experience lead, I'm not exactly sure I understand their purpose. Leadership is out of touch and not available for coaching or mentoring. They always talk about servant leadership, but nothing comes of it. Training is at a bare minimum and delegated to low level management (pod leaders). Management is too consumed in their own roles to effectively lead. Ownership has a very old school approach to management and I believe it to be one of two reasons they cannot retain talent. They expect you to EARN your stripes at every step of the way. Which is fine, but when you can do that at another company and earn more money, it doesn't make sense to stick it out to see how green the grass is here. Culture/Workload: Associates wear a lot of hats here. This company prides itself on squeezing as much out of you as possible without offering anything other than average to sub par pay. Pay for this position is not in line with the current market for similar positions. High stress environment: The company expects you to cram 12 hours of work into a 8 hour shift and then discuss work life balance. At this point there is virtually no overtime opportunities and it seems impossible to stay afloat as far as workload is concerned. The company will post internal opportunities but when it comes to applying, will actively discourage specific employees from hiring. Or overlook people who have been there for years and gained valuable knowledge about the company in favor of someone from outside of the company. Do not expect much of a raise if anything at all. Company will only talk raises in May when everyone is up for annual reviews. This often forces associates to look outside of the company to find a market that pays similar positions a better starting pay, more vacation, better benefits etc. A CSR will spend more time in damage control/problem resolution. This makes it very difficult to enjoy the job, because you're constantly putting out fires and dealing with angry people. This is often due to things completely out of your control. Also you will be responsible for answering 1-800 line calls which take away from your ability to execute on your own workload. Processes: Their build of SAP is very outdated, like late 90s version. Everything is manual process to the extreme and you will spend an incredible amount of time fine tuning manual entry orders, where other companies have adapted to more user friendly and efficient order processing systems. All communication is email driven, which makes it very likely that things will slip through the cracks and get lost. You will definitely be held accountable if things slip and management will ask why you do not have a sound order tracking process when in reality, the company doesn't even have that. Completely outdated website makes it very difficult for prospective customers to order from the company. Their internal sites such as SalesForce and Insight are either misused or underutilized. Insite is an absolute mess and barely functional. SalesForce is virtually used by nobody.
