A good but sometimes stressful entry-level call center job that pretends to be a lot more
Pros
Extremely good insurance offered (99% coverage with very low deductibles and premiums) Fun coworkers, friendly management Sometimes fun to assist with custom designs and art team Free lunch once a week, free snacks Generous Paid time off, but it is often hard to get approved Learned a lot about the printing industry and processes Sometimes freebies to try out new products Very good employee discounts of blank apparel Lower level management really does seem to care about you Quality service team will try to make customers happy when there's a mistake
Cons
- Poor commission structure, don't expect much beyond your base salary. A typical month might look like this: you get a fraction of a percent of your sales that exceed 30k, (ie if you hit 45k, you get paid like 0.5% of the 15k difference) so around $100-300/mo if you're doing well. And there's a cap on large sales where it's calculated separately. -Weak 401k match -Micromanagement over time and various metrics like call count, average $ per sale, email count, and review scores lead to frequent unnecessary meetings. Expect some browbeating and nitpicking even if you think you're doing well. - Some of these metrics are highly luck-based and affect your pay in more ways than just withholding or lowering your commission. For example, your hourly pay is on a tiered system where if the stars align & you hit all 3 metrics consistently for a quarter, your base will go up about a dollar an hour for the next qtr, but so will your goals, sometimes to unrealistic levels. You could have very high reviews and sales, but not take enough calls. You could get one too many negative reviews that wasn't even about you. Or have plenty of calls, good reviews and sales, but your average $ per sale could be too low. Etc.. -Sometimes too much pressure to join outside work activities, pointless "fun" meetings, cliquey high school-like culture among teams & managers. They will get upset if you clocked in late or went over on lunchtime by 2 minutes a couple of times last month, but will happily waste entire hours on a goofy meeting that accomplishes nothing but limit your sales time. - They encourage you to have fun with assisting designs and product recommendations, getting to know people, etc.. but you are essentially rushed and never rewarded for helping customers do anything but give you their credit card. -There are A LOT of ever-changing rules and limitations that you have to stay up to date with and nobody has all the answers. -Lots of surveys and peer review, company feedback.. but I don't know what they use it for, the biggest complaints never get addressed while trivial things do. -Due to design controversy, there are some clearly biased policies that favor the company's political & social leanings. They claim to be open for free speech but will label relatively tame mainstream opinions as hateful or dangerous while allowing much worse on the opposite end. You'll figure out very quickly where they align and be reminded in not-so-subtle ways during any major events. -Higher than competitors' pricing will mean some haggling with customers and convincing them why you are worth it