Ill write my experience as briefly as possible. To start Ill explain what a normal day can be like, get to work at a minimum of 730am do morning paperwork and load truck with chemicals(sometimes 1000LBs or more) listen to a daily meeting.Leave for daily route and deliver all products, wash, check and fix machines as needed on route, pressure customers for payment, and possibly shut machines off if payment isnt recieved. During your day you may get service calls which take you at times 20 miles off route or more to deliver products to customers that are not yours, or to fix a machine that is broken, this can occur once or more a day(had 5 in one day once). All while your expected to finish your route. You usually get done with a full day at 5-6 pm but sometimes later if your lucky enough to not be on-call you can then go home and relax for the rest of the night. Also if your done early or have a small route that day you are made to call into the office so they can give you more work that you dont make money on, remember you work on commission.
I started this position even after reading many bad reviews thinking these were only from disgruntled employees. In my first 2 months I was very happy making good money with all the over time I was putting in. after the 3rd month things changed drastically. I was put onto commission and made to believe I would be making as much if not more then I was on hourly *HUGE LIE*. I went from making about $1800 take home every 2 weeks to about $1100 take home. I also was put into the "on-call" rotation at this point which equates to working an entire week of the month on-call. while on-call you are NOT PAID except for when you get a call to go fix a machine ,BUT YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO DO ANYTHING ELSE. YOU ARE REQUIRED TO WAIT FOR A CALL AND RESPOND TO IT ASAP. this is on the weekdays after work as well as all weekend!!!!! I am currently taking to the department of labor to find out if this was illegal in NY. I was also promised annual pay of $45k a year, but later told that this company calculates all overtime and extra pay into your annual rate which is something ive never heard of before and almost no other company does(brought it up one time management got pissed). After looking over my earnings once i switched to commission I realized I wouldnt be coming close to this number and brought it up to management. This is where everything went down hill FAST. My branch manager would punch in theoretical numbers about what I would be making that was based on commission and the joke of an hourly pay we made $11/h plus his "estimation" of the hours of on-call pay I would make. When I would point out these were just theoretical numbers I would get firm but definite "discussion is over" answers from him. So I continued to work, but stopped caring about making sure to give that extra 110%. I wouldnt volunteer to do extra work or extra on-call shifts. I was seen as a problem. At this point I was targeted to make me shut up, written up for leaving a GPS in a truck overnight in thier own lot that has cameras and that no one else goes into!!!!!! Or for using sick days that I had earned and needed when I had the flu etc!!!! This continued for several months during which time I brought to my branch managers attention that I was falling short of what he "projected", and that I would not be making the $45k at this rate and after the 3rd time I brought this up he started to supplement my paycheck to make up for the commission I was not making due to having a route that was always paid as $16/hour due to it being the "scrap route" that everyone put thier undesirable stops on and it having little to no commission. He also informed me that had he hired me for this route he would have hired me at $40k since this route isnt able to earn $45k with commission if paid at the same rate everyone else is. This continued for about a month and a half until I was informed by one of the girls in the office that my manager was getting pushback about supplementing my checks and that I might be getting let go. Also about this point my girlfriend sent me a link for job postings by my company that she had run across. including my job and another one for shop help/repairman. I ended up finding out before I was let go that thier plan was to move the shop helper/repairman we already had up to my position, give him $40k a year and hire a new guy to fill his old position. This eliminated the problem of paying me $45k a year like i was promised. So the day came where they finally called me into the office and my route manager couldnt even look me in the eye.
