Pros
They are improving their stores with new systems and upgraded looks. The board members, I think, have finally realized that you have to have a maintenance budget in IT to replace equipment and upgrade systems on a regular basis. A lot of their private label food stuff is pretty darn good. I found out that the company who supplies some of their private label cookies also contract to produce some of the Girl Scout cookies. There is a version of the Thin mint in their private label. Tastes better than the GS cookie. They have comfortable offices with walls that are 4 foot high. Not quite the dreaded open office system but it seems they are moving in that direction. The people are what I consider southern friendly.
Cons
The company is very lean. Their philosophy is to outsource as much as possible. This causes a lot of bottlenecks. If you happen to be an employee of the company the only way to move is if somebody quits the company. If you need training...good luck. There is none. Criticism is called coaching in some departments. They have Sharepoint in the company but nobody I have met fully utilizes it. In fact most people don't even use it. Sharing of documents and collaboration is hard to come by. They do not have any formalized project management in house. The company wants to manage projects but if you can't track hours and people who worked on it how in the world are you going to figure out what works and what doesn't. The headquarters is located in BFE. If you are not very conservative be very careful what you say. Did I mention there is no training....not even the basic CBT stuff for ethics, diversity and safety. I had to gently inform a few people that the LGBT community deserves as much respect as the heterosexuals and where they could find some useful information. There is no anonymous HR input form. If you have a question or concern and you want to inquire to HR about it....good luck, even finding a non-anonymous way to contact them is very difficult to do. IT hasn't learned yet that the business side of the house pays their salary. They do not like discussing or revealing their processes to the business side. There as yet is no transparency or active collaboration between departments. There are a lot of people with Manager in their title who manage nobody. The people are what I consider southern friendly.