Where to begin...
First, I don’t want an HR representative responding to this because I am going off of what the area manager in Quakertown told me. The is what the job was for me and if you try to say anything about how you all care about your people, then CHANGE SOME THINGS.
-Pay is garbage. I was told $180 per day, but really that was only if you emptied the truck of ice. Being young and naïve, I gladly believe we I could do this. Then I learned about commission “rings.” I still to this day do not know exactly what percentage I was getting at any of the locations I was at. MANAGEMENT DOESN’T TELL YOU. Bonuses? Nah, they’ll tell you about them , but not give you them because they want to save as much money as possible.
-Vacation. You get 3...yes 3...days for working there. After 1 year? A whopping 5 days. Paid time off? HAHAHAHAHAHA NOPE. I was never told I got paid time off and was never paid for time off. The area manager in Quakertown NEVER PAID ME ON MY DAYS OFF. EVER. So whoever responds to these thing at HR: better tell that manager they need to ACTUALLY PAY THEIR EMPLOYEES ON DAYS OFF IF THEY’RE FULL-TIME. No raises on base pay, so you BETTER try to make commission. Base pay is awful, commission is shady, and you will only ever get commission rate raises. Again, I have no clue what I was actually making because all the area manager would do is say one one thing, but not tell you anything else. Also, if you don’t sell enough ice, they pay you the hourly base rate, and it is really bad. After 4 months of working there, they dropped the price of ice to our biggest customer in Pennsylvania. All of my coworkers and I lost A LOT of money on that. They didn’t tell us they were doing that, and all of us were pretty angry, but we couldn’t say anything because that might actually have gotten us fired.
-Benefits. While they do offer 401k, no dental and vision. Health insurance is some random company in Ohio called “Custom Design Benefits.” No one knows about them where I live, and you have to pay out of pocket, send them the bill, and then hope to get reimbursed by then decently. I’m thankful I never got hurt off the job.
-Holidays. The only sacred day they won’t make your work is Christmas. That being said, you WILL work Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, possibly Thanksgiving, and any other small holiday. Easter is a toss-up. No holiday pay. “Your commission is your holiday pay.” That is a DIRECT QUOTE FROM THE AREA MANAGER IN QUAKERTOWN.
-Equipment. Oh gosh, ALL the equipment. Breaking down, ceasing function, leaving you stuck somewhere you don’t want to be. If you’re making commission and something breaks mid shift, kiss your commission goodbye. Trucks rarely had A/C, so you fry in the truck and then get temperature shock by going into the 20 degree box for the ice. This is the dumbest part, even with trucks, liftgates, and electric pallet jacks breaking down constantly: for the 5 terminals/plants they had, THERE WAS ONE FREAKING MECHANIC. They hired a second one, but let him go in September to SAVE MONEY. For Quakertown, Lancaster, Philadelphia, Wilkes-Barre, and York, they had ONE FREAKING MECHANIC. Bad choice for the third largest company in the US I’d you ask me.
-Customer Relations. Not good. The driver is the face of the company. Unless you had a good relationship with the customer (because that was easy with all the bad employees HCI had), they didn’t trust you and you basically had an even harder job than you expected. HCI is so inconsistent that a big customer in Philadelphia won’t give them any more stores until HCI meetS their demands...which I was told by the area manager that they aren’t planning on trying to meet that demand.
-Hours. Long, demanding, and outright illegal. If you finish your route, you’ll not hear anything from management. If you don’t, you’ll either be made to do them the next day with a full route or yelled at and made to do them along with the full route. Average of 15 stops? HAHAHAHAHAHA NOPE. I was constantly give 16-18 stops, and I would be expected to finish them all in the summer when all boxes are empty or close to it. Unless you have your cdl, you are going to go back to the terminal/plant and refill your truck, which will take 30-40 minutes depending on how much you need to clean up. The bags of ice will break open, and you can’t throw them away at your customer’s shops unless they say you can...and they don’t all say you can. You then have to go back out to try to finish your route. I had to work sometimes 15-17 hour days, and I would start at 5 am. Since I had a CDL, that would have been illegal, and it was all to keep the area manager from being angry, yelling at me, and making me work harder.
-Management. As you can see from the above, the management is deplorable. The former plant managers in Quakertown and York were amazing, but no idea who’s there now.
Too long, didn’t read? Bad upper management, horrible hours and equipment, illegally long days, extremely shady payment system. STAY AWAY IF YOU VALUE TIME WITH YOUR FAMILY, WANT TO SUPPORT A FAMILY, AND WANT A LIFE OUTSIDE OF WORK.
