One step forward, three steps back - Operations Specialist McMaster-Carr Employee Review

2.0
May 30, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Generous pay and benefits. Tuition reimbursement.

Cons

Everything else. Trust the detailed reviews of this company when applying, not the 1-2 sentence ones with five stars that are typically posted by members of HR to boost their rating. There is no room for growth if you aren’t hired into a managerial position. Pay doesn’t reflect your position, so if you get moved (not by choice) into a role with more responsibilities, your pay stays as it was. Imagine working for a company where you can’t move up in the ranks, and get moved to a different department because of business need, not because you want to learn something new. And you can’t tell them no.. Everything you do is monitored and measured monthly, quarterly, yearly, and now every six months where you have to sit in an awkward meeting with a manager who judged your work. You’re required to complete work in a set number of minutes, be checked “available for work” for 90% of your shift, and keep errors under a certain number. All of that is fine, but publishing that info twice per month and showing how you score against your peers is horrible for employee morale and created the toxic culture many have mentioned here. Imagine working for a company where you’re stressed just because you have to get measured against your peers all the time. The morale at the company is still extremely low. They take one step forward, two steps back. They’ve hired external companies to analyze the company to see how they can improve morale and then did nothing with those recommendations. If anything, they’ve made life worse for their employees. They gave time off for Covid related things while all office employees worked from home, which was great for parents when they lost their child care and were keeping their bubble tight. Then that was randomly taken away and updated so you can only use that time off If you got the virus. They told employees they would grant additional time off and accommodate schedule change requests if you needed an earlier/later shift, but now that it’s busy they changed that policy (shocker) so you’re required to use your PTO if you need to start or get off at a different time. Imagine working for a company who won’t let you change your schedule unless you use your own paid time off.. Sadly, the real reviews on here are real. Employees stay because the money allows them to take care of their kids. You don’t learn any practical skills at this job that you can take elsewhere as they prefer to always use homegrown systems and hourly employees are rarely involved in projects (another thing they said they would start doing but never did). Use the tuition reimbursement they offer to get a degree, and get out as soon as you can. It’s an old company that makes a lot of money, but isn’t focused on their employees. We don’t want a new cafeteria. We want a positive workplace environment that isn’t ran by supervisors (they’re definitely not leaders) who just graduated from college and have zero experience. We want an HR department that is non-biased like they’re supposed to be.

Explore other reviews about McMaster-Carr

5.0
Jun 7, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Salary, benefits, coworkers, work/life balance

Cons

micromanagement at every level and job is boring at times

2.0
Mar 4, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good salary, guaranteed bonus, opportunities for overtime

Cons

Management changes constantly, managers are either fresh out of college or have never done your role or both, so I felt like I was managing myself. The metric standards are so high you have to essentially be perfect month after month. The standards are completely unrealistic, robotic, and leave little room for a bad day. There is PTO but you are only allowed to take it if there are “available hours” for that day - everything is about capacity and squeezing out as much work from as many people as possible. Taking time off affects your metrics for the month, which I did not know until after I took my first week-long vacation - they are always looking at your performance in terms of the past year, so I had to try to overwork and correct the bad month I had, when in my opinion your PTO should be completely YOUR time and have no adverse effect. Mentally and physically strenuous, whether you are on the warehouse side or office side - go to the bathroom too many times in a day and it will become an issue - they expect you to be glued to your desk/post. Like I said, no room to be human.

7
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