Pros
Free Dunkin Donuts Coffee and Hot Chocolate. Co-Selectors were fun people to work with. All selectors are in the "same boat" and go through the hardships of being worked like slaves. So building up friendships was the only way to help each other get through the grueling days.
Cons
Everything about this company was bad on every level. I will try to sub categorize everything about this company to the best of my ability. My apologizes if I write alot but I would like to steer everyone away from this company that reads this post because your life will be ruined by this company on all levels. Im 27 and i have worked for alot of companies and i can honestly say that no job has even come close to how bad this company is. So please take the time to read all my cons below,,,,trust me you will appreciate it in the long run. Pay- The pay for the company wasnt that bad. This is also assuming you actually make it past your "90 day probation period" where if you dont make rate you will be fired. Once you get your raise and your a dry selector you will go from $13/hr to $16.25/hr. Compared to most jobs these days, especially at entry level, its pretty good pay. With this pay comes the work you have to do to make that money which will be explained in the work category. Hours- You will work alot of hours at this company. I worked at the Mokena, IL warehouse from Feb 2014- Aug 2014. When you find the job posting for National DCP on career builder it says 40 hrs/wk for 4 days a week with "SOME" mandatory overtime. PLEASE DONT BE FOOLED BY THAT ONE. It is mandatory overtime EVERY SINGLE DAY YOU WORK. My shift would start at 1pm and my average time leaving was roughly 3am. The job description said 1pm-11:30pm. Trust me its a huge lie. If your a young person with no family or kids this job is perfect for you. But if you have family or your going to college, trust me you WILL HAVE NO LIFE what so ever. Work Vs. Quality of Life - This by far is the most important part of this review. You may work only 4 days a week the website would say but in reality you do 6 days of work squeezed into a 4 day schedule. I say this because your average work day is about 14-16 hours. Being a selector the pick rates are extremely high and you gotta maintain rate for 14-16 hours a day. This is SLAVE WORK by all means. After 10-12 hours you are completely drained. This is where you have no QUALITY OF LIFE. You get home in the early hours of the morning and all you want to do is sleep. Sure its your day off but you dont have the energy to do anything with your family. By the time you wake up its already 2-3 in the afternoon and your too sore to want to do anything requiring energy. You basically have to learn how to live and enjoy your free time at 50% energy if that makes any sense to people reading this. Plus you got dock supervisors calling you all day begging you to come in on your day off because they are short staffed. Management- Wow where do i begin with this one. Management at National DCP in Mokena, IL was horrible on all levels. There is no organization in the company at all. Shift Managers would bark orders at you all day and remind you of how bad everyone is. Everyday before you would begin to pick orders the shift supervisor would hold a meeting and go over any issues in the warehouse. This is where they tell you how everyones average Pick rate is doing and how bad the OS&D is. OS&D for those who don't know is generally Pick errors made by the selectors or errors made by drivers when they delivered the product. TRUST ME THE BLAME IS ALWAYS PUT ON THE SELECTORS. There is no motivation during this meeting which is what it should be. All the shift supervisors do is B!tch about how bad everyone is doing and that if people dont shape up they will be terminated. These people work you for ridiculous amounts of hours and then they literally can't understand why people are not at rate or why people are making pick errors. When you ask for help all they do is tell you they are busy and that you have to figure it out yourself which sucked because your pick timer is still running. You can spend 15 minutes trying to figure something out and guess what, its hurting your rate and somehow you gotta figure out a way to make up for the 15 minutes you lost. Employee Expectations- The supervisors expect you to be a slave. They feed you this crap that making rate is not a hard task to accomplish. BULLCRAP. Lets face it people pick rates are not made for you (the selector) to be able to pick at a steady pace. Pick rates are designed for maximum output of the product PERIOD!!!!! In order to make rate you literally have to work as fast as your arms and legs can move. And if you let up in the grueling 14 hrs or more a day shifts, you will not make rate. Most of the equipment is poorly maintained because DCP has a contract with Crown and the services are horrible. I dont really blame Crown per se because at a previous warehouse i worked at Crown always did a good job keeping the equipment maintained. What DCP needs to do is hire there own mechanics who have guys available 24/7 who can maintain the equipment at all times. The headsets that you use to pick the product only work half the time which definitely becomes very stressful when you have to repeat picks over and over again because the headset doesn't understand what you are saying. With all the issues with the equipment it makes it hard to keep a good pace in the warehouse. When you present this to your supervisors they look at you like its your fault. The "figure it out yourself" attitude is what you get in return. Equipment- As you saw above the equipment is horrible. Poorly maintained and there is not enough equipment for the employees on shift. Once again its a figure it out yourself moment again. Safety- OSHA would have a field day with this warehouse. Here are some examples. When we did our shift meeting one day we were told that a morning shift restocker hit a sprinkler head in the freezer and got water all over the floor. At this point we were informed that this happened during the early morning hours and that now the floor has ice on it. We were then told that it wasn't that bad and that we should be able to continue picking product in the freezer. When we were given our assignments the 6 of us who were gonna pick in the freezer went in to get a size up of the situation. When we arrived in the freezer is was a nightmare. I swear you could put ice skates on and played ice hockey in the freezer. Ice was everywhere and about 2 inches thick too. We went back to the supervisor and informed him that there was no way we could pick in there. We informed him it was unsafe because the "electronic heisters/electronic tuggers" would not be able to steer or move on the ice. We also informed him that trying to walk on it was gonna be extremely difficult and dangerous and that it would even be worse once you are trying to carry product in your hands at the same time. Can you guess the response we got....They basically told us "O WELL" and that we still have to pick the product anyways. There was some other days where stacked pallets of product would tip over and just miss landing on you. This can KILL someone people!!!! My buddy missed being crushed by a falling pallet by 15 seconds. He left the area because he finished the product he was picked and seconds after driving away a pallet came down and scattered all over the floor. Before i started working a DCP i was told it actually happened to a guy. A pallet fell back at him and he tried to run outta the way and it caught his ankle and he got hurt. Another day in the freezer there was ice hanging from the ceiling. And i mean some big pieces of ice. I informed a supervisor of this and the issue was never addressed. Well later on that night a pallet went missing and i had to take a supervisor in the freezer to help me find a pallet. Well i had him on a pallet and i was driving the forklift and i had to raise him to the ceiling so he could look up on the top racks for the product. And when i informed him about the ice he finally got to see the ice chunks i was telling him about. So while he was up there he knocked the chunks down off the ceiling. Wow you shoulda heard these things hit the floor. If that was someones head i can bet that it could kill someone easily. I know what im saying sounds crazy but i was shocked at how this warehouse operated. These are things they don't tell you about when your interviewing. I really hope someday OSHA goes in there and sees all these safety violations. Overall- Please people take what i am saying seriously. The only good thing about this place is the pay for being a entry level employee is not bad and the health insurance is pretty good. If you got family this job is not for you. You live and breath this warehouse and when your not there your just too tired. The warehouse is poorly managed and all the blame and stress gets put on the selectors. All they care about is maximum output, even if it means putting your safety and health at risk. They threaten your job all the time if your not making rate, and believe me the rate is almost impossible to make. Sure for a couple hours you can hit rate, but on the long grueling days you just cant maintain it. You will hit points of complete exhaustion basically every single day and when you do, you realize you still have 4 more hours to go on your 16 hour day. Take care of yourselfs people and stay away from this company. They dont care about the selectors at all. .
