Pros
The work you do is interesting and you get to travel to convenience stores in your area and meet a lot of people. I loved the job, or at least I did before the company sucked all the enjoyment out if it. I worked in two different districts, Atlanta and Charlotte West, and had fantastic coworkers in both. Very exceptional people. I didn't get to see them very often, but seeing them at meetings ended up being the only thing that made the job bearable anymore. I love the people I made friends with in this company.
Cons
The culture is absolutely horrible. Very hostile work environment with gaslighting and mind games. Someone told us at a sales meeting that the RSM team is a "cheap date" for the company. It is insulting to hear something like that but hey, at least they admit it. They don't pay enough for what you do in this job and it shows how little respect they have for you to say something like that. When I started this job 12 years ago it was much more of a merchandising position with some low pressure selling. There was a focus on being ethical in what we sold and how much we sold. Over time the sales have become high pressure, and the company added more and more responsibility to the RSM position but never changed the title or increased the pay to reflect that. You manage your own field sales territory in this position. It is strictly limited to 20 hours a week regardless of what takes away from that time (such as meetings, admin, conference calls, etc.) I heard it said once that this is a full time job with part time hours. The pressure to squeeze all of your job duties into that limited amount of time is very stressful. The expectations are contradictory, and you will get asked to change priorities in the middle of a call cycle and reroute yourself "dynamically" to adjust. You will always end up missing calls because of changing priorities, or have to go over your call times. You are told that you are the manager of your own territory, but you are not allowed to change your route or schedule in ways that will help you work more effectively. I worked under 7 different supervisors and each one had different policies, which you don't find out until you unknowingly break one. Your DSS is the only regular contact you have with the company and they really make or break things for you. I was harassed and pushed into quitting. When I reached out for help I was ignored. I lost all respect for the company after seeing how this issue was handled. The bigger problem is unfortunately Hershey has already lost a lot of respect in the marketplace due to unfair business practices. It put me in an ethical conflict every day to try to do what was asked of me. The company does not stand behind you or back you up when you do what they ask, so why put your own personal reputation with customers on the line for it? It felt like a fool's errand to keep selling for this company. You get paid the same whether you sell or not. No commission, no perks, no bonuses for selling. They only want to grind it out of you to make up for the poor leadership decisions that have cost the company. It's way too much to ask out of part-time employees in a dead end job. They take pride in getting as much as they can out of you for as little reward as possible.