Pros
There are pros to working for this company despite my long cons section. The largest benefit by far is the salary and the vacation package. They give you 136 hours of paid time off a year, 40 of which can be used as unplanned or "sick" hours. The health and dental plan are decent, the vision is great. The company culture looks good on the surface as well. They give out a lot of incentives like gift cards and treat bags for those who perform in the top 10% of their segment, do company picnics, friendly sales competitions with various prizes, etc. The thing about this is, much like a dystopian novel, all this "friendly culture" and "good management/associate relations" is a surface image that becomes something entirely different once you actually spend time here and get to know what goes on in the upper levels, which leads me to my cons section.
Cons
The fact that Harland Clarke prides itself on so-called "pillars" of trust, integrity, etc. is very ironic given how their team-level management can manipulate records and outright lie to get people fired and there is NO investigation into the matter whatsoever. I've been here for two years and the turn over rate for one specific team was INSANE. We get classes of 25 new hires and by the end of their 15 week probation period there would be about 3-5 left, if that. This, in my opinion, is because of two things: 1.) there is a rift between what trainers teach new employees and what is actually expected of them on the floor which creates unfair negative write-ups against agents. 2.) The team-level supervisors are not competent. I've seen favoritism, greed, and outright lies keep people from earned promotions or just plain fired without any investigation, even if it was brought to the attention of HR. In fact, the folks who DO go to HR suddenly disappear, especially contractors. Anything you say against the unfair supervisors can be taken as "oh you don't seem to fit into our culture here, sorry" and they're suddenly gone. That's immoral and manipulative for a company that supposedly loves their employees. It's also important to note that the night security team here is sexist and verbally abusive. They will corner you when no one is around and confront you about something as small as forgetting to shut a locker door, point in your face, and then scream at you to go down to the other side of the building and close it again. It also seems to only happen to females. It has been brought to the attention of center management so many times but the same guards are still there. Speaking of sexist, the dress code here is used as an excuse to promote favoritism and micro-manage those who the team supervisors don't care for. You will literally get yelled at or possibly written up if someone doesn't like you for wearing the same thing another agent down your row is wearing. If you ask if that agent got in trouble as well, they will say they can't comment. If you ask who you can file a formal complaint to about it, they will say there is no one. We already know what happens if you approach HR, so unless you want to disappear, you have to put up with the bias. Agents here have literally had dress codes made by their supervisors just for them, like a specific agent isn't allowed to wear dresses for example. It's the textbook definition of targeting. As far as promotions, good luck. They have so many cliques here that when they post a job they basically already know who will fill it. If you DO get an interview, note that bachelor and masters degrees as well as job performance (you know, the usual qualifiers) don't matter. This is a company run by old white men so they won't promote many young people with proper credentials; instead they'll promote older folks who have been with the company awhile even if they don't know the difference between excel and word.