Pros
The pay structure is minimally sufficient.
Cons
The following is my strong opinion, and reflects my honest experience at VHS to the best of my ability. Some of the details may be a little off, but I did the best I can to accurately describe what it was like to work here. Victor’s is cult-like. At VHS, Victor is the star of the show. If you work here, you will have to clap for him, stand for him, cheer for him, smile for him, thank him repeatedly, and always laugh at his jokes. There’s is a bizarre display of worship, whenever he is present. There are multiple, mandatory events throughout the year. There’s no shortage of get-togethers, events, meetings, excursions, and outings. The multitude of functions that required my presence made it very difficult to maintain a work/life balance (I have several kids in school with extracurricular activities as well). Of course, you are allowed to be absent at times, but you will not be easily excused from these functions. The company prides itself on “culture”. It’s definitely an intense, Victor-centered (in my view) culture, somewhat of a party environment, and often fueled by alcohol. I experienced some enormous second-hand embarrassment at some of the antics I witnessed at these drunken (it seemed) events. For a family man such as I, it’s hard to maintain the involvement necessary to support such a culture-driven environment of this type. Even though my sales numbers were tops, I was eventually ostracized for my lack of familiarity with others in the company, and (I personally believe) it affected the quality of sales leads I was given as a result. Victor seemed to demand and draw attention to himself in peculiar and eccentric ways. I admired how he would hand out large bricks of one-dollar bills to select employees. I wanted one too! But now, I believe he just relished in the volume of cash he was giving out as payments/bonuses or whatever. And looking back as a former employee, I think it was an extremely abnormal way to pay your employees. Even more degrading, were the times dollar bills were distributed with a cash gun, and leadership seemed to smile as employees groped all over the ground to pick them up. Or when leadership seemed to laugh at them trying to snatch $1 bills in an inflatable cash cube/money machine. In my opinion, I think they should just pay their struggling employees in a more traditional way, instead of such a humiliating way. Imagine a rich man giving money to a homeless man, and instead of handing him a $20 bill, he threw a cloud of $1 bills into the air, and watched the homeless man pick them up (just a fictional story to help illustrate my feelings about what was happening at this company). The regular pay structure were adequate, when the sales leads were coming in strong. I believe Victor had to change his pricing model a bit though, as it seemed his customers were catching-on that he was GREATLY OVERPRICED (again, my opinion), and (it seemed to me) his competition was cutting him off at the knees. I think he tried to compensate for this, by increasing the size of his sales team, and decreasing the quality of sales leads, which, I suspect, caused many of his veteran employees to resign. As I was struggling through the low volume and quality of sales leads, I was INCENSED as I watched Victor continually hand out seemingly lavish gifts (including $X,XXX watches from Detroit Watch Company) to a very few, select group of his employees, while it seemed other employees were struggling to feed their children and pay their at home. Without making any claims or accusations, I found that I grew to hate the unprofessional, foul, and often immoral (in my opinion) language of leadership and employees during meetings and events. Sometimes it was racially fueled humor, other times it was filled with sexual innuendos, and very often targeted towards someone’s appearance or gender (in my experience). I realize that my opinion of these events is highly subjective, and that others may not have seen it the same way (especially in matters of race/gender), but for me, it was continually discouraging. I felt that the work environment at Victors was immature overall. When I finally decided to leave, the company decided to absorb all of the remaining sales that I had in the pipeline, sales that I had worked for, and closed. They stole (in my opinion) more than $X,XXX from me. I guess they probably had a way of justifying it, but it hurt my family bad! However, I chose to move forward without looking back and without making any accusations. This was just my experience. I’m sure others have had a different experience at Victors. But looking back, after more than a year, I can honestly say that there’s nothing I liked about the job. I honestly wanted to like it, because I was good at it, and it payed well, but I just couldn’t subject myself to the aggravation and humiliation of the “cult”. So I’m here to publish my honest (to the best of my ability) review of Victors as an employer, in the hopes that it might resonate with someone else, and help them to understand what they’re getting into. It’s crazy, but in my private conversations with my fellow employees, I found that they felt the same way I did about all of these things. There was no shortage of their own aggravations with the company and culture as well. I believe the cult-like atmosphere made it impossible for them to be anything but publicly supportive of everything company-related, which has formed a bubble of delusion around Victor’s view of his company, so that while he thinks everything is hunky-dory, he is actually dealing with a lot of disgruntled employees. I am generally not a disgruntled employee. I liked where I worked before Victors and I like where I work now. I get paid better now, with much less involvement, stress, and labor than I did at Victors. Victors is intense! It is an overwhelming atmosphere! For me, the job was just too pervasive into my life. I personally prefer to compartmentalize my job into a small, opaque space of my mind, but Victors made this impossible. I believe this is a legally powerful company, and it’s hard to leave a review like this. It feels risky. In my experience, they were always PUSHING HARD for 5-star reviews. It seemed to be their #1 priority. I think that’s why they have so many excellent reviews on Glassdoor, so I’d ask you to consider that. I think they have employees specifically appointed to manage their online presence, so I know I’m writing my opinions here to their great dismay. And again, I’ve tried not to dramatize the facts in my review, or stretch any truths, but please know that what I’ve said is my experience from my personal paradigm, and not necessarily absolutely factual, and that the events and people mentioned above may not be entirely accurate, but that I’ve honestly represented the company, the best I know how to, based on my personal recollection.