The perfect cocktail of micro-management, toxic culture, and dead-end positions.
Pros
It is a job, if you absolutely need a paycheck. Some good people, most are friendly. Possible to get overtime, if you can work the hours. There’s always something to do.
Cons
I’m not really sure where to start. The pay is ridiculously low for industry standards, or any industry for that matter. It was explained to me that if you “proved yourself” that it’s possible to get raises, and move up in the company. From what I saw, “proving yourself” had little to do with your work ethic and ability, but with how much you could handle management’s “expectations”, which is basically working as hard as you can while your boss walks around and points out what everyone else is doing wrong. In my time at Ford, it seemed like the only enjoyment the employees got out of their jobs, was to belittle and berate the mistakes of others. Granted, these people made as many mistakes as the next person, but for some reason they felt like it was their duty to correct that person by any means at their disposal. I constantly saw coworkers research an issue for upwards to an hour so they could find every detail wrong with a situation and map out a game plan for how they were going to drop it in the offending person’s lap. While I saw management do this to their subordinates, I also saw them do this to each other. I can honestly say that this is the most toxic culture I have ever been around. While it does have a mom and pop feel to the organization, management is like the attention-seeking children always trying to get on the parent’s good side (The Fords). There is no semblance of mentoring or coaching at Ford. There are a long list of processes that must be followed to a T, even if it doesn’t make sense. Some reviews have talked about “pet policies” from the home office, and how they tried to enforce on other branches. This was the case for my branch. I couldn’t count the times that I was told “if you don’t do this or that, that you’ll get on the Ford’s bad side”, only to not comply and nothing was ever said. There are a lot of useless meetings, that are recorded, and for the most part could be answered in a short email rather than a 30 minute to 2 hour meeting. There isn’t anything that happens at Ford without the Fords knowing about it. They do enlist employees to spy on other employees and report back the findings. There are no performance reviews, unless you ask for them. I was told when I put in my resignation that I was being considered for a promotion, but that was the first I had heard of anything like that. I can’t stress how much everything is micro-managed. More on the toxic culture—I watched bosses demean and berate their subordinates in front of other employees. One manager told his employee that he didn’t know what he did all day, and that he could do the subordinate’s 40 hr/wk job, in 8 hr/wk. Other coworkers went on vacations, only to come back buried with the work that their boss was too “busy” to help with. If you plan on staying in the AV field, this is good experience to take to another company. If not, this is similar to a construction company, and your experience will be counted as that. If you’re fresh out of high school or college and have no experience whatsoever, this is a good job to get some experience and move on. To boil it done, your pay will be low but you won’t expect high pay starting out. Your boss will probably know a lot about the process that the company uses, but not much else outside of that. You’ll meet some nice people, and a couple won’t talk about you behind your back. Any interactions with the Fords after the first couple of initial ones will be stress-inducing and terrible. Keep your chin up—in a couple of years, you’ll be able to move on to greener pastures, where you can look back and be thankful that you’ll never have to go back to this place.
