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Harbor Freight Tools

Engaged Employer

Harbor Freight Tools reviews

3.6

62% would recommend to a friend

(3,450 total reviews)
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Eric Smidt

67% approve of CEO

57% positive business outlook

Harbor Freight Tools has an employee rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 3,450 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Harbor Freight Tools employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
3.0
Jul 19, 2014

A mildly irritating, and nearly adequate job.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Its a pretty laid back atmosphere, with a relaxed dress code. Some friendly managers or supervisors makes the job better. The fellow employees can be great and you can view a few of them as family after a while. Most of the customers are pretty good, you can actually stand around and have a conversation with them once in a while if you're on a roll and joking with them. As a sales-floor associate you generate a little over a week of paid time off a year, and 2-3 days of paid sick time a year. Low-end promotions are possible, as in it's not too hard to move up to a supervisor position, moving up to management seems near impossible. Training is quick, but not that efficient and ends up being a running joke between employees.

Cons

Scheduling is a nightmare. Every week you will have a completely different schedule, and so will everyone else except for whichever manager makes the schedule. Lots of favoritism. If one of your managers doesn't like you, and their closing with you, expect that you'll be cleaning the bathrooms. And it doesn't matter how long in advance you put in for time off, your not going to get it, and when you say you wont be in and you gave them plenty of notice, the managers treat you like the bad guy. But dont worry, your managers will change very few months. Very few last much longer than a year, or leave for somewhere else. Your pushed to sell warranties and coupon subscription plans. Whatever you sell, you get roughly 10% commission, but the only way to sell warranties is either getting lucky with a customer that wants one and will ask for it, throwing a lie at the customer and talk it up, or scan a coupon when their not looking and trick them into buying it. The supervisors and managers will tell you to use the coupon scanning method (cheating), but tell you to hide it. But if the district managers find evidence of the cheating, someones probably getting fired. You get yelled at if you don't meet the goals set for selling these things. I've heard the managers get some kind of bonus if the store sells a lot of these, so that's all they care about. The yearly coupon subscription (ITC's) are junk, and all the employees know it, but we still are required to sell these things, and most the customers who do buy it still don't even get the coupons that their paying for. Everyone always whines about the job, and there is a lot of people who will just stand around and do nothing. The companies name collection is a bit over the top. There a quota every week for how many new addresses and email address we have to collect as a store, and it's to the point, atleast at my store, that we pretty much bully them into giving us something or else their checkout process takes forever. The inventory system is a joke, and so is receiving shipments. Most of our freight guys are at court if they don't show up for work. I've been with my store since opening a little over a year ago, and sales on average has gone down, but people get about the same hours anyway. Base pay at my store is 9/hr. Asst Head Cashier 10/hr. Head Cashier about 11/hr. Assistant pricing coordinator 9.25/hr. Pricing Coordinator 9.50/hr.

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Harbor Freight Tools Response
11y
Thank you for your insightful feedback. We especially appreciate your pointing out the casual atmosphere and camraderie in the workplace. We hear that consistently and we're grateful that we can provide such a comfortable environment to our staff. That being said, we are concerned about your input regarding some of the procedures you shared and we urge you to reach out to your regional HR representative or anonymously call the HFT Outlet Hotline at 1-800-693-8377. Thank you, again.
3.0
Jul 15, 2014

Not understanding company's logic.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I work at a new store, I got to work with the red shirts and set up the store. I live how fast this company is growing and the opportunities that were recently presented to me. I somehow locked in the head pricing coordinator position. My store manager recently told me big things are going to be happening in our district and he wants everyone that's part of the leadership team to be ready for the next level up.

Cons

The pay is really low. I understand this is a retail job, but unless you are part of the management team you're basically making minimum wage. I don't know about other states, but in CA. you can't live off wages that small. My other issue is our store has a bunch of great workers, how are they rewarded? They're told their hours are getting cut. That's just an insult to injury. You make $ .80 above than minimum wage and are lucky to get 20 hours a week. Why would anyone want to stay with a company that treats them like that. Our store meets or exceeds the daily budget everyday, but we can't afford to keep our good workers on the schedule. So we have a high profit store, but can't pay the employees decent wages or give them hours to work. The company says it has competitive wages... Competitive with whom?

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