MSC Industrial Direct reviews

MSC has a number of positions advertised as remote, and a large number of employees hired for remote positions that will be required to report to a MSC facility if they live within 50 miles. There is 0 flexibility on scheduling and the ridiculously high turnover should be a red flag for anyone considering MSC. HR and recruiting also astroturf reviews on this and other sites, but the average speaks for itself. Based on the way they are handling the return to office mandates, there will be a lot of positions available for those willing to settle. If you are currently working remotely and asking why you haven't heard anything about returning to the nearest MSC location it's because some departments have embargoed the announcement, and that says a lot about how management works.

Corporate pricing policy. I spent hours managing and having customer discounts loaded only to have them erased by a corporate "pricing automation" in the fall of 2013 (By the way, they never asked for input from the sales team, never visited one of my customers or shook their hands while looking them in the face while agreeing on a pricing contracts - had no clue what I had agreed upon with customers). My customers were irate and questioned my integrity ("you have us a good price to get the business and now you are raking us over the coals"). Lost some business and MARGIN because customer began to shop pricing (that never shopped pricing). Very ironic, corporate used pricing automation in an effort to increase margin (and please shareholders) but I lost business and had to lower pricing to match competition because customers who never shopped starting shopping when their discount on an item they bought regularly a few times per year went from 35% off list to 12% (for example). The following year (2014), they at least told the sales team about the pricing automation and asked for us to submit accounts we would like exempt. I wanted all my accounts because I managed my discounts properly. But they only allowed 2 of my customers to be exempt. And guess what, when the pricing automation went into effect, my exempt customers still had prices raised dramatically to whatever the corporate pricing team wanted (none of my customers received the exemption that was promised!) I had invoice problems I was asked to research because customers were paying pricing based on contracts I personally negotiated that corporate raised without any input from the sales team. Good, large customers (500K in sales annual) were short paying invoicing, and being threatened to be put on credit hold because they were paying pricing based on what they negotiated with their local rep instead of the invoiced pricing inflated by corporate. I became more of an account receivables employee rather than a sales rep. Enough was enough. When I went to management to discuss I was told that I was in the minority of sales reps who actually managed discounts properly and I had to deal with it. (PS - my entire career at MSC I ran my sales around a 45% GP, apparently that wasn't good enough?? The commission program is not fair, they offer a decent base salary and commission program based on growth. If you have a great year and grow business in the 35-40% range like I did, good luck making any commission at all the next year. It sets you up for having to go out and sign up new accounts/look for new business which is hard to do because I was super busy maintaining all the business I had grown the previous year. If there is a salesperson that can grow business 40% year after year keeping the exact same accounts, give me a call I would like to start a sales business with you! Realistically, you grow business and then you spend time maintaining that business. If you grow business and then turn your attention to other customers, you will lose business to the competition.