TIDI Products, LLC reviews

Silo workgroups, limited growth, cutthroat business

- Tedious work. Operator work at Tidi is a constantly on your feet, hands always busy-type work. Some of the machines are more involved than others, but none of them are 'set-up and let it run' style machines. If you're okay with mundane and repetitive work, then this could be a pro for you; bring in a speaker and blast your music loud so you can hear it over your machine and through your earplugs and you'll be good to go (good luck trying to listen to podcasts though). - Some of the co-workers. While there are plenty of good people working at Tidi, most of the employees here do not socialize much. If you're already in manufacturing, this may not be a big deal to you but coming from a more social line of work, I am put off at the lack of comradery between the workers at Tidi. Lots of weird stares from the older male workers... and I'm a dude saying this, good luck to any female co-workers. It's just the nature of the place, it seems, with mostly everybody sort of in their own workspace. Most 3rd shift workers are guarded from the workers on other shifts that come in early or stay late into their shift; they're not quite hostile but some are certainly more than unwelcoming. Most are kind enough, but three of the 8-10 Team Leads (2 on 1st shift, 1 on 3rd), who are there to help the operators when in need, while knowledgeable and therefore serviceable, can often be condescending and standoffish. Most of the maintenance workers on 3rd shift can be standoffish, too, which can make it uncomfortable to call them for help to get a machine back up and running. Material handlers are also a mix of friendly and unfriendly throughout the 3 shifts, but if you can cater to their preferences, successfully building rapport with most of the material handlers can be rewarding as the 3 drivers that deliver to and send product from your machine are the folks you see the most while working throughout the shift. - No climate control. Thankfully, the coldest of winter days are comfortably warm in the plant, but the plant becomes uncomfortably sweaty in anything higher than 75 degree weather during the humid summer season. The humidity can also make certain materials and machines tougher to run smoothly. To his credit, the Tidi VS1 manager has proposed plans to install climate control multiple times, but all have been rejected by my next con, the... - ...Equity Firm Overlords. Tidi was recently sold from one private equity group to another. Why is this a con? In my opinion, a private equity firm owning the company makes it effectively similar to a publicly traded company; in that the company will always be beholden to the whims of their investors instead of just doing right by their customers and workers. If Tidi could be employee or family owned, the pay could be greater for their front line co-workers, allowing Tidi to hire higher quality candidates across the board, as well as empowering the upper management team to truly make other good decisions (not knowing them, it is hard to say if they would or wouldn't concern themselves with these sort of things) for the company; such as offering profit sharing to incentivize the workers instead of dangling a weak (and uncertain) yearly bonus. Going back to the previous con, when Tidi did propose to install climate control, they would have the power to do so without having to seek approval from their investment group, who likely only care about the ROI they're getting from having purchased Tidi. Sorry Tidi workers, TJC Equity needs a new yacht this year! (Dear reader, don't worry about Tidi's management team though, they're fine, they have air conditioning for the offices, of course.) It's a shameful situation, but that's probably why the management team at Tidi is the only group here being paid well for the industry; as it's cheaper for the equity group to pay the few managers a lot more to toe their line then having to pay all the workers above industry standards.