Pros
There is the opportunity, should the cards fall into place as well (not everything is in the RSRs control) to make good money. There was some real camaraderie here amongst people, it was cool to see.
Cons
Dismally early work day that may still go until 5pm. I was told before I was hired that 5am would be the earliest I would have to show up, only to find out I would be going out with some guys at 4am. That extra hour makes a difference to me. It may not to guys in this industry because they are, large in part, workaholics. It takes a lot of grit to be trucking around with these early starts, and I commend them on it. But this still should have been communicated to me, I have a life to balance. Chaos and poor communication between the sales team, the drivers and the plant. Tension amongst managers and on one occasion I was yelled at by a manager who couldn't keep it together, totally unprofessional, I don't go to work to be someone else's punching bag. They also didn't have an OA (sorta like HR) to smooth over my hiring process, which isn't necessarily their fault. They are a new plant and a lot of the chaos of things could be attributed to this. Essentially I was hired by one manager over a brief phone interview (lesson learned there on my part), and it became evident very quickly that I would be learning the job until something came up and a driver quit. Prior to my hire, they had been experiencing high turnover amongst drivers, and my belief is that they wanted me trained as a backup to fill a route once someone quit. Lo and behold they finally obtained a solid roster of drivers. As a result, once I was trained in, I was sent out any time someone called in sick or took vacation to cover their route. I did not come to UniFirst to do this, and if there was even the slightest possibility that I would have been thrust into this position prior to my hire, it needed to be explained to me. I essentially took on the role of a Route Supervisor, which is a position that comes with more pay than the RSR base salary in order to justify the volatile nature each and every day could take on. To be fair, I had some very easy days here and there where I got to come in a little later and run "specials" which amounted to nothing more than errands. But the principle still remains the same. They eventually started building me a route, and by the time I left I had one day out of five. Yes, had I stuck around, maybe in a year or two I could be making more money. But they had burnt me out before I could get there. Maybe a better man than me could stick it out, I say that with no shame. Lastly, all of these factors amounted to intense job dissatisfaction. When I do a job, I like to do it well. Instead, I found myself running around not knowing how to make sense of most days. Guy calls in sick? Go run his route and get yelled at by every other customer because you don't know the special verbal agreement the driver had, or what the status is on the order they put in last week, or even where the clothes are hung up. A lot of these drivers get to build momentum with their customers, and a person in my position had none of that energy. I found this feeling hard to articulate to others there.
