Fastenal – “Fastenal Rocks the Western Front!”

Pros

I think that the best reasons to work for Fastenal are the fact that there is not a major amount of pressure to achieve things that are out of reach. The goals are set high but not unrealistic and they are always at one point or another, achievable. You are praised enough for your hard work and not reprimanded more than needed when markers are not hit. They have good benifits, and as long as your a hard worker you do not need to be superbly intelligent to work in management. They assume that someone who works hard and is trained in the field from thier school of business is perfectly fine for the job.

Cons

I would have to say there are quite a few downsides, but the perks outweigh the downers. For starters, I think that there is a lot that is expected thoughout the day and depending on the branch, these cannot all be completed in the assumed time frame. My store has more customer walk-ins than many others. This causes my in-store support guy to not be able to do his main job, so my manager gets on me about that, so to solve that I will take the in-store customers instead and then I am not able to do my main job to its full capacity. This causes for some frustration.

Advice to Senior Management

To senior management, I would say, set high goals, keep on everyone about selling; but do take into consideration the different branches situations because some may be busier than others, some are different from others so to send an email to everyone saying to do something by a certain time may not be possible, afterall each branch operates on only three employees.