Pros
Work vehicle, pension, plenty of overtime, some of your coworkers, some of the customers are pretty cool. If you get a bonus, that's nice too. There is some flexibility, but not really flexible. Emergency calls will throw off your plans for the day, but you have the freedom to work where you want to work within your territory. But you can't just not answer your company phone or not show up to work.
Cons
Pay. We are allowed 55 hours, but no one wants to work that. I think most people are paid around $20/hr average. So to make what we need, we work those hours.
Work phone. We already are working 50-55hrs but we are still on call even when we are clocked out. And if you don't call the customer back within an hour, and it escalates, you'll never hear the end of it.
Weekends. We all work weekends on a rotating schedule. If you aren't fully staffed, you're working in a shorter rotation. Some guys are every other weekend, some every 3. You also don't get paid for sitting around your house on the weekend until a call comes in, you only get paid for the time clocked in. But you spend your weekend waiting for a call unable to enjoy your weekend or do anything more than sitting at your house. The company phone might be a perk to some, but to most it's just another obstacle.
Staffing. When someone puts in their notice to leave, managers cannot post a job opening until that person is gone. That means Caretaking is now on the people who are still there, running their territory, are now covering someone else's. It takes about 3 months of training before the new hire is put officially into that open territory. We used to have ATRs, they learned the job, covered vacations, open territories, maybe even got promoted to an open territory. Whoever decided to eliminate that position should lose their job too. One of the stupidest moves EVER.
PTO. The amount of time off is nice, but you take that and you're guaranteed to lose about $300 of pay for that week. Mostly due to not being able to use however many hours you want or have available. Also if you have time left over at the end of the year, you cannot roll it over, you can't get paid out for it, and depending on your district, there may not be anyone able to cover your time off. But you know, your time is earned and you need it for your own wellness, or so Ecolab has said many times over.
Parts/inventory. All we do is fix problems, and the parts needed to fix those problems need to be available to us. Instead of being able to order and receive what we need, managers cut the order or don't place the order for 30 days. In the meantime, customers think we aren't doing our jobs or attending to our customers machines, which they pay a monthly lease on. Look, the parts aren't for me, they are for the customers. You know, the ones who pay us to stay in their places of business and make sure they are serving the public safely.
Equipment/machines. Some of our equipment is pretty decent, but some is just cheap junk that we have to replace or repair way too many times. The machines are not ours, they are from Jackson, but we have to keep them running. The good old ES2000 is the best machine we lease. The machines are easy to fix, dependable, cheaper than the newer model, and relatively easy to operate. The new ELT is pure over-engineered junk. These have parts that are electronic, more expensive to order, and have some of the worst parts put into them. But because they have a digital display, they're the best machine out there? Wrong.
Mentor. It's a driving monitor app. Think of the snapshot that Progressive uses. Except this one can cause you to lose your job.
I could go on, but I'm running out of room. Hopefully you get the idea.
