refrigeration technician

customer service representative

technician

supervisor

service administrator

City Facilities Management

As an HVAC/R tech you start your typical day when you are NOT on call at 0730 as you drive to your nearest (Home Store) to your residence. If you happen to live 30 mins or more from the nearest store, you will lose the first and last 30 mins of each day when you are not on call. If you are on call (7 days at a time) then you will clock in like regular days but when you are doing ON CALL work then you will be paid to and from your house. Hope that wasn't too complicated. 

As you head to your home store to clock in for the day (before 0800) you may get a phone call or a text from the Help Desk giving you a new job assignment if not then you will just log into your tablet and sync a few times till it starts working correctly and you will be able to access all the jobs that you still are currently working on. On a good month you may only have 3 or 5 jobs your are working on or a bad month you may have 45 jobs. In addition to those jobs you will also be assigned (monthly) 5 to 20 preventive maintenance jobs, like condenser cleaning or store leak searches etc..

Most if not all parts will be shipped to your home store so after you clock in for the day, you will sign in at the stores customer service desk and find a manager to acknowledge that you are there. In the back of the store is the receiving department and if you have parts for pending jobs you will grab those and head to the store the parts have arrived for. 

As you drive to the first jobs store you will get a few dings on your phone and if you look (You really aren't supposed to) you will see additional jobs that just came in. All jobs have priority letters A, B or C. An A job has to be seen in 4 hours and repaired in 24 hours or sooner. You will usually on average get a few A jobs a day. So far you have two and now you are supposed to pull over on the road and sync your tablet a few times and eventually click on the jobs to accept them and provide ETAs for them. So now you have to divert from your original plan and go to the latest A call cause remember you have that 4 hour respond timer ticking. 

30 mins later you get to that first jobs store and you get your tools together and the rolling cart you keep in the van and bring all that into the store to log in at the front desk. There is no one at the desk this time you have to find someone to go in the back to get the log book for you and your phone starts ringing and its from the Help Desk. You answer and they want to help you out by reminding you that you need to accept those two jobs and provide an ETA. So you tell them that you already did that and they tell you to just resync. So you resync the tablet a few times and see that it now says you never accepted the jobs in the first place. So you accept them again and provide ETAs and you resync again to make sure it all goes through. By that time you have signed the log book and you are looking for a manager, 

So far its about 0930 and you haven't done any work yet but your phone starts dinging like its insane. You look down at it and there are 5 new A jobs. You check out the tablet and of course you have to sync a few times and the jobs start popping up and then your phone rings and its the Help Desk again. They want to let you know you have more jobs to accept and provide ETAs for. You tell them thank you and you will get right on it and you hang up wondering what is going on with all the jobs, The store manager walks up and tells you he also called in a few jobs and you ask him what is going on. He tells you that the SEG inspector is in the area and walking through stores to evaluate them. Now those store managers all talk to each other and are in panic mode to call in jobs for their stores because if that inspector sees an unaddressed problem, he will ding them on their eval. Having a job created for an issue will remove it from the eval.. 

Your phone text messages again with an additional 3 A jobs. So now you have 10 A jobs all required to be addressed in 4 hours and repaired in 24. You call your supervisor and let him know the situation and he says to just do what you can do and knock out the most dire jobs first. So you start scrolling through the new jobs on the tablet and by this time the Help Desk is calling you again and they want to help you out by reminding you again that you need to accept those new jobs and provide ETAs. 

Its only 1000 and so far you have not gotten any work done and you have a bunch of jobs you have to address today and then you get a phone call from the Help Desk again and its the Alarms department of the Help Desk. They need to let you know they are sending you a priority job for a high temperature on equipment at one of your stores and they also need to get a verbal ETA from you. Well this is different than all the other jobs cause it is more critical. You tell them you will be there in an hour. 

You pack up your stuff and load up the van and start heading to the priority call. You get a phone call from the Help Desk as you are driving and they need for you to accept and provide ETAs for a few jobs and you already did this earlier so you tell them you will get right on it as soon as you can. You drive to the store and then you get a phone call from your supervisor wanting to know why you are not accepting jobs and hanging up on the Help Desk. 

I think you guys get my point here. I can write another 20,000 characters to describe the Rack that goes down and the leak searching and acquiring the refrigerant process and by the end of the night and it will be late into the night when you finally say enough and you need sleep or a break... 

The system and policies put in place are just redundant, broken, counterproductive and absolutely demotivating.

The work just piles up and some days aren't too bad but most days are and at some point you will just want to not be here anymore. 

During my interview, the interviewer was bad mouthing the previous tech that I was replacing and I asked him if the Tech was a bad tech when he was hired or did he work under a system that due to what ever reason eventually wore him down and he then stopped caring and became a bad tech?

A year and a half later I had to ask the same question about myself. I know I'm not a bad tech..  but eventually at the end, I think I was becoming a bad tech and due to this and many other reasons I chose to move on.

This is not a good place to work. I have worked for much much better employers and I highly encourage anyone who takes pride in their work to stay away from City.

I was in your shoes once. I got a job offer from City, and I was really excited about it. The pay was good, and they told me all these great things at the induction ceremony.
However, the weekend before the Walmart partnership kicked off and we all officially started, I searched for reviews of City. There were many negative reviews, and the only positive ones seemed to be from upper management or someone that was paid to write a good review. 
"I'm sure it's not that bad," I thought, trying to quell the uneasiness brewing in my mind.
Fast forward 6 months later, and it IS that bad. Everything they tried to sell us at the induction ceremony has gone right out the window. It was all lies. Unfortunately, I did drink the Kool-Aid, and was extremely pro-City. At least for the first 2 or so months. Then some things started happening, which I would've noticed earlier if I wasn't blinded by City-induced brainwashing.
Work orders keep rolling in. Store managers always have something negative and disrespectful to say. Parts that we order for same day or next day take a week to arrive if we're lucky, while store managers complain the whole time, and City managers hassle you about your aging work orders, which are totally out of control because you're waiting for the parts team to do their jobs. Walmart associates and customers are CONSTANTLY destroying things, which City likes to describe as "job security," but it's quite frustrating when you're going back to the store for the 3rd time that month and the store manager is accusing you of not knowing what you're doing because whatever it is broke again. There is ZERO communication within the company, from the techs in the trenches all the way up to the VP, until the complaints come in from Walmart, then everyone is listening and communicating.
City doesn't care about you or your family, even though they lie to you and tell you they do. You get ZERO holidays off, and no matter how late/long you work, it will never be enough, which then begins to eat into your personal/family time. Every tech I've talked to has said this job is negatively changing their relationships/marriages. City tries to get you to work extra hours of overtime, which you think you would like (because who doesn't like more money) but after your 3rd 80+ hour work week in a row, you begin to really hate the overtime and the constant burnout you'll inevitably be experiencing. You'll always be told your quality and/or amount of work is never good enough. They'll try to institute mandatory overtime and weekends, regardless of whether you worked your 40 hour week or an 80+ hour week. 
CONSTANT work orders will be coming through and piling up, and they expect them to be done fast (nevermind the fact that you can't get parts fast and that sometimes one work order can take hours) even though you're just one person and can't be in 7 places at once. While all this is going on, you've got to somehow fit in preventative maintenance work that stacks up every month. It's like being in the ocean with concrete filled boots and staring at an incoming tidal wave.
City tracks your van so they can try to prove you're doing something wrong, even when you're following every rule and doing your job. They watch you like a hawk, and you always feel like an ant under a magnifying glass, just waiting to get burned. 
I've worked many bad jobs, but I've never experienced such a two-faced, blatantly lying, stressful, demeaning job in my life. They've got a two year contract with Walmart, but instead of trying to go all out and secure a contract resign, they would rather pinch every penny and work their techs into the ground. They try telling you this is a career, not a job when you get hired, but a career doesn't last only 2 years. Almost all techs have either already left, or are working on exit strategies. Good luck getting that contract resigned when all your work force leaves. 
The sad thing is, I really do love this kind of work and the work we do, but City is just such a demeaning and demoralizing place to work. 
My advice to you if you've gotten an offer from City: Either take the job and do the bare minimum so they don't keep overloading you with work because you're actually competent at your job and take their money while you look for something else, or stay far far away. If you made it this far in the review, I commend you. 
Take everything I said as a warning and don't try to just "shake it off" as me just being bitter.

I was in your shoes once. I got a job offer from City, and I was really excited about it. The pay was good, and they told me all these great things at the induction ceremony.
However, the weekend before the Walmart partnership kicked off and we all officially started, I searched for reviews of City. There were many negative reviews, and the only positive ones seemed to be from upper management or someone that was paid to write a good review. 
"I'm sure it's not that bad," I thought, trying to quell the uneasiness brewing in my mind.
Fast forward 6 months later, and it IS that bad. Everything they tried to sell us at the induction ceremony has gone right out the window. It was all lies. Unfortunately, I did drink the Kool-Aid, and was extremely pro-City. At least for the first 2 or so months. Then some things started happening, which I would've noticed earlier if I wasn't blinded by City-induced brainwashing.
Work orders keep rolling in. Store managers always have something negative and disrespectful to say. Parts that we order for same day or next day take a week to arrive if we're lucky, while store managers complain the whole time, and City managers hassle you about your aging work orders, which are totally out of control because you're waiting for the parts team to do their jobs. Walmart associates and customers are CONSTANTLY destroying things, which City likes to describe as "job security," but it's quite frustrating when you're going back to the store for the 3rd time that month and the store manager is accusing you of not knowing what you're doing because whatever it is broke again. There is ZERO communication within the company, from the techs in the trenches all the way up to the VP, until the complaints come in from Walmart, then everyone is listening and communicating.
City doesn't care about you or your family, even though they lie to you and tell you they do. You get ZERO holidays off, and no matter how late/long you work, it will never be enough, which then begins to eat into your personal/family time. Every tech I've talked to has said this job is negatively changing their relationships/marriages. City tries to get you to work extra hours of overtime, which you think you would like (because who doesn't like more money) but after your 3rd 80+ hour work week in a row, you begin to really hate the overtime and the constant burnout you'll inevitably be experiencing. You'll always be told your quality and/or amount of work is never good enough. They'll try to institute mandatory overtime and weekends, regardless of whether you worked your 40 hour week or an 80+ hour week. 
CONSTANT work orders will be coming through and piling up, and they expect them to be done fast (nevermind the fact that you can't get parts fast and that sometimes one work order can take hours) even though you're just one person and can't be in 7 places at once. While all this is going on, you've got to somehow fit in preventative maintenance work that stacks up every month. It's like being in the ocean with concrete filled boots and staring at an incoming tidal wave.
City tracks your van so they can try to prove you're doing something wrong, even when you're following every rule and doing your job. They watch you like a hawk, and you always feel like an ant under a magnifying glass, just waiting to get burned. 
I've worked many bad jobs, but I've never experienced such a two-faced, blatantly lying, stressful, demeaning job in my life. They've got a two year contract with Walmart, but instead of trying to go all out and secure a contract resign, they would rather pinch every penny and work their techs into the ground. They try telling you this is a career, not a job when you get hired, but a career doesn't last only 2 years. Almost all techs have either already left, or are working on exit strategies. Good luck getting that contract resigned when all your work force leaves. 
The sad thing is, I really love this kind of work and the work we do, but City is so demeaning and demoralizing that it ruins my love for it.
My advice to you if you've gotten an offer from City: Either take the job and do the bare minimum so they don't keep overloading you with work because you're actually competent at your job and take their money while you look for something else, or stay far far away. If you made it this far in the review, I commend you. 
Take everything I said as a warning and don't try to just "shake it off" as me just being bitter.

I have waited four years to write this review because I needed time to process what happened to me during my employment with City FM.

I joined the company at the start of the pandemic and, after about a year, was moved back into the office. I accepted a receptionist position on the SEG side and came into that role while dealing with an extremely abusive relationship. I disclosed my situation to leadership because I believed transparency would allow me to receive support or, at minimum, understanding. Instead, I felt completely abandoned.

Despite what was happening in my personal life, I showed up to work every day and did everything I could to succeed. Rather than receiving guidance, I was constantly written up for minor mistakes and felt as though I was being set up to fail. The office culture was deeply cliquish. In the BSU department, there were only a handful of us, and I regularly overheard coworkers mocking me, gossiping about me, and speaking negatively about me behind my back. When I asked for clarification or assistance, I was often met with hostility or completely ignored.

What hurts most is that I repeatedly tried to address these issues through the proper channels. I raised concerns about the bullying, the office politics, and the treatment I was receiving. Nothing changed.

The day I was terminated came shortly after I had been involved in a serious car accident. At the same time, I was attempting to escape an abusive relationship and was receiving mental health services to cope with the trauma. My abuser even contacted the office. Instead of receiving support during one of the darkest periods of my life, I was called into a meeting and presented with a list of minor incidents, including mistakes as insignificant as placing mail in the wrong box.

As a single mother, I begged for help. I asked for support. I asked for understanding. I even asked if I could return to my previous position. I was denied every opportunity. I remember sitting in that office, in tears, looking leadership in the eye and pleading for someone to listen to what was happening and how I was being treated. Nobody did.

No employee should have to endure workplace bullying while simultaneously fighting for their safety at home. No employee should be made the subject of whispers, jokes, and ridicule while they are surviving trauma. No employee should feel completely disposable after showing up and doing their best every single day.

What happened in 2022 still affects me today. The emotional damage caused by that experience did not end when my employment ended. I continue to carry the impact of it years later.

I am sharing this because people deserve to know that a company’s values are revealed not by how it treats employees when everything is going well, but by how it treats them when they are struggling. When I needed compassion, professionalism, and support the most, I found none.

City is an excellent company with a great culture and is growing super fast, so I see a lot of growth opportunities over the next couple of years.  The culture is all about problem solving and getting things done...super fast pace!  As a tech you get to plan your own work day and take care of a certain set of stores.  You own them, which is good, because over time you will get them in a great condition and make your life easier.  

They offer hands on training for the technical staff with trainers who travel to the techs.  They are so committed to our development that they have an online City University where you can take classes to help with your career.   

The management is actually pretty good and they really do care about their employees.  We all know that no management team is going to be perfect, but they seem to try to do their best, they treat us with respect and I feel that they appreciate me.

The home office is an open work environment that leads to a lot of collaboration.  The team seems to be pretty close and the company is always trying to do things to make it fun. 

Since this has been a "start up" of course there have been bumps along the way, but I have been here from the beginning and we are getting better and better every day.  You can't expect a business who had 10 weeks to prepare to go live with 300+ brand new people that all needed to be trained to get everything perfect out of the gate. The important thing is they are always listening to us and putting our ideas into action.    

We have a philosophy that we are One Team Together, and there couldn't be anything that is more true.  The techs in the field have great teamwork as well as the home office people.  Everyone is always willing to lend a hand.  

The company benefits are amazing.  The 401k and PTO (28 days year one) are my favorite. Also, they offer 2 sets of uniforms per year, boots, ipad, iphone, all the tools we need and a company van. 

If you are someone who takes great pride in your work, has a positive outlook and wants to make a difference, then this job is for you. If you  just want to punch the clock and do the bare minimum, then it is definitely not for you.  I'm looking for co-workers that are going to show up each day, deliver excellence, like I do, care about the company and put our customer first.

Decent pay that was not worth the hassle. From day one they seem incredibly excited and motivated to have you. Once the management realizes you are not a sheep they work on pushing you out the door. The dress code is not made clear, there is more focus on how you are dressed as opposed to your intelligence. Mid level management is a pure joke these people should not manage the growth of potatoes. You can see there are a few good eggs possibly two, but the rest are sheep afraid to step up and treat employees like human beings. NO DAYS OFF. They literally advertise 28 paid days off. That is AFTER A FULL YEAR working there. Do not fall for it. They are incredibly unorganized, they work their technicians all day long. They give more work than the techs can handle and value your outside life none at all. Doctor's appointment with a note? That will still count as an occurence. So you can't get sick without getting into trouble. They will give you Christmas "off" while taking a day from your paid time off. Horrible attrition rate due to zero work life balance. One minute late? .25 occurence up to two hours. 2-4 hours .50, 4-6 .75 and a whole missed day is one point. 6 points allowed before termination at 7. The points only reset every SIX months. Again this is just a snapshot of a company that will waste your time. Even with a Monday-Friday schedule you will have to work a weekend at least once a month with different non consecutive days off for that week. Zero stability if one person doesn't like you you are listed as a problem in the sterile environment. Do not let the 16 dollar an hour pay fool you it is not worth the hassle. They offer that money to get people to overlook the tedious procedures and sterile workplace. No jackets on the back of your chair. No pictures allowed on your desk. No assigned desks.

At first, City looks like a great place to work. The pay seems decent, the benefits are nice, and the work doesn't seem all that bad. Once you actually get your foot in the door and realize that everyone above the field tech level has absolutely no clue what they are doing, you'll see this company for the complete mess it really is. You receive ZERO training, even though they built a "state of the art" training center (and we the field techs wonder why we can't get fair compensation). Rules, policies, and procedures are constantly changing on an almost daily basis, which should be enough to prove this company has no clue how to effectively run an organization and that they bit off way more than they could chew. The refrigeration techs are run ragged, and are not compensated nearly enough for the headache they deal with. The MSTs are constantly getting more and more work added to their workload, and policies on what they do/do not fix changes almost daily. MSTs are also required to know everything about every trade and be experts in every trade, even with zero training, and the moment they don't, store managers think the techs have no clue what they're doing, and the higher ups at City want an explanation why XYZ can't be fixed, even though they know they provided less than zero training. The workload increases, but pay stays the same. Don't be lured in by the promise of consistent hours, overtime, and benefits. You can go do one single trade at any other company and make the same or more money.

Just remember: City and Walmart DO NOT care about you. You're nothing but a number to them. 

I have worked in the workforce for over 30 years. This company is by far the worst I have ever worked for. I worked for a company for over 10 years and left because the recruiters for CFM offered me more money. The worst career move that I have ever made. Once I was turned out on my own, I had absolutely no support. My supervisor was of no help what-so-ever. More times than not, he would not respond to questions. He would however be quick to call when he wanted to send me in a different direction than where I was headed or to scream when he thought I wasn't being fast enough between locations. I was given job locations of over 3 hours from my home. When I voiced my concern about my safety because of the long drives after hours, I was told "too bad" from the Regional Facilities Manager and that it was the nature of the job. When I accepted the job, I did not agree to take on work over 150 miles from my home, especially after hours. I was working between 55 and 90 hours a week with no time for myself or family. If you are considering working for this company as a field tech, DO NOT DO IT!!! Maybe other positions are better, I don't know. But this company does not care about the well being and safety of its employees. Get the work done, and just keep going, and going, and going, and going, and don't question anything. That is how you will feel. I read the reviews before I accepted the job and questioned how it could be that bad. Trust me, it is, and even worst than anyone can put into words. I can go on, and on describing bad experiences with CFM but I have already given this company too much of my time. I surprised myself by working for them for 4 months before I quit. 

I have been employed at this company for about a year now and it’s an absolute miracle I have stayed this long. Working for this company is mentally and emotionally exhausting. Physically you are worked in the ground. I almost wrecked my van driving at night recently after a long on call assignment. We also lack technician resources as well. We don’t have a technician dashboard so we can see our numbers or our geotag scoring. We don’t have access to the danfoss systems that run our racks because they don’t trust us in the field to use it but will allow someone who is clueless every access to it. So when you’re in a store or on call you can’t log into it. You physically have to go to the motor room and run back and forth over and over while making adjustments etc. You can’t procure the parts you need in a timely fashion due to stringent screening processes to get what you need only after multiple people have approved it. It’s is 100 times harder being a technician at City than other companies due to their ridiculous policies and processes. This company pays well and has decent benefits but comes up way short in a lot of other important areas. HR and other management will not do anything to change anything. It’s either take it or leave it. This could be a great company but no one is listening to us in the field. It is what it is I guess. I can’t recommend this company to anyone at this time. Hopefully some day I can.



Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Refrigeration technician 8 salaries reported	$35.73 per hour
Customer service representative 4 salaries reported	$18.75 per hour
Technician 11 salaries reported	$27.42 per hour
Supervisor 2 salaries reported	$50.00 per hour
Service administrator 3 salaries reported	$17.50 per hour

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