associate manager

store manager

maintenance technician

maintenance person

facilities manager

Life Storage

As somebody who’s needs to keep busy at work, it was not the job for me. While the work load is not hard, I found the inconsistency of work flow made myself to be a glorified janitor with a mess of downtime and a whole lot of room to be absent minded. Considering the location I was at wasn’t busy at all, if and when I did get a customer I found myself, often, unequipped to deal with their unique situations simply for the fact that you are not trained on every scenario that can be thrown your way causing a delay in the rental process, frequent calls to my manager on his off days, bothering other stores with ill equipped employees to assist me, or making frequent mistakes based on policy and procedures that’s not covered by training or the operations manual (8 months in). While they are very understanding when it came to making mistakes or leaving things for the manager to take care of, sometimes you don’t talk to/see the manager for weeks and the area manager didn’t know nearly as much as the manager. It just didn’t seem professional of/to me to make a customer wait on a response and, in my opinion, ultimately cost the business it’s business. Ideally having both the manager and I there for the first year would have been the best training but the workload is simply not big enough nor was it possible giving the fact he had to frequent other locations due to lack of employees. Overall if you are fine with learning as you go, cleaning the whole facility day in and day out and having a lot of downtime while getting paid for it then this is the job for you. Being an introvert with a lack of a social life, going to work to sit for roughly 8 hours and then coming home to relatively the same situation is not ideal for me. Also unless you’re willing to transfer or your higher ups happen to leave there is a substantial lack of growth within the company.

Let me preface by saying that this isn't a bad gig. It has pros and cons like every job. On the plus side, your hourly wage is higher than most, if not all, in the industry. Daily tasks are really quite relaxed, even accounting for the cleaning. I also found my area manager to be very accomodating to family issues and needs for time off, but that is not a guarantee. The cons are mostly found at the corporate level. Nobody there seems to know what they're doing and have a seeming inability to operate on the same page. Coordinating anything involving more than two people is a nightmare. Technologically they are stuck in the 90s. We are unable to receive emails from customers, almost as if by design to make sure they have to take our insurance. Speaking of insurance, sales are pushed heavily but are not part of our already lacking bonus structure. Bonuses are paid only quarterly and you make very little. Other storage facilities I have managed paid bonuses monthly and at far higher rates, which more than made up for the lower hourly wages. At the end of the day people actually make less. You will never make more than a 2.5-3% yearly raise and on this last raise oir insurance was increased, eating up 32% of the raise. Once you have gone from associate manager to store manager, you're done. It is exceedingly rare for them to hire area managers from within the company so the only people with long tenures are those who have on-site apartments that they were grandfathered in on after an acquisition. Perfectly nice apartments sit empty because they won't allow new employees to rent them. Turnover is an issue that leads to understaffing. I recently worked 4 months straight with only the paid holidays off because there was no-one to cover. There is also a lot of nepotism, favoritism, and project managers give crony contracts that regularly cost more than necessary.

I worked a year and a half at Life storage 2018-2019. I balanced school and work well, mostly due to the accommodations of my manager, who was very understanding. As an associate manager, I counted money and handled sales of spaces to customers, as well as payments and customer service. Once a week I made long call lists, or sent letters to overdue customers. I walked the facility twice a day and would clean any messes I saw, though we did have a cleaning person. Other than that, everything ran itself, and I had many hours of downtime, which I was expected to fill myself. My manager and I were the only two employees on site, and switched off days, so I was usually alone. This could be both freeing, and a little depressing, based on how much I had to occupy myself with.

The company prefers to promote from within, but I was never searching for promotion, so I can't say how easy/hard it is. In fact, everything above talking to repairmen was considered "out of my pay grade", so my boss handled most of that. It was simultaneously the most, and least, power I've ever held in a job. Asbury Park is a nicer location than say, Farmingdale, as you are not isolated and can step out to get necessities from the nearby stores if necessary. The trade-off is the brand of clientele, who were often, usually through no fault of their own, down on their luck, broke, or generally desperate. I got some abrasive customers, no one dangerous, though once I had to order a drunk, pant-less man out of the facility, and obviously evict him.

Overall, Lifestorage was an alright job for a struggling college student, and while I won't look back on it with longing, I'm happy for the help it gave me. Though I do feel I got out just in time, as the overall company was going through changes designed to become more "corporate" (at the expense of customers), and I was uncomfortable with that.

This company seemed great when I started. I thought I’d have the tools to advance. Instead, I was poorly trained, left on my own on auction days after I had repetitively asked for help, worked full time hours as a part time employee (and only employee) for a few months (with no end in sight). Management is awful. There is little communication. Everything is “Were a team! Work as a team!” But it was really stores calling each other, frantically trying to figure out who knows what procedures that you don’t do you don’t mess up daily work.

It is also unbelievably unprofessional to find out from coworkers if you got a job or not, when they should even know you applied. It’s also disrespectful to force your employees to work every day and not compensate them for the time they put in. Not hiring people as soon as the job is vacant puts uneccesary stress on the workers you have and let’s the quality of work decline. It also shows your employees you don’t care about them or the time they’re dedicating to the company.

I worked holidays and weekends and had no one to help me. It’s cheap and let’s the people who work for you know that they are just money to you. By the end I was honestly afraid something would happen to me on the property and no one would know for days. 

I hate to present problems and no solutions, but Indont know any solutions to this. Maybe a higher standard of training. Two weeks on a computer isn’t training. And when a manager leaves, the employees need to be trained on how to run a store as you’re actively working on the hiring process. Keep your promises. Talk to your employees.

I’ve worked for the company for a little over a year, it truly is a great company. Hours are long but the hour lunch is a plus. They recently added to the benefits that they give to field level employees. I worked in their Milford location and my boss was great he treated you like family and my area manager was great as well. They truly do promote from within as my boss was just promoted to area manager. The only reason why I left was because I got a job with the state and I couldn’t pass that up. Otherwise I definitely would’ve stayed. They offer bonuses for meeting quarterly goals. Two weeks paid vacation which is prorated for your first year and sick time. They use to have most holidays off but no switched to working four hours which isn’t bad when they give you a total of 12 hrs paid for full time and 8 total hours for part time. There’s some traveling involved but for the most part unlike most storage companies you’re at the store you were hired for. Most of the complaints you will read about this company are based off of pay which is determined on the size of the facility you work out, which happens to be my only complaint with this company. I understand a bigger property should equal a hire pay but at the same time a store manager at a smaller property should not be making less then an assistant manager at a larger property. Overall I do recommend this job as it is truly a great company and it is bitter sweet that I am leaving it.

This is not the hardest job in the world. You'll be doing a wide variety of office and outside work keeping the facility up, you'll have less of a typical retail experience but not completely absent. It's an ok job. There's not much in the way of advancement. Once you reach store manager that's basically it. They don't seem to like hiring area managers from within the company. Pay is below average and they do everything in their power to try to not acknowledge that they barely pay their employees anything. Bonus structure is decent and obtainable however. Management tries to pretend that we enjoy their newsletters and empty gestures of thanks in lieu of raises. We do not. Company has literally doubled in worth over the last 2 years and our raises are in the low double digits of cents. After inflation we basically took a 5% paycut. 

Day to day is mostly left to you on how to handle. They have exacting policies you have to follow, but don't micromanage your time. 2 weeks paid vacation, 6 days sick leave, not good, not terrible. Hours are set with a consistent schedule for the most part. Get off at 6pm each day and usually no need for any time of overtime.  Job security is decent as long as you can do a decent job. Insurance is decent, but expensive. You get half an hour unpaid lunch, but don't be surprised if they call asking where your at if a customer shows up at the office. It's very much one of those take your lunch, but don't you dare not be there to help a customer type places. 

The day to day basis was being an assistant manager. It was always cleaning, lock checks and more. The management went through a merger and now is with Extraspace storage. I’m mixed on all this because of day to day basis now became going to facility to other facility and that are far from home and hard to get too. Communication isn’t really there with ASM’s and SM’s due to company’s merging. It’s hard enough that going to place to place was very consuming but work life was ok for the most part the DM was communicative at times due to the merger I get that things get hectic but being sent to facilities not knowing what there idea is or where parking is very difficult in some locations it isn’t very safe to leave your car outside due to the area and leaving till 7pm really doesn’t help me ease my worries about my car or anyone’s car. It was definitely worrisome and very frustrating for the time. Life storage was a great company before the merger and loved the work life and team I had because it made things more organized and manageable due to us not going to place to place.
The LifeStorage and Extraspace merger is very rough and not easy for people that are new due to two completely different companies,rules and work culture and environment. This company has a great potential but I would sure hope that they would go that extra mile for the ASM’s and SM’s

This company is one of the saddest displays of Self Storage business struggles I've ever seen. The only worry is about the budget. The problem is, if this company is so worried about money, just say that. There are accounting departments, but yet, the store managers and associates are supposed to keep track of the budget every month. There's one Maintenance worker for a set amount of stores, the stores are understaffed, just barely having one person working for days on end, associates are supposed to do the managers job for the pay of an associate, they never have the Operations Manual updated, customers get emotionally abusive and get in your face, there is no support, the Area Manager barely is around, the managers who have been there for years are stuck in their ways and older, there's never positive moments, everything's stressful and disorganized, your benefits literally take almost $200 from your paycheck every paycheck (and that's IN ADDITION to your regular taxes coming out. Another $200), and the simple fact this company went from Mom and Pop, thinking it could become more, without proper execution, is quite sad. Honestly, you're worth more than just taking this job in desperation. Convenient Stores weren't ever this bad, and that's saying something.  

A typical day of work entails taking the brunt of corporate decisions to put profits over customer satisfaction. Customers have no way to contact corporate. Management at the home office is overall arrogant, unconcerned with customers or employees, and interested only in short-term gains at employee and customer expense. Clearly, long-term company health is also of no concern. The home office wants store employees to justify absurd rent raises for existing customers, often to a rate that is higher than what new customers are paying. Store employees are also expected to find reasons to deny insurance claims which are extremely common for things like roof leaks, rats, and mold damage, among other things, They tell store employees to look for things like grocery store boxes so that the company can say to customers with an insurance claim that they violated their rental agreement, even if it is completely unrelated. The company keeps scaling back employee benefits and hires new people for more money than long-term employees are making. The ability to promote is almost non-existent and there is no loyalty. The only benefit is that there is little oversight, but it does not lend to a well run company.

My day start at 830 am ( half hour before open) I check cash draw and petty cash to make sure we have what is needed for this location. I run a customer paid report and make sure i remove any over lock we may have put incase customer didn't pay. I match bank deposit from night before, check email and voice mails from customers.Once 9am comes I call back customer who left voicemail and answer any question they have. Open all doors and make sure gates are operational. 
   I learn how the storage business has many law and lots of detail documents and all it take to make  sure customers items are stored safely and with clement control for better maintenance of the stored items. 
   Management in this location is straightforward , they give you your daily goals and make sure you meet them. My co-workers are great and we help out each other out with out hesitation.
   Hardest part of the job is many time you see customers that can't left or pull  items out of their cars/ trucks that they are storing and by company policy I can not help them with their property, its very hard telling a customer that i can't help them due to policy.
    I love customers interaction and helping them with their needs. I enjoy listening to them and how the paint a picture to better help them. Building a report with them. Just knowing my personality can make a difference in a customer outlook on a company

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Associate manager 598 salaries reported	$15.98 per hour
Store manager 1 salary reported	$12.75 per hour
Maintenance technician 13 salaries reported	$23.00 per hour
Maintenance person 14 salaries reported	$14.89 per hour
Facilities manager 5 salaries reported	$80,500 per year

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