inventory associate

inventory manager

recruiting specialist

district manager

merchandising associate

RGIS Inventory Specialists

The work itself isn’t particularly hard, but as usual the new people get all the “lousy” jobs, which isn’t really a surprise, and its not really a big deal, every employer does this, the problem is; at RGIS, the amount of work they schedule you for is directly tied to your productivity. If you can get them to talk to you at all about this, they will tell you that your schedule depends on your availability, this is a load of manure, I’m available 24-7 and still get less than 10 hours a week. It doesn’t matter who you try to talk to in management; they absolutely positively will NOT tell you anything about what's going on with the scheduling. Nobody will tell you everything, but if you talk to enough employees that have been around awhile, you’ll start to piece it all together and there is no way for somebody new to really get a reasonable chance to have decent productivity, and they make sure of it.

 What typically happens is, you go into a store to count merchandise, and initially everything seems like its going to be fair, but here’s what happens. You arrive at the store with several other people, they pass out the equipment used to count the merchandise, a hand held computer, and a laser scanner, except that some people already have equipment, so essentially the new guys are getting the left overs, again no surprise. This equipment almost never works properly, they have to have close to a 100% failure rate, when it comes to the equipment working properly from the start,(or at least it hasn’t happened yet for me). Typically it can take anywhere from about 20 minutes to over an hour to correct the issues, during this time you’re on the clock and have zero productivity, this is NOT taken into consideration when your overall productivity is calculated, in fact, it’s held against you as if somehow it was your fault. When they finally get the equipment working, being the new guy, you’ll be one of the last people to start counting the store’s inventory. While you and whoever’s supposed to be in charge jacks around with the equipment, other people are already counting inventory and are moving through the store from area to area. When they finally resolve the issues with the equipment you’re sent out to start counting, you can see the areas that have already been counted, so you start heading to the location where the others are currently in, when you arrive a supervisor or flow leader sends you back to areas that were supposed have already been counted, usually tables of folded clothes, messy clearance racks, accessories, and other areas that other people “forgot”, this doesn’t seem like a big deal until it keeps happening over and over and over. Instead of sending the people that “forgot” these areas back to count them, they pawn it off on the new guys.  (Either the supervisors and flow leaders are incredibly stupid, or they’re complete cowards).  These areas were NOT forgotten, they were deliberately skipped because these areas are much harder to count and will hurt their production. If you mention this they will tell  “it shouldn’t matter, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting your numbers” or “ you’re new, they won’t hold it against you” both are flat out lies. When you see people skipping certain areas, its for a reason, and memory loss isn’t it.  If they send you on a break they won’t let you “log out” so your production keeps dropping while you’re not counting. They set up a local wireless network within the store and the hand held computer you’re using relies on this network to transmit data to a central computer, usually a laptop; they can’t make this work properly for anything and again this hurts your production. As a result of all this you’re production will be very low, so they start taking you off the schedule to help you improve your productivity (what? This will help how?). If you get assigned to a grocery store, being new, you will likely be sent to the frozen food to count bags of frozen vegetables, or some other area where it will be difficult if not impossible to get the numbers you need, being new you won’t get a chance at working in any area where you could possibly hit the numbers they want to see. They know what they’re doing and they’ll do what ever it take to keep the productivity of certain people high and the productivity of certain other people low. This is probably why everybody has either been working there for at  least a few years or not more than several weeks, nothing in between

RGIS itself doesn’t sound like a bad company as a whole, but locally in West Palm Beach Florida, district 124, it seems to have some very serious issues. The communication with the employees is very poor. If you call them they won’t answer, if you leave a message, they won’t return your calls, if you email, they won’t respond, but for some reason they get upset if the tables are turned.  I hate to say this in this day and time, but there is almost certainly some type of discrimination or favoritism going on. Don’t get me wrong, they have plenty of good people working for them, but there is something seriously wrong with the way this district in West Palm Beach is being managed.

My time at RGIS has definitely been an... interesting one. I have a lot to say about it. The best part about the job is that you can set your availability to pretty much what ever. Although they will question some of your motives if you change it later on. The community is awesome amongst the employees. We are all in the shitstorm together and you form great friendships for that reason.  At least in my district, the job security is fantastic. You have a pretty large margin of error before they will threaten your job. The pay (at least in my district) is pretty good.

     The worst part about the job is the hours and the management. The hours are inconsistent. One day you may have go to work by 4 AM and end up working 12 + hours (beware of harmon's weekend. you do that 4 or 5 days in a row. they won't warn you about it.) other stores you only count for a couple of hours. Sometimes you go into a store expecting 6 hours and end up with 10. If you have night stores there are some that will go from the evening or late afternoon until 6 AM. It's a part time job, but sometimes it feels like an overtime job which is especially the case during harmon's and if you are available for day and night shifts. Don't do that by the way. they will run you absolutely ragged. All I saw was work and the back of my eyelids for about a year. Because it's officially part time, they don't give you benefits which really sucks.... I mean, you CAN get insurance, but it's garbage. The management is pretty bad. I feel I am quite lucky in my district. The DM's are nasty, mean, hardend, and cold. (although you can't exactly blame them, A lot of things about the company are just extremely taxing.) But the moral is generally pretty low because of this. If you go help in stores that you are not schedule for, and if you do this semi frequently, they will consider that a change in your availability and will start scheduling you all the time. So they will really take as much from you as you can, they won't stop until you put your foot down. (which luckily, in my district anyway, that is possible.) We travel pretty frequently. My district does some travel runs while there is an entire district dedicated to traveling. Being out of town for a week at a time. My district mostly just does small travel runs. There are a few overnights, and we will sometimes travel 3 or 4 hours away, count a store, and drive back in one day. Travel pay is minimum wage after the first hour and only if you ride in the company van, or drive other's in your car. My district a stricter about things like talking. They want you to be silent, and to count. In my district we are not allowed to share isle sides, so you are alone most of the day, counting merchandise, with nothing but numbers and your own thoughts running through your head. I've seen it break people. They can be stingy about breaks and lunches. I've seen shifts where people have worked 12 hours with two 10 minute breaks but zero lunch. Sometimes I feel like we are seen as less than human. Androids who's only need and purpose is to count. 

There is not much room for growth in this company. You have 4 ranks of counters (well five but one of them is near impossible to reach, only one of my coworkers has gotten it). It's depends on the average speed you count. the higher ranked you are, the more you get payed. it goes by an average, hitting certain numbers for a certain percentage of stores determines you rank. The average pieces per hour that you count can somewhat be based on the luck of the draw though. You can run a stores (basically supervisor of the inventory), which gives you a dollar or two higher than what you get payed by your rank. Managerial positions are extremely few and far between. There has been 1 managerial position that opened the entire 3 years I've been working there. They get paid salary though, which means a free for all with the hours. They will run you into the ground with no mercy. The new manager we have has been there less than a year, he's a really good manager, but he is already stepping down. Being a manager is not for the faint of heart. 

Over all this job is probably best for people like students or as a second job. It can very much run you down, but there is a lot of freedom that you can't get with other jobs. DM's and managers are completely worn out so they can be cold and even cruel at times. They can take advantage of you but they can also work really well with your needs... and the hours can be insane.

I worked on a two week schedule during which I was assigned to several different stores around Nassau County, and sometimes in Suffolk. 

Once I'd get to the assigned location I would clock in and the Supervisor for the store would tell me where to begin. Generally I would work with a team of between 5 and 15 co-workers, depending on the size of the place, doing the store's inventory. My job basically amounted to scanning the merchandise with a portable scanner that recorded the totals of a given section before being transmitted to the Supervisor's computer which kept track of it all. There were two ways to do the job, which depended on what kind of merchandise I needed to scan: for clothing items I had to scan each piece individually. For other items, such as food or electronics, I could scan the products in bulk. That is, I would scan one item and enter the quantity of that particular item. The difference with clothes was that it was very common for differently priced items to be mixed in with each other, so counting each piece individually is the only way to accurately tell what products the store had in stock. Accuracy and speed were the most important things when it came to doing this job well. 

I can't really say I learned much doing this job, other than what was necessary to learn to use the portable scanner. But there was something of an intellectual reward in how much mental math was required of you to do this job well. It helped keep my mind sharp during school breaks. 

The Management was pretty good. They could be easy to work with if you did your job well, and notified them if you were going to miss work or if you were going to be late. 

There's not much to say about my co-workers. I was never on bad terms with any of them, but I didn't see the same people often enough from store to store really build up a rapport with them. The only friend I made there was someone I had already met by coincidence. 

The hardest part of the job, for me personally, was actually getting to the job sites. The town I live in is pretty much in the dead center of the island, so I would always be on time for work if leaving from home. But I often needed to travel to these stores from where I was going to college at the time, and only about half the time the store would be close enough that I could get there in time. I hate to make excuses for myself, but during the last year there was a period of time where I didn't have a cell phone, so I wasn't able to notify the Supervisors of the store when I was running late, for which they weren't very understanding. This eventually got me in a lot of trouble and likely contributed to them laying me off at the start of their "off season." 

The sad thing is that I don't go to that college any more. So, ironically, just when it would've been easier than ever to get to work on time, I don't work there anymore.

Don't work for RGIS unless you have to!! 

One example of typical scheduling for me (I'm a "top gun"):  One day they will schedule me from 8pm-2am and the following day they will expect me to work from 6am-1pm go home from there and sleep for 3 hours then head to another inventory for 2 hours.. You will have no life outside of work during the busy season. During the slow season from October-January you won't be scheduled for more than 10-15 hours per month. 

 Also there are many days where I'm expected to drive 45+ miles (one way) for 2 hours of work. After gas I would profit less than $5...  

They cram as many employees as they can in their company vans and force you to go all over the state like this.. Some commutes are 5+ hours.

In Wisconsin where I work they aren't required to pay you for the first hour of travel to a scheduled inventory and the first hour home. So basically there will be 2 hours of being crammed into a company van that you will not get paid for... A lot of times the employee driving the company vehicle will not have slept for 20+ hours. Dangerous and scary

After you achieve the top gun rank you will never get a raise no matter how hard you work. I'm a top gun and have been at the same pay rate for 6 years and I know top guns that have been at the same pay rate for 20+ years.. It's not because they/we don't work hard it's because the top pay rate for our district is $13 an hour for inventory associates. You will never make more than that working for rgis unless you become an area manager.

As an inventory counter you will be required to crawl around on your knees and climb up and down ladders for the entire inventory session. My knees will never be the same.. If you do take a job I would suggest you buy a good set of knee pads and find a good chiropractor that doesn't charge much because insurance won't cover all the work you will need.

Schedules are supposed to be emailed to you 2 weeks in advance but rarely are.. Schedules will also change last minute with no warning. I can't tell you how many times I was scheduled to have a weekend off and the Friday before they email me a new schedule saying I work both days. They never ask if you can work. They will just add it on and expect you to be there. It doesn't matter if you had plans or not they don't care. 

You will not get a break unless the area manager feels the inventory will last more than 7 hours which you won't know until your about 5 hours into you shift. Breaks are not paid. 

Health insurance offered is minimal Obamacare and covers nothing unless you are in a serious accident.

The only way working for RGIS is worth it is if you live in a big city where there is no required travel in company vehicles and your doing it to earn extra cash to supplement current income.

A typical day at work here is easy from a mental standpoint, but takes a tole on your body as it is very physical and exhausting work. I am sick of almost, literally breaking my back for a company that just doesn't seem to care about the health and well-being of its employees.

I learned how to count product using a 10-key computer, which does indeed, make the job much less tedious than having to count and record product quantities with a pencil and paper like the old days. 
Unfortunately, I also learned that, there is much favortism within this company and those that are truly quick and accurate auditors, make less many than those who are simply, rushing through and even making up false quantities to get through the count and leave ASAP!

I literally take a hit in pay because of lazy people that don't want to do their job correctly because my work ethic means more to me than making the money I deserve, however, it is becoming too much and I am no longer able to live my lifestyle with this little and inconsistent pay! 

The management here is not great as I and my coworkers, are constantly dealing with issues such as; not having adequate company transportation to inventory sites and sometimes, not being able to access vehicles or the office itself, as the managers do not provide us with keys and sometimes are nowhere in the vicinity to enable us access and so we are forced to wait making us look bad to our customers and significantly affecting company morale and coworker's attitudes. 

The workplace culture is sadly, all about favortism and politics. Basically, if a manager likes you as a person, not due to job performance, solely based on how you look or interact with them personally, odds are, you will get the best and easiest products to count and even if you don't count them all correctly, someone like me has to stay after a count is complete and correct all mistakes costing me my potential for a rank advancement and a raise! 

The hardest part of this job is having to swallow my pride and watch as those who truly don't deserve it, receive the higher pay and appreciation from supervisors and also rank advancement for bragging rights, while I am stuck at my same rank with the lower pay rate and doing all the actual work! 

The most enjoyable part of this job is the fact that, sometimes I get to travel to nearby states and get away from home for a bit so it is a little bit like a vacation, Unfortunately, it doesn't last long due to the requirements and demands of the job.

Pros:
This job provides an opportunity to travel to places you’ve never been to before. In addition to traveling all over Colorado, I’ve been to Wyoming, Utah and South Dakota, where I was able to see Mt Rushmore! Co-workers in my district and zone have traveled to Washington, Minnesota, Mississippi, and even Hawaii!

Pay was decent, with travel-time being minimum wage (unless you’re a driver) and store-time anywhere from $16-$21/hour. If you’re a Supervisor, you have the potential to earn bonuses with certain stores.

Although there’s repetition with the auditing aspect, the setting changes which makes this job less mundane. You can go from a grocery store, to a high end fashion boutique, to a hospital setting—all in one week!

Room for growth. You are in charge of how much you earn based upon how efficient you become. Opportunities to become a Supervisor are easy to obtain if you show your potential.

Cons:
No set schedule. Each contract is different; some stores like to be closed so you’d start a 6 hour job at 9 pm, while other stores would prefer before business hours, starting a job around 4 or 5 am. It varies.

Time away from family. If I were single, with no kids, I’d absolutely ADORE this job. Being away for 14 hours a day at times, wore me down as a mom. But the more you can travel: the better your paycheck. Please note: my district was a traveling district; we do not reside in a big city. They consider the first and last hour your traveling anywhere to be “local”, thus you do not get paid. The location of my district made traveling a huge monetized incentive.

Pack lots of food, snacks, and beverages! You spend much of your income on these while you’re on the road and at jobs. 

If you decide to become a Supervisor, this job can add a lot of undue stress! Pressure rides on your back and a 6 hour job can easily turn into a 12+ hour job. Customers can be difficult to work with because their job/bonus is potentially based on the findings of your inventory.

MANAGEMENT. I liked my district manager, and she did her best towards the end of my career there. But most of the higher-ups were shady, incompetent, and unprofessional. One DM asked me to run a store with over a million pieces. He provided insufficient equipment, promised the store manager there would be a certain amount of people, under-fulfilled his agreement by half, then disappeared, ignoring my calls as well as the store managers (who was PO’d by the way. It took him a few hours to stop treating me badly once he realized the situation.) I found out later that the DM lived within miles of our location. And this behavior is a regular occurrence! If you decide to become a Supervisor, tread carefully. 

First off, this job has a very unsteady schedule. You work as an inventory specialist and you take drives to store as a crew at very early hours of the morning to begin taking inventory before each store opens, usually piling the crew into vans posted at designated pickup spots. You don't work the same store twice Ina year and every store starts at different times. This can be kind of interesting but the under stimulating monotony of the inventorying itself kinda cancels out the joy. Their management is hectic and overall atrocious, I know I personally almost got sent to the wrong job sites because they were so unorganized, not to mention the management talks down to the staff and make no effort to personally know their staff. I was stopped at work and criticized by the branch manager for which hand I wore my device on while working before he even knew my dominant hand, for example. They have a system In place to pay for travel, they pay minimum wage for the time spent in the van, yet you get no pay for the 1st and last hours of travel. Considering maybe half your shifts are less than an hour commute each week, not to mention most stores take less than 4 or 5 hours, you aren't making hardly anything from travel pay, which puts almost all employees in the position of having to pull multiple doubles each week to make bills. Oh, and when you're hired on, you're asked if you can work double shifts, and regardless of your answer, you will have doubles pop up in your schedule. Another thing is they do very little to provide for their employees needs. If you work a double you can be with the crew for up to 10-12 hours with two 10 min breaks and a lunch. In that time, you are at the mercy of the driver if you stop for food, water, or restroom, which itself isn't awful. I never had a driver refuse me a stop, but when you're pinched for money by your employer and dragged on the road for half a day, if you didn't pack your lunch you're eating fast food every day. We couldn't afford lunch for a lot of days, our kinder coworkers would occasionally share. As a last note, the folks who work there have really low morale, some are kind and others aren't, and it gets worse as the ladder climbs. I would not recommend working here under any circumstances.

This is by far the absolute worst job I have ever worked. Interview and "training" happened on the same day which wasn't too terrible. You're pretty much guaranteed the job as long as you show up to the interview.

The real problem started on the first day on the job. The supervisor didn't seem too thrilled to have me. In fact, she rolled her eyes when I told her I was new to the job and just handed me the scanner I would be using to take inventory. Little to no effort was made to actually show me the commands or how to fix errors (things that I SHOULD HAVE been taught on the day "training" occurred, but wasn't) so I guess I couldn't blame her there. I pretty much had to learn the commands from other employees and supervisors who actually made an effort to be nice (the latter being few and far between).

There was no typical day at work. Some "events" as they call it would last anywhere from 3-4 hours and others would last anywhere from 4-6 hours. There just wasn't any rhyme or rhythm to their scheduling. You are expected to drive or carpool pretty much anywhere in Texas that they need you, regardless of how far it is and you'd never know how long you are needed. Some people were allowed to leave an hour into the job and then the supervisors would get angry with whoever was still there and complain about how long we were taking, how areas weren't being properly counted, or just generally belittling you in front of clients. ALL of which could be avoided by properly training recruits on how to actually use the commands on the machines and gee, I don't know...NOT CONTINUOUSLY ALLOWING PEOPLE TO LEAVE WHEN THERE ARE LARGE AREAS TO BE COUNTED AND ARE ON A TIME CRUNCH. Just a thought though, right?

Also, forget about eating lunch. Remember I said there no way of knowing how long an event will take until you actually get there? If your supervisor that day is nice enough to let you take a small break, you may get a chance to grab a quick bite to eat. Otherwise don't count on it. 

Honestly I could keep going on and on about this terrible company. Most if not all the supervisors are rude, the people working in the offices are rude, etc. If you're just desperate to work and don't mind an erratic schedule whilst also being disrespected/belittled on a regular basis then by all means RUN, DON'T WALK. Otherwise, you're better off avoiding the headache that is RGIS.

As a project manager, way too many responsibilities to list.  Most projects consisted of 10+hrs in a 4 day work week in addition to two days travel to and from locations out of state.  Daily responsibilities included managing and training merchandisers, temp laborers and store employees.  Unloading, building, setting and dressing steel fixtures according to floor plan measurements. Building cosmetic walls and merchandising product. Keeping track of budget and expenses.  Following a project timeing and action plan and reporting to upper level management at the end of the day of progress or setbacks.  Installing light fixtures, signage and wall graphics.  Scheduling trash removal pickups and vendor arrivals.  
I learned how to work in a fast paced environment and that it was key to hold everyone accountable for his or her task.  I also learned the importance of how to communicate effectively, proficiently and address issues in a timely manner.  Most coworkers are new on every job location, so you train new people all of the time.  You are never given the same assistant, so it's necessary to train each one you are given on how best to support you while working together.
The hardest part of the job is receiving support from RGIS when its necessary and crucial to replace workers (team members, assistants,etc.) due to poor job performance.  You don't receive the best help possible, just make due with what you have.  From my stand point, this was never cost effective for the company or project itself.  This position is not for the weak or meek.  There are many stressful situations you deal with on your own and very little support from upper management of the company.
I loved everything about my job, but hated the undisclosed responsibilities you were given at the last minute, on a regular basis and without fair compensation.  As the company modifies itself in the business world, it requires you to give more while offering lesser pay or no position with the company at all.

Management is so corrupt in RGIS that DMs, AMs, AND regional Managers lie to their superiors repeatedly placing issues at the feet of either the auditors or the supervisors running events, when issues lie inside poor choices made by management in the scheduling process for events.   Instead of taking recommendations from those in the feild, management ignored and ridiculed the supervisors. 
I had an auditor working for me who would constantly clock out and leave during my events and instead of correcting/terminating the auditor for insubordination, due to the fact RGIS couldn't afford to loose employees, i demoted from supervisor back to auditor.   Someone who refused to work for me caused me to be demoted, and now today has my position.   There is EXTREME favoritism in each district, that unless you spend time in the feild, you wont ever see it, so management is unaware or disbelieving.   They wont investigate any of their own for fraud.   The conditions the auditors have to work in are EXTREMELY poor.   Companies contract RGIS to inventory but dont prep backrooms that are unair conditioned, extremely dusty and compacy.   RGIS will fit as many people as tightly as possible in warehouses and backrooms to get the job down as fast as possible, disregarding it being 120 degrees in backroom before shoving 50 people in the tight space to count for 5-8 hours.  Most Mall stores that are counted are at night, and some of these places do not have bathrooms available for RGIS auditors to use.   RGIS does nothing to compensate this.   RGIS Flex Schedules are.... Once your at the event and clocked in, it doesnt matter what time it is, your here until we finish the audit or you can look for another job.   I can go on and on about RGIS, there was nothing positive in the 5 years I worked for them, or in either location.   Actually it seemed Daytona Beach was a worse location than Glen Burnie.   Maybe because I worked and was treated like a slave in Glen Burnie that I didnt notice all these little things.   OH and RGIS will send you on a travel event 3 hours away, you get paid 4 hours out of the entire 6 hour trip at state minimum wage, only for you to maybe work 2 full hours at your normal wage before that district sends you home.  SO RGIS monopolizes 8 hours and pays for 6 and most is at minimum wage.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Inventory associate 66 salaries reported	$19.30 per hour
Inventory manager 58 salaries reported	$20.50 per hour
Recruiting specialist 11 salaries reported	$51,500 per year
District manager 16 salaries reported	$70,000 per year
Merchandising associate 22 salaries reported	$17.00 per hour

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