merchandiser

order picker

truck driver

customer representative

laborer

Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling

I started with Coca-cola as an account manager (They just eliminated this position) and about 2 months in, I quickly realized why they have such a bad reputation and why so many long time employees want to quit. The only benefit to this job was a monday through friday schedule. other then that, every day was a stress filled nightmare that included...

1. Having to see anywhere between 12-16 stores with no overtime.
2. Serving as the punching bag/Getting yelled at by store managers/owners at 95% of your stops due to Reyes brothers policies and lack of service. Reyes is hated by most acccounts. Anytime my work phone rang, i knew it would be a unhappy or upset manager/owner with a complaint that i would have no solution for. Overall on my route i was in charge of about 60+ Stores.
3. Unrealistic expectations on a weekly basis. Example: We would have shippers and displays added each week to our pallets of product that was not selling and be forced to get it into stores and post pictures as proof. Begging store managers/owners to set up displays to not get written up was miserable and stressful.
4. Complete lack of merchandising support. No accountability for the overworked and burnt out merchandisers. Getting multiple calls a day from managers upset about poor merchandising service while trying to finish your already overloaded day was a nightmare.
5. Reyes brothers made the decision to not give account managers hazard pay during the pandemic because we were "managers" and not front line workers even though we were going into stores every day and risking our lives. Competitors were paying CORPORATE positions hazard pay and we were told tough luck.
6. The only thing with reyes that seemed to be the direction on a daily basis was to make as much money as possible at the expense of any customer service. 
7. Reyes brothers refused to give away any free product to gain space in stores like competitors did (Pepsi, 7-up) making gaining new space a difficult and nearly impossible task.
8. The bonus structure was taken away and reduce greatly. Due to the pandemic, bonuses were missed due to out of stock product and warehouse not fulfilling orders etc. i was told "tough luck" when i fell a few thousand short due to this. 
9. Reyes policies would punish the customer even if we made a mistake. If you accidently order the wrong or incorrect product for a store, Reyes will not allow you to pick it up unless its expired. Having to explain to stores that even though it was my fault i clicked the wrong product, they are stuck with it was horrible. 
10. Management was pretty out of touch on a day to day basis. Wanting more and more out of us and not caring about employee complaints of being over worked. Example is after every drug store visit, they wanted us to type out a full email of notes for the merchandiser each day as if we had time to do that on top of our over loaded routes. The only way to complete these emails was if you worked off the clock which many account managers did.(Of course we were told never to work off the clock)
11. When the pandemic first started, we were told to go into store and just order and leave to be safe. After a few months the expectation of selling in shippers and displays and setting up new accounts was back in full swing even though the virus was getting worse in LA. I called HR to voice my concerns and nothing was done. I was told by a manager that the most important thing was for management to hit their bonus.

Overall my entire time with Reyes was stressful. If you have tough skin and don't get bothered by being a punching bag, this is the job for you. After Reyes (A billion dollar company) got rid of account managers and now combined merchandising and sales into one, I can't imagine what else they will cut if the pandemic gets worse. 

I've been working for this company now for about a year or so, and I can honestly say I feel so completely miserable working for this company. There are so many different things that have been going on that are making me feel this way. 

I will say, at first, I felt like this would be my dream job. I was mostly left to my own devices to get stuff done (a pleasant change up from my previous job, where my bosses were constantly breathing down my neck). The job duties aren't especially difficult. I think almost anyone who is physically in good enough shape can do this job easily. Overall, things were going really well for about the first 4-6 months. However, recently there have been several issues that have been affecting my happiness. 

First of all (and the biggest concern), I am constantly being subjected to 6 day work weeks. Because of being chronically understaffed, I have had to work 6 day work weeks for 2 months straight now. This is not something I signed up for. It's one thing if I volunteer my time, but it's another thing entirely to be scheduled that way longer than I said I was comfortable with. 

There have been other periods in the past where I've had to work 6 day work weeks for a month straight because of staffing issues. What's really insulting is the fact that supervisors still take vacation weeks off and give themselves 3 day weekends whilst they subject their employees to month long periods of 6 day work weeks. Because of this, I basically have no time to spend with family or friends. My life right now is just me going to work all the time, and I'm sick of it. 

Related to this, work life balance at coke is virtually non-existent sometimes. There are times I go in not knowing if I'll get done at 10am or 5pm. Because of this, it is very difficult to plan for anything. Since I basically only reliably get 1 day off a week, I almost have to be completely dependent on that one day to do anything. 

Some of the benefits are pretty good, such as health insurance, vision and dental. Other areas, it's not so good. You'd figure a company as big and well known as coke, would be able to pay their employees sick pay when things like them catching covid would happen, but apparently that's not a benefit they offer. You'd have to use vacation time to get any sort of pay while you're recovering from covid. I don't think that's right. I think the company is fully capable of paying sick pay. They just refuse to do it. 

This isn't even getting into the abysmal work culture of coke compared to what I've seen from our competitors. It's very much an "every man for themselves" type of environment. If you're having a particularly busy day, good luck getting the help you need. Sometimes management will assign you help, or your coworkers might reach out to you if theyre feeling generous. 

For the most part, you're all on your own. This is so unlike the culture I see at our competitors, where they'll pair 2 people together right away to take care of especially large workloads. That or other companies will assign their sales people to help merchandise when they're short handed. For us to get any kind of support sometimes feels like pulling teeth out of an angry bull. 

I really think this job could be so much better if we could keep adequate staffing. I fear this will never happen. Everytime we get "fully staffed", several people start quitting, which repeats the cycle all over again. I truly think the reason we can't keep enough help simply just has to do with how this company treats its employees. 

If you like being worked to death with little appreciation or regard to your well being then this is the place for you. You will have a points system hung over your head with every move you make (7 points and they fire you) you get pointed if you call off, if you're a couple minutes late, if you take a sip of water while you're driving (all trucks have a camera in your face) pretty much anything you do they want to write you up. Final warning if you are caught on your phone while driving (they will call you numerous times throughout the day when they can see that you are driving because your truck is tracked by gps). In the summer you will work 12-14 hours every day with excuse after excuse about why they cant hire help (you will run into pepsi, dr. pepper, all the beer companies and they all have helpers on the truck to assist with the heavy work load). Their equipment (trucks, trailers, liftgates, pallet mules, hand carts, handhelds, printers, etc.) are all junk. You will be sent out every day with at least 1 item that is going to fail on you. You are set up for failure every day at this job and it will always be your fault. As a driver anything and everything that goes wrong, becomes your fault. Their customers all despise them because they do not take care of their customers rather they force loads of unneeded product through their doors and the customer will take it out on you all day every day. They do not stand behind their employees and will let their customers walk all over you. After you work these long, exhausting, mentally testing days and you arrive back at the plant, you have to fill out numerous useless pieces of paper only to go inside and get lectured on something tedious that you did or did not do wrong. Nothing is ever good enough for this place, they'll make up new rules on the fly. You can show up to work with the flu and be throwing up in front of them and they will tell you "just tough it out you'll be alright" and send you to work a 13 hour day. If you go home for being extremely sick you will get a point and they will guilt trip you about it (no you do not get any sick days). You will be sent into the worst neighborhoods whether you like it or not where people are shooting at each other with no regard to your safety and you are not allowed to leave the area until your deliveries are done no matter what the conditions. Of course you are not allowed to carry a firearm or weapon with you even if you have a concealed carry permit. If you have somewhere important to be at dinner time just consider calling off for the day. You can request the day off or let them know you have to be somewhere, and they seemingly make sure you have an even longer day.

They literally do not care about anybody or anything other than forcing their product through peoples doors. 

There's plenty more to say but you get the idea.


I would not recommend this place to my worst enemy.

This company is a revolving door now more than ever. The team that was here when I started a few years ago vs who is here now is almost totally unrecognizable. There is a very good reason for this. Please proceed with caution if you choose to work here. Take the numerous low ratings seriously. 

Simply put, they expect people to work far too many hours in this role, while complaining about paying you overtime. The department is frequently short staffed, which means you will have to pick up extra stores every other day. This, as well as some poor route planning, causes what could be 8 hour days to become 10, 12, even 14 hour shifts. 

You will likely have to work 6 days every other week. Good luck getting help when you need it. All of this, combined with not enough vacation time, made it impossible for me to achieve a work life balance. That's a major reason why I chose to work for another company, that grants its employees a better work life balance. 

That's not even to get into how you're always having to deal with complaints coming at you from multiple people, whether it be your supervisor, store personnel/management, shoppers, or the sales team. You deal with very negative people daily, and this eventually takes a serious toll on your overall outlook on life. My mental health has deteriorated in my time with reyes coca cola. 

The work is very physically demanding. They try to give people advice on stretching and preventing injury, but there's only so much that can do when dealing with thousands of pounds of liquid every day, especially if you're chronically sleep deprived, eating very poorly, and overall not taking care of your body, which sadly seems to be the average reality for people in this role. We work so much, we often don't have time to take care of ourselves. 

Despite all the negatives, there are a few positives. The pay is honestly not bad in this market, especially if you're working overtime hours. There's potential for some very good checks. For the most part, management will leave you alone if you're competent enough. Even then, I feel this company has definitely shifted towards greater scrutiny and micromanagement of its merchandisers than when I started. The one truly positive part of the job is slowly becoming a distant memory. 

The job can be good, but it's super hit or miss. It really does depend on whether or not your supervisor is able to plan the routes out effectively to where you can get done on time most days. The occasional late day isn't an issue, but when it's the norm to stay late daily, that's when it's time to apply for other jobs. There was a massive shift in management sometime last year. Ever since then, things have rapidly declined. 

...and it shows. How do they achieve it? By running "lean and mean". This translates into "doing more with less". Under-staff and over-work account managers and merchandisers. Raise order requirements for accounts to deliver to them less often. Focus on "hyper markets" like Walmart and Meijer's, but largely neglect mid-size and mom-and-pop shops. Greatly limit credit amounts for broken/damage/loose (BDL), pick up credits less often, and publicly shame the top ten BDL account manager "offenders" weekly via internal company emails. Remove vending machines and coolers from accounts if new minimum case requirements aren't being met, thereby diminishing Coca-Cola's presence in the trade while allowing Pepsi and 7-Up to swoop in and take the forfieted space. Close distribution plants one by one in Michigan (and likely in other states) and consolidate them all into three or four production facilities, thus delaying customer response times and greatly increase drive times to reach far-flung accounts. Handle plant closings in an apathetic manner, with a HR department that is lethargic in offering what little response it can muster. Then GLCC loses a noticeable percentage of the employees "affected" by the plant closure, and higher management acts rather shocked and surprised so many people left. One would suspect there is a disconnect.

The pros of working at GLCC? Lots of company swag. Some are fairly nice and useful, but most of which is just creates uneeded clutter (excessive amounts of caps and t-shirts). Hourly employees are offered a fair union-bargained wage. Salaried positions are offered what appears to be a fair wage until one divides the salary by how many hours one has worked. Your results may vary. Medical/eye/dental benefits are passable, but not great. They also offer a matching 401k. The vast majority of hourly and mid-level management are pleasant to work with, and largely capable in their respective fields. In higher management, the situation tends to become more spotty.

At this point I would recommend a job at GLCC if one is in need of money regardless of the work situation, or if one needed some experience to put on a resume. But based on GLCC's business practices, I would strongly suggest it be a short-term employment, if any at all.

I was a transportation driver pretty much what that is a driver that comes out of production where the product was made and make deliveries to the distribution. Hooking of tractor to trailers pre trip and post trip backing into docks. Driving safely to place to place and getting the product there standing up and the semi there in one piece. 

This job helped me prepare for my new job. When you are a delivery driver for Coca-Cola making deliveries to gas station party stores chain stores. No offense you think your in the bubble. You think you are a real trucker. Hate to say it your not you are but not. What I did was nothing what the over the road driver go thru but being a transportation made me a better driver and help me set up for my future. The boss most of them were great man and women but you have your few. If your not willing to play there game then you didn't get the special treatment I call it. I do miss some of my employees and boss but not the games playing.

The hardest part of the job for me was the games being played. Watching work get taken away from us because of other employees. Not sticking together but when the higher guys are getting there extra work don't rock the boat but once they lose that extra work. We all need to stick together. For me that was the hardest part of the job. I hate games. if you do your job and if everyone did there job none of this would happen and stop worrying about other people things would work great.

What I enjoyed most there was driving the semi the freedom of being out there and being my own boss. the friendship I made being there for 22 years.

The Coca-Cola that once was I would tell everyone to work there you could move up in the company. You get in there part time and move up to a position that you could make a living at and start a family. That is gone. The new Great Lakes Coca-Cola all there care about is the bottom line. If they can bring it from Alaska and they will save themselves a dollar they will do it. They don't care about the people they laid in that city where they are bring the product but you can bring all you want but when no one has a job then no one can buy the product.

As an order builder, you come in at 1:45 every afternoon. You clock in by two, and you can expect that you will be home by midnight at the earliest. This is an optimistic view. You will more likely be home every night by 2AM. Every single day. Everyone at entry level has to do it, this is non-negotiable. You will have this work schedule for at minimum 5 days a week for about a year before you can even consider moving up to any other job. This is a union job, so you're not competing for the promotion you're waiting in line for it. They told me it'd take 6 months before I could expect to see results, and I tried to stick it out. But I applied for this job with the intention of funding a college education. My body couldn't keep up, I never got to go out, and I slept from the time I got home to the time I was up to go to work. Towards the end of my time there, I was being forced overtime for the weekends as well, and I had to take points on my 9 points a year to be able to do ANYTHING in my adult life. 

This job is hard. They never hid it, they did not lie to me. 
I overestimated my abilities to do this job well. 
I will not say they were not fair about every aspect of what they were asking me to do, but I will say that it is clear to me now that this job was simply not for me. It was a lot of physical activity, it was a non-stop job. The people who I worked with while rough and occassionally rude, never made me feel like it was in bad form. The work environment is like a group of pals just trying to make it through the night so they can maybe go home a little earlier. 

I do NOT recommend you apply if you cannot perform hard physical tasks non-stop for 12 hours straight. I cannot recommend it to you if your time with your family or friends is important to you.

But if you want good money, are up to the physical task, and you want a fair and equal system of promotion free from workplace politics, I do recommend you try your hand at order building at Reyes Cocacola. I am deeply appreciative of the oppurtunity they gave me to try it for myself, and though it was a short while I was proud to be counted amoungst the people of the Teamsters  Union. They're good people.

I worked as a part-time merchandiser. You get your scheduled route for the coming week on Friday; work week starts on Saturday. Because of this, you don't know which day of the following week you'll have off which makes it hard to schedule any type of appointments in the a.m. hours, however, you are usually off by 2 -3 p.m.; Super nice! Each time you walk into the store and into the backroom, you are greeted with whatever inventory you have to work with. You pull the pallets with the merchandise out onto the store floor with whatever  (store owned) hand jacks you can find - which can be difficult at times and the other the jacks are NOT OSHA certified (broken!);shame on these supermarkets!!  I got many bruises because of this. 

The work is hard but I found it rewarding. You work at your own pace but you learn to move quickly. It can be overwhelming due to the over zealous ordering of the sales person (they order the merchandise - rather, they OVER order). This is bad because you may only need 1 pallet worth of merchandise to fill the empty spots on the shelves but there can be up to 7+ "extra" pallets you have to wrestle through to get to; and you have other vendors vying for jacks, space, etc. It can get pretty dicey at times; not all vendors are nice. Over-all, my time there was great and I enjoyed communicating with my merchandiser supervisors. I met quite a few folks and they were all very pleasant and kind. You HAVE to have steel toe shoes and they give you $$ to order shirts with the Coca-cola logo. Also, there were times when I fell behind (time wise) and one of my supervisors would come out and help! Or they would send another merchandiser in the area that was finished with their route - there were times I was finished and had to drive to help another merchandiser.

This is a pretty brainless job that requires constant physical activities such as filling coolers, stocking shelves, building displays, organizing backstock, and rotating product. Pay is generous and vacation time is very good. Benefits are terrible with some of the worst health insurance I've ever seen. You'll need to use a pallet jack and occasionally a forklift or ground stacker.

The real problem is the mental taxation you'll go through on a day to day basis. Every store hates you because this company does not care about their customers. Upper management is completely clueless on what you go through every day. Every department is against each other. Backstabbing coworkers and lying to customers just to save your own behind. Your sales rep will order insane amounts of product regardless of if it can be stocked or not. They will throw you under the bus anytime because they are scrutinized for every single tiny problem that arises from an account. You are a scapegoat for everything. There is no team mentality. Its every man for himself. If you work in Rockford you are treated like an outcast and have zero support from the big wigs in St.charles. It takes a special kind of person to be able to handle the physical and mental abuse you go through every day. Don't ever expect to get weekends off and there are no sick days. If you can get past the physical part of the job, you can make it work but it is not something I would ever recommend anyone to do unless they are desperate. This is not a career job like it was before Reyes Holdings took over. They are a bunch of crooks. Your direct supervisors are the real heroes and they will try their very best to help you when they can. Unfortunately it's usually out of their hands.

Very short staffed (but they are working on hiring more people), they will work you repeatedly for 10-12 hour days every day (to be fair this was stated in the interview process, but not every day) and even ask you to work a 6th or 7th consecutive day. You can of course turn that offer down.  Don’t ever try and make plans to get off early for the day (unless already discussed with you boss). For this region in Temecula and Lake Elsinore some of your coworkers do a really good job and others have attitudes reflecting high school drama. If you love a full bodied exercise everyday then this is the job for you. If you enjoy being on your own for a majority of the day this is the job for you. If you love waking up 3 hours before the crack of dawn and working till the sunsets, this is the job for you. If you are a tall person, like myself, I don’t recommend this job because you will be bending over constantly and crouching in a lot of small spaces. (But you do you) The pay is ok, could definitely be compensated a little more. (Other soda company merch’s work less hours at a higher pay). They pay for mileage only during work hours, never to and from work. You don’t know your schedule for the next day until the night before. You don’t get to pick your days off unless you have other obligations such as school, They pick your days off for you. You do know what days you’re working a week ahead of time, but you don’t know what time your day starts until the night before. You don’t have a set time to the end of your day, the job is done when it’s done. You will always work weekends, and you’re only guaranteed holiday off is Christmas. Overall they are a decent company to work for, not great, but if you’re just looking for a job to get yourself back on your feet then definitely apply here.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Merchandiser 178 salaries reported	$19.69 per hour
Order picker 2 salaries reported	$27.28 per hour
Truck driver 1 salary reported	$27.60 per hour
Customer representative 1 salary reported	$20.50 per hour
Laborer 25 salaries reported	$20.77 per hour

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