process engineer

qc technician

plant supervisor

plant manager

logistics technician

Roquette

I was a demand planner at Roquette for 9 months, I would say tread lightly and document everything even to the extent of recording one on one performance meetings with your boss, make sure you notify them if you do this, and walk out if they don't allow it because he shouldn't be saying anything he doesn't want to be recorded. I was terminated due to what they said was poor job performance, and they provided me with a list of 17 grievances against me to make it look like they had substantiating documentation against me but I don't know how this is the case and here's why. 
    During the termination process, they gave me a short time to read the letter. Upon the initial scan, I could already tell that in order to justify my termination, my boss referenced conversations we had and took them wildly out of context. Which is the first reason I say document EVERYTHING! 
    When I got home, I looked at the document again and found that some of the dates my boss had listed in the documentation corresponded to a time when he was vacationing with his son in Europe. This is important because during that time I had little to no correspondence with him until he got back into the US. I can prove with phone records and text messages. 
    Also, there was a blatant claim that he had to discuss a process with me to tell me how it works even though we discussed it several times. While it was true we discussed it several times, it was in the context of the betterment of the demand planning group to improve forecast accuracy. Besides that, the date he claimed this conversation happened was during a time when he was not in the office and the only correspondence we had, was through text message. No call logs exist to show he contacted me via voice, nor are there text messages mentioned anything about the process he was claiming I didn't understand.  
   Additionally, not one of these grievances were discussed with me at any point. My termination was sprung on me like a trap, which is how companies do things I guess. I will say they tried to keep my dignity intact during the process and gave me a two-week severance but that only goes so far as I have a family of 6 to support and I bought a house, moving them to Keokuk. 
   The scary thing about all of this is, up until that point, my boss was the best boss I had ever had. He was very approachable, very cheerful and smiling all the time. Additionally, I had gotten all of my performance metrics accomplished by the second week in June while I had the year to get them done. I had no idea this was coming and I legitimately got stabbed in the back. I would not recommend applying for this position or any position where you would be working for this man as he will go so far as to falsify documentation to get you out if he perceives you as a threat or doesn't like something about you. Also, I am a military vet, still serving in the reserves, at least I have that going for me.

The pay is decent for the area. That is almost the only good thing. The fifth crew swing shift does not provide a good work/ home life balance. Supervisors will hold you over for trivial situations with no concern to how it affects your home life; child care, spouse/family support, etc. When confronted some supervisors will simply respond with "I don't care". Most equipment and machinery is severely neglected, with most problems being bypassed if possible and never fixed until a catastrophic failure occurs in the bypass. Safety has a modest program which is enforced heavily on union employees but salary individuals tends to ignore when it is an inconvenience. There is some opportunity for advancement but if a supervisor or someone in management does not like you, your advancement will be blocked even if you are a good employee. Some management and supervisors seem to form their own group. This allows them to do what they want with no one being able to check them. Because of this situations seem to be hidden from the parent company in France and changes are made that are largely beneficial to the collective salaried group. At the end of the day a job here is stressful most days but it pays the bills well enough. 

To survive, they need an experienced turn-around specialist running the show.

To save costs and gain efficiency, logic and about every school of management will recommend streamlining management, centralizing and consolidating operations, sharing ideas and innovating.  This is not what was occurring.

On the positive, there was opportunity to take on more responsibility, innovate at times and use your creativity.  

It a very top heavy organizational structure and recent layoffs were necessary,  understandable, eliminated waste, but to make the most of them, they needed to dramatically restructure and eliminate managers, consolidate departments and figure out how to do more with less.

I've even heard from managers that they needed more workers to accomplish work, and fewer chiefs making rules, needing reports, meetings.   More doing, less discussing.

The negativity following the labor dispute never went away. The damage was far worse than any benefits gained.

Lots of great people working there, smart, passionate about their job and wanting to improve.   It can be a great place again.

Excellent, highly skilled workforce, but poorly managed and struggling to survive.  Current culture is focused exclusively on cost cutting.  The company is currently laying off a substantial proportion of its workforce and the focus is entirely short-term.

A tremendous amount of responsibility is placed on each individual, fostering a steep learning curve, however, each employee is challenged to learn many disciplines and we all emerge stronger as a result.  There are many opportunities to lead projects, and grow as individuals, as well integrate into various strategic teams.  This leads to building strong relationships among coworkers and invaluable friendships often develop.

The corn syrup market is weak and Roquette is struggling to market new, specialty products.  The lack of a competitive advantage in the sweeteners market is placing the company at a distinct disadvantage. I have many friends who remain at the company and I certainly hope that the company can survive, and ultimately grow.  There are some amazing people at this organization......hopefully they can weather the storm.......

What is the best part of working at the company?
You will learn a lot, but you will be expected to learn fast due to the high turnover at the site. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The high turnover. 6/11 engineers quit in 2025 alone due to frustrations with management. You'll be working with employees who have been on a PIP for years, but are still there. Management prefers to act surprised than be accountable. Management also rarely goes on the floor so they're out of touch with reality and don't realize or appreciate how hard everyone has to work to keep the site running. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Very dysfunctional. Maintenance is more reactive than proactive. Everyone is stressed from trying to keep the plant running with no support from management. When I was there, every two months an employee quit.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Busy. You have to juggle multiple priorities and management provides no help with advising which order your priorities should be in. You're expected to treat everything as priority #1.

A typical day at work is uploading MSDS and FENA reports, ordering materials from SAP and keeping up on daily safety projects. I learned to take on new tasks to help out with the group and putting a effort in giving new ideas. The management was new before I left and still getting things in order but working well with communication. My co-workers worked as a team and knew that there were short term projects that needed finished immediately due to safety concerns. The hardest part of the job was having a serious safety issue happen and dropping everything to come up with a solution so it would not happen again with the working conditions that we had and couldn't dramatically change. The most enjoyable part of the job is getting to do new projects and working with the team to see what outcome we came up with together as a team to fix the problem.

Every day is new and different - enjoyable part of the position. Opportunity to be creative and instill new ideas in employees to avoid cost, improve revenue and grow business. My position works for a board of directors comprised of executives of parent company of which I was formerly a team member. Our business employs contract labor at the board's insistence and yet enjoys labor rates at 40-50% lower than parent company contractor rates. The most difficult part of the position is convincing the board that the subsidiary that I manage needs to be flexible and responsive to grow and contribute to their success. The most enjoyable part of the position is making money contributing to the success of the overall business and leading a team of employees anxious to succeed.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Nothing I can think of, horrible management. Pay decent

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Management demands unrealistic and totally out of touch with reality. Firing the people who actually try to make things better.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Horrible, owned by French with typical anti-american bias. Send non-qualified people over as managers who can't do the job and blame the workers.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Not there anymore. While I was there spent most of my time having to answer for unreasonable demands that can't be met. Most of them by people who couldn't engineer their way out of a paper bag. VERY frustrating...

What is the best part of working at the company?
The salary was great the hrs I worked was great the environment was great

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Things breaking down alot it needed more funding to upgrade the plant

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
It's good i never had a problem at all the time I worked there

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Coming  into work seeing how my day going to go seeing if I'm going to have a smooth day or a bad day. You can come in and everything is running smoothly or you can come in and everything chaotic but it's my job to make it better for the next person that comes in behind me it's all about making the job work smoothly so productivity can be a plus

Roquette is a corn syrup and sugar manufacturing company. I worked long hours in a hot factory. My team of three were producing a new type of sugar, so a lot of the process was experimental and all of it was manual due to the fact that we had a smaller production facility than some of the other buildings. The management style of my direct supervisor was controlling and micromanaging. The hardest part of the job was that it was easy to lose product and nothing was completely known, so it was a lot of trying this or trying that, but we figured it out in the end. To make sugar from corn, there were several steps in the process, each step taking several days a piece. it took about two weeks to produce one batch of product (1000L.)

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Process engineer 7 salaries reported	$96,090 per year
Qc technician 6 salaries reported	$28.83 per hour
Plant supervisor 2 salaries reported	$93,516 per year
Plant manager 6 salaries reported	$182,355 per year
Logistics technician 6 salaries reported	$23.15 per hour

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