merchandiser

retail merchandiser

maintenance technician

sales manager

Scotts Miracle-Gro

The factory that I worked at was a mixed bag. The people were all easy to get along with and the work itself was not too demanding. But I was a temp worker for the entire ten years that I worked there.

 The company claims to need more workers. The company claims that they are doing everything they can to get more bodies on the floor. Yet, people that have worked there as temps get repeated rejected for full time because the company claims those people don't have enough experience at the job that they've already been doing for years on end.  Meanwhile, the company hires bulk of their full time employees off the street and sight unseen. Management has a clear bias against anyone that has worked as a temp. While two or three temp workers do make full time every five years or so, most of the new full time staff are hired from the outside. 

This problem is directly tied to their so-called "manpower shortage." Because they refuse to hire former temp workers, and they keep the temp employee wages significantly lower than full-time wages, people are less inclined to seek employment here. Those that do go in as temps don't stay because it becomes very clear that they will not make full-time and they can get better wages plus shorter hours somewhere else. This leads to massive amounts of overtime for everyone that is working there. And the transition to overtime hours during the busy season is always handled poorly which results in large numbers of people quitting throughout the season. 

The transition to overtime is something of particular note. When the busy season starts to ramp up, they begin looking for volunteers to come in early or stay late. If they don't get enough volunteers, they then have the temp agency liaison walk the floor and ask everyone individually if they want to stay over . If the still don't have enough people they "mandatory" people for overtime. Usually you are told that you've been mandatoried two hours before your shift ends. Don't worry about your ride though, they've already mandatoried the driver of your carpool, so if you don't volunteer, you'll have to find another ride home. 

Eventually they do shift over to twelve hour days and six to seven day work weeks. But the time leading up to that is somehow more draining and stressful than doing seven twelve hour days a week. All of which could be avoided if they could just get enough bodies on the floor to cover all shifts. 

In conclusion, don't work here as a temp if you don't have to. If they won't hire you full-time, keep looking for work. They aren't urgently hiring and they don't seriously care about being sufficiently staffed. You're also less likely to be hired on full time if you work as a temp. Fair warning. 

I worked for Scotts Miracle Grow for about 5 months. This was one of the best work experiences I have had. You go through a lot of Computer based training which are essentially slide shows with little quizzes at the end.  You are compensated for all your time during training.  Your manager issues you a company phone and tool bag with lots of great items that you will get to keep. Also you get several nice Scott's polo shirts. 

The actual job is great! You get to travel to your area of operation Home Depots, Lowes, and occasionally Walmarts. The job is quite simple. You start at about 0830 at a scheduled Big Box retailer usually with one other person or by yourself. 

Early in the season you will set items to Planogram and or MAPs.  You are essentially creating a skeleton for future items to be placed.  When the season starts to pick up in middle March your primary goal is restocking, fluffing, etc.  This is bringing down product from top stock, replenishing soil and fertilizer and doing anything you can to make your SMG products more visible.  It's quite fun to create things that folks will appreciate.  

A day will consist of walking the store looking at what needs to be done.  SMG has a ton of products from Miracle Grow, Ortho, Natures Care, Ecoscrapes, Tomcat, raid, OFF, etc.  You will spend time working off a ladder bringing down boxes of product and replenishing your items and straightening.  Outside you will be restocking fertilizer and soil which will be the hardest element physically.  I worked a pallet jack constantly moving thousand pound stacks of soil and fertilizer all over the Garden area.  But your outside having a good time working no one there riding you.  

You will have to coordinate with Big box staff in order to get product down via forklift, use tools, and help convince department heads and managers on your ideas for product placement.  You will constantly have people come up to you and ask you where things are that are unrelated to your product.  My advice is be polite, tell them you don't work here but... you can help them find it our find someone who can. 

I loved this job and wish it was not only a temporary position.  I was fortunate to have an amazing boss who was flexible with his folks and allowed me anytime off I needed.

It is a good company to work for but it has huge flaws. Understand I have worked for some very bad companies so my standards might be lower than yours. Work life balance was fantastic and I was blessed to have great managers. I was promoted several times so advancement is great. However I was one of the lucky ones. There are horrible managers that play favorites. People have had overtime taken away from them because they wouldn’t do special favors for them. I was told by my bosses to stay away from certain people because would bring me into their drama. They were right. Safety on the surface looks great but in reality they are not that serious about it. Most people don’t know where the fire extinguishers are. I worked there for years and only heard the fire alarm for a drill once. Most of the safety is listen to a safety video (at the worst time) or read and sign a form. There is always messes on the floor. Whenever it rains it soaks the machines and the floor. To be fair they are not horrible but they are far from a safe work environment. The worst part of this company is that COMMUNICATION IS HORRIBLE. Fortunately my manager was great but again I was one of the lucky ones. Everything from overtime to safety meetings you never knew about until five minutes before they happened. I must have missed 50% of the meetings there. Departments rarely ever communicate with one let alone different shifts. Also when I was hired there was a lot of work and overtime. I loved it. That is when I shined but the last two years they honestly paid me two years pay for three weeks of really working. It was so boring and depressing because I was always asking for more work but they never had any. Not overtime I mean something to do at my job. If you are older and don’t like doing anything for half of the year then this is the job for you. I am surprised that they haven’t closed the place down but I am glad that my former co workers have jobs. I have read all the reviews and they are all true. It’s a hot and cold place to work it’s just not for everyone.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Working there made you feel really smart. Senior management is not in touch on how the company needs to operate.  They think cutting costs is the long term solution to profitability.  The market perception  sees it the same.    

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
They stress safety as the number one priority of the company.  Their safety department is made up of non-professionals that come up with short term solutions and will not spend the money to provide permanent fixes for the issues. Sit in on the companies safety team meetings if you want a good laugh!
Turn over is constant and disruptive to the business.    


What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
It was a great culture until  senior employees resigned or were forced to resigned for cost cutting initiatives. The new senior management have no original ideas so they are bringing in employees from other companies trying to instill Whirlpools culture. They have no change management process to coach or guide employees. No money allocated for sustainability.  The Joke is..If Whirlpool was so good why did they leave? Were they the bottom 10% of Whirlpools yearly employee purge process  ? 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Try to avoid having to fix equipment, ask for money or call the main office for guidance .  Majority of the plants and machines are made up of old inherited  machines which are not standardized across the network.  No long-term engineering plan to correct this issues.  Can not find parts or have to engage a machine shop or outside programer to make the machines run;  because  the machine vendors don't support anymore. 
HR / Financials issues are turned back to the plants to figure out and blame is the key fix for the issues when it is due to poor policies and constant turnover at corporate.

On a typical day at work, you will arrive a bit early to spend some time refreshing yourself on the events of the day before and prepare a plan for your day, you will likely be interrupted several times, have urgent meetings to attend, work through your lunch, realize you have not yet accomplished the things you intended to complete in the day (due to the "priorities" that interrupted you) and you are already leaving later than expected.

This job has taught me how to multi-task and prioritize on a level I never thought possible. The company is so fast-paced, and usually barely meeting committed deadlines. Everything becomes a last minute priority. 

The management at Scotts is hit-or-miss. You will always have "good" and "bad" managers, but most managers in the company do not do a good job of communicating down. 

My co-workers and peers are amazing individuals that manage to keep the crazy environment an enjoyable place to work. While I have never heard anyone say they weren't overwhelmingly busy, we all take it well and there are not many complaints. 

The most enjoyable part of the job is the environment, but it is also the hardest part of the job. I personally enjoy the fast-pace, non-stop chase, but in my first several months it was borderline overwhelming. 

The culture of the company overall is sink-or-swim. There is not a formal mentoring program and you will learn most of the job through your own methods. You will find that most individuals have been here for a long time and plan to stay, or they leave quickly. I haven't met many people in my 6 years that feel the environment is OK, they either like it or they don't.

Typical day you go in a home center, walk the store and look for pallets to be dropped. It's typical to drop 20-30 in one store alone. Then you need someone to drop the pallets for you. This process can take ten minutes, a few hours or frustration and move onto another store and start the process all over. Once the pallets are dropped you start packing out fertilizer, chemicals, plant food, rodenticides, outdoor cleaner,  etc. Its very labor intensive and it's no uncommon to spend 12-18 hours doing this six day a week in season. You have a merchandising budget for help in the stores. It's very hard to retain part time, seasonal workers who don't get raises.  Even if you have your help planned out, Scotts will yank the budget out of no where and you'll be stuck trying to do 35-40 stores by yourself. Then upper management will walk your stores and nit pick, asking why spreaders are dirty, bags of fertilizer have rodent and or bird fecal matter on them. This is a common technique used to RIF or terminate a sales manager. Walk stores, look for the tiniest goofs and then either terminate you on the spot or put you on probation and ride you until you quit or they terminate you. The only person who has job security is the CEO and his family members, who own about 1/3 of the company. The CEO Uses profanities  prides himself on terminating upper managers, and has slowly taken away everything that was fun to work for Scotts. This is so he can fly his jet and helicopter at the company's expense. Expect to be constantly tracked via your company phone and vehicle.

My typical day at work is traveling to retail customers, presenting and selling customer solutions. I call on and work with key retail accounts, buyers and sales mangers of my assigned distributors. My postion requires that I cultivate good relationships with decision makers to create a common goal which is profits for our customers and my company.

I learn everyday that market trends change and we as suppliers have to change to always be the best we can to supply those needs.

Working closly with co-workers for a common goal is so important. Each co-worker has an important position to the success of a company and putting value to that common goal is important. I treat my co-workers both inside the office and a fellow sales person with respect.

The hardest part of any job is to be able to accomidate every customer everytime. Sometimes if the profitability for my company decreases to a point that I can no longer accommodate my customer, and there are many reasons these things happen, it is difficutlt to cut those ties.

The most enjoyable part of my job is working with people. Presenting new items, working trade shows and of course closing the sale....getting that order! I am passionate about my job and I love working with people.

Scotts LawnService was a great place to work for at first. Benefits changed, and so did everything else. It does have its perks, however as a sales rep you can expect to work up to 70 hours per week. If you are in Door2Door sales good luck on getting past the temp position, they usually tell you after D2D you will go inside the sales room, well that rarely happens, usually they just lay you off due to lack of work by Memorial Day. On the technician side, you do get the benefit of being on your own for most of the day, and interacting with customers, however they don't offer benefits to employees in sales or operations for the first year because you are temp. Saturdays are almost a constant thing, changes from year to year, but Corp management always wants you to work while they are at home with families. If you have a family and young kids or kids and are looking at sales, ask yourself do you want to work 9a-9p? or 12p-9p? Chinese overtime is true, you get half your pay rate etc, it is a complicated formula. Also d2d they constantly threat you if you don't get 15 sales per week after your 2nd week on job. You get written up and then they put you out door if you don't hit it the next week or following week after that. TGCL is always cheaper and really cost is the biggest thing for customers now a days. This can be a rewarding job where you can push making 50k in a year. But overall can be very stressful mentally.

As a Warehouse Associate, a typical workday involved wearing a headset and following instructions from a robot that guided me on where to pick inventory in the warehouse. The system would provide aisle numbers and specific shelf levels, and I would use a pallet rider or forklift to retrieve the necessary items. I learned how a warehouse operates, became proficient in using the SAP program, and gained hands-on experience with various warehouse equipment. While the work itself was straightforward, the management was unprofessional and often lacked transparency, with leaders making inconsistent decisions and promoting less motivated employees to leadership roles. These leaders rarely helped with picking or organizing pallets, leaving most of the physical work to the associates. I also witnessed a coworker being written up for missing work due to a family emergency, which seemed unfair. The hardest part of the job was learning on my own, as training was minimal, but the most enjoyable aspects were the friendships I formed with coworkers, riding the pallets, and the perk of receiving reimbursement for new shoes each year.

Loved working at Scotts, they value hard work and put the brand first and foremost. Managers and district managers were all great and valued the company message. Would love to stay but it's seasonal work.

The work itself is physically demanding and depending on your local climate you can be working in extreme cold and heat in one season. I worked in 7 degree and 98 degree weather. You'll be building shoulder high towers of fertilizer, grass seed, and chemical sprays that can weigh up to 60 pounds all while expected to help any customer with any lawn and garden issue that Scotts sells a product for. You'll also be expected to work Saturdays during peak which is around 1-2 months.  Don't take this job if any of those are deal breakers.

The pay is higher than average and the company has a great 401k but it is full time for about 4-5 months and you will be downgraded to part time and then shortly after will be told there is no more work. This is only if your managers like you as I've seen people work for as little as 2 months, but if you're good you will work the full season which is still not year round. Advancement is definitely possible but without a college degree was unlikely. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Merchandiser 306 salaries reported	$18.16 per hour
Pt 120 salaries reported	$17.31 per hour
Retail merchandiser 4 salaries reported	$18.00 per hour
Maintenance technician 22 salaries reported	$32.47 per hour
Sales manager 1 salary reported	$72,500 per year

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