car wash attendant

site manager

crew member

shift leader

sales

Take 5 Car Wash


This company sets you up to fail from the start. No real hands on training. They will assign you computer trainings months to years after youve had your position. and theyll be trainings about things you should know from the start like safety, lock out tag out. The list goes on. This company puts very very little to no money back into the stores and then expect ridiculous results. You have very little control over your bonus as a site manager. The washes are way too expensive and wages are not competitive. Take 5 starts at $13.50 meanwhile you can start at McDonalds at $15+. As a site manager, youll have no work/life balance. Youre expected to work open to close every single day, and work every saturday. They pay you a less than average salary yet expect you to be the face of the business. Your job is threatened more than you are praised for good work. If result expectations (conversion and Pro5 mix %) arent met, the automatic assumption from corporate is that you are not doing your job and will put you on a 30 plan to fire you. Corporate will never reach out to check in one sites or to see what we need for help or what we are struggling with. They come to town once every 4 to 5 months and are on site for about 30 minutes. Every aspect of your job is micromanaged. We have goal boards we fill out to motivate the team, we have to send those into a group chat every single week, fill out a spreadsheet every single day, send our schedules to corporate so they can see whos at what station at any point of the day and if they look at the cameras and happen to see someone else at the station other than whats on the schedule, youre in trouble. All of these things are things they can check themselves through programs we have. Cameras are constantly watched and youll be disciplined if caught sitting for any amount of time no matter how long youve been standing outside. Sites arent given enough labor hours for coverage so site managers are forced to clean their tranches and tunnels on their own, which is not an easy task to do alone, especially the trench. We are also so low on labor that we have to schedule people alone on shifts which is EXTREMELY EXTREMELY unsafe. Maintenance has no budget to fix anything so they will ghetto rig anything they can just to keep the store going. Even if its a product we are supposed to be upselling. This company makes the absolute worst financial decisions and then blames the field workers for poor performance when they dont even spend enough time at sites to see how each store and team operates. Take 5 couldnt care less about anyones well being and will do nothing to offer you support. The preach prep to president, which is their things for hiring from within. They do not hire from within and will search outside the company before even considering moving someone up. If you held a corporate position for any retail company what so ever, theyll hire you despite the 1000+ years of carwash experience everyone in this company holds. This company will do anything they can to pinch pennies and when expectations arent met, anything you say is an excuse. Do yourself a favor and literally apply at any other car wash than Take 5. I promise you wont regret it but you will be absolutely miserable if you work for this company.

Typical day you can expect to be hounded about forcing sales onto customers who do not want a membership or dealing with upset customers or even your wash breaking down multiple times a day.

 I did learn to fix mechanical issues and leadership and to have thick skin.

 Management horrible, sometimes site managers can be good but district managers and higher are bad and will hound you for not forcing a customer to buy the membership that they sale and will write you up for not meeting said sales even on rainy days when hardly anyone comes in but when they do, they end up buying a single $10 wash because they don't want a membership which will drop your conversion down.

 Workplace culture with site employees can be good depending on the workers I would have to say about half of the sites I've had the chance to work with were pretty cool individuals and others were either lazy or rude and incorporative or very inappropriate. 

Hardest part I would say is the fact of dealing with constant hounding from upper management and very upset customers that want a refund or want the company to pay for damages caused in the wash.

 I did enjoy working with a good group of people all the way up until I was a site manager and even the people, I employed for job roles at the site I managed. 

All in all, I would not recommend this job unless you have car sales experience as I've seen people with this background excel with the sales portion of the carwash business, but you also have to have tough skin and tolerance to horrible upper management, and you can climb rank really quick or even start as a site manager. I've seen them just throw people with no experience into manager roles and watch them fail and fire them with ease so I would never recommend just jumping into said role, work from the bottom up plus when you start from the bottom up you have the opportunity to gain extra income with sales commissions as soon as you become a site manager you no longer get that commission but are still forced to make sales. I hope this helps some with deciding on whether or not they want to work for this company.

Take 5 Carwash has the potential to be great if they didn’t hire so many outsiders who need to be trained after talking up a big storm about how their all about hiring from within. They do not keep their word, it’s also stressful balancing outside life/self care with this Job. I DO NOT recommend. This Job mentally drained me. I used to love it here. I also had high hopes for this place before Management/HR’s true colors were shown. Multiple Managers would watch me on security cameras struggling and running the place by myself, scrubbing over 300 cars A DAY and would LAUGH about it with co-workers AND other Management!! Do not KILL yourself working for a Job that does not care about your physical, emotional and mental wellbeing!! 
They will replace you the day you croak!! 
This is still happening to this day. When I tell you I spent hours in a freezing(no heat) “office”.  
We ran ZERO CARS and STILL had to be there. Some days my car couldn’t make it there especially in the thick/Icy snow. 
Now you tell me why a CAR WASH is open in NEGATIVE DEGREE WEATHER? 
Pipes froze over/busted and had to be replaced
A-LOT of money spent on Diesel for a Diesel fueled Heater. Money that came out of employees pockets whom were never Compensated!!!
 Now, if they would’ve just kept the heaters running everyday and never tried to RUN CARS 
Or turn on any water to operate how Management wanted us too. They would have saved a lot of money!! 
This place is honestly a Joke. I wish I could say it was the best work place ever but I would be lying. It USED to be, I’m surprised their still operating. Whew. 




What is the best part of working at the company?
I couldn’t tell you, maybe the tips!

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
From fixing broken machines, to the lack of training, and honestly the lack of support when it comes to crew members and being the only representative when you barely know anything unless you pick it up by stalking and analyzing your co-workers.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Very chill and laid back, until it isn’t! The customers can assess quickly that you have malfunctions and problems with seeing the “tunnel” there are so many machines that break down or aren’t functioning that its crazy and you’ll have to spend every day trying to figure it out. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Wait until a car comes through, and hopefully they understand how the kiosk works, because if not you’ll of course have to help them which isn’t the problem it’s when you’re busy and you don’t have much staff to help you run the tunnel. It can be very stressful because people wish to be going and moving as the get in the tunnel, let alone the fact that they have a standard of brushing EVERY car unless they say not to (which is RARE) and that alone is TAXING to your body even if you’re active outside of work. Along with you having a good pace because you have to manually insert the movement of the vehicle on a tablet, which can malfunction from time to time, then you have to fix that….So all in all, Its taxing,stressful, and annoying for you and all the customers who’ve never had the experience and those who come from time to time with their Wash Pass.

The job itself was pretty straightforward, just stand in the tunnel all day long and direct the cars onto the conveyer belt. I never learned how to do the sales and honestly didn’t understand the difference between the washes well enough to be confident to sell them to people. We also had yearly subscription packages which was even harder for me to understand as management never trained me on those things, but I believe I just got unlucky with my particular manager, he was the type to say that I could have the day off if I was feeling sick, and then use that against me in a write up later on. 

I’m pretty sure I attained some hearing damage during my time working here due to the volume levels in the tunnel, but it’s fun, if you can stand for 8 hours at a time and breathe in all those chemicals, honestly I recommend wearing a mask. It gets pretty freezing cold during the wintertime in the tunnel too so if layers really bother you then maybe this is not the job for you. But I liked it, management at my location just sucked.

They make you follow pretty strict uniform guidelines and they want you to make sales, cuz corporate, but otherwise the job can be alot of fun working next to all different types of cool cars all day. Training was more centered around safety than it was actually telling you how to do the job. Lol.

When I heard about Take 5 taking over the wash I worked at, it looked like a huge deal. It was going great, until I heard about the corporate hiring people with 0 knowledge of the wash business and that they do not care for the customers or employees. They only care for the money and take advantage of you. I would recommend save the pain and not work for these guys. They give you no freedom to be you and will have people call out and you are all alone at the site and they do not care at all. The only good thing I give it is with looking after customers and making sure they were not taken advantage of too and that they had a 401k option with pay. And speaking of pay, they lie about raises and never give it to you. I was hoping to be a site manager of the please, but found out the terrible truth from former site managers that they are paid way less than the assistant managers and forced to work more than 50 hours a week with no raise or good pay, so I am glad I decided not to level to that. And when you leave they try to say they will give you a raise, but I saw right through them and dealt with it for too long that I left gracefully and moved to a different car wash company with people who know what they're doing for the business.

it’s rare to find good management and workers at this company. management above site manager makes it difficult to complete tasks by continuously cutting work hours, not offering pay raises for outstanding employees who’ve gone above and beyond, and constantly making things more difficult to accomplish. equipment is all outdated and continues to break, only to receive a “bandaid” and a prayer it doesn’t break again. company is unreliable, doesn’t pay living wage, and only 4 paid holidays for employees below SM while upper management gets more. district manager is hard to get ahold of, company has blocked all orders on necessities for site to operate properly, and expects people to pick up shifts and double at other sites with no reward. employees being exposed to the elements, especially extreme heat seems to have no effect on upper management and their ability to care as they have blocked the opportunity for employees to cool down during hard work hours. 

I will say the job IN ITSELF is not bad. They don’t hire minors anymore and still are only paying $12 a hour. Which unless you’re in higher management is not going to pay your bills. However, the management is corrupt and staffing is a huge issue. They hire employees in at more than current staff is making. I’ve worked here for over a year, I’ve received no raise, bonus, nothing. The site I’m at doesn’t have a site manager so I’m working long hours with no raise or anything. Half of the time the wash is broken or some part of it is and maintenance never comes and fixes anything so we’re the ones taking the heat from customers when their cars are still dirty. They push for conversion rates to be extremely high but when your wash has a bad reputation it’s hard to sell passes. Now that we don’t have a site manager I take the heat for poor conversion rates. This job has put so much stress on me that it’s unbearable at times. I enjoy being outside, I enjoy working with people however no one wants to spend money on something that doesn’t work properly. 

What I learned was the difference between family owned and corporate owned. They don't value any employees with experience I mean I saw managers with 20 years of experience get treated with no respect.  Ignored no ideas or plans were ever took into consideration. 
They don't promote from within the company but push thier inverted pyramid of caring so much for thier workers is sickening. If you like being lied to and filled with promises and hopes of advancing up in the ranks and it never happens this is the perfect job for ya ! If you have experience in carwashing trust me anything and everything you know doesn't matter to take 5 . The most enjoyable part was the last day I worked under the name of the previous company before take 5 took over and killed the love and passion of a job I once loved to a job that turned to hate and dreaded to drive too. PLEASE IF YOUR GOING TO SELL OR WORK FOR TAKE 5 just know your gonna see I'm right you will hate your job . If your selling reconsider I'm begging you not too . 

Where to start… Upper management is highly incompetent, raises are non existent unless you get promoted which you only get promoted by knowing someone in upper management or you’re completely incompetent at the job, shocker. Hard work is completely ignored and instead criticized, laziness gets you farther than working which is completely backwards. Massive difference between first and second shifts when it comes to workload with second shift required to do everything at the end of the night and yet they’ll understaff and leave a single person to run an entire site by themselves and then do all closing procedures in less than a half hour. You’re not allowed to discuss pay which on doing so you’ll realize you could be a closer full time and be making less hourly than the new part time hire who is a standard attendant. Company loyalty gets you absolutely nothing and favoritism runs rampant.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Car wash attendant 13 salaries reported	$13.04 per hour
Site manager 1 salary reported	$17.00 per hour
Crew member 9 salaries reported	$13.81 per hour
Shift leader 1 salary reported	$11.50 per hour
Sales 1 salary reported	$10.50 per hour

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