field service engineer

customer service representative

field engineer

accounts receivable clerk

payroll specialist

ZEISS Group

I felt very good about myself and what I had to offer.  I found a way in this position to use my need to be organized, clean and professional.  This suited my character and the company appreciated that.  In the German company culture.  It was accepted that you would seek perfection in your work.  Often that interfered with our American business management style.  I would have loved to have stayed on with Zeiss, but my personal needs were changing and I needed to be home and more available to my family. But this became unlikely when leadership in the US refused to allow me to move away from travel and service.  The travel was excessive.  Out ever single week.  There was a time when we would be allowed to stay in our own town for a week.  This was after 5 or 6 weeks of travel.  Giving techs the chance to catch up at home.  A break from travel.  Later this was modified an no longer offered.  Other changes came that took away any incentive for a tech to finish up work early to catch an earlier flight home.  Techs were now sent to another service call late in the week, thus pushing our hours well over 60 hrs per week.  Often I would catch a flight out very early Monday morning and return late Friday or early Saturday, just to turn around and do it again come Monday.  Continuing to work at this pace with only being home on weekends became unsustainable.  With this work schedule, I lost myself and no longer was able to enjoy any of my own time while home.  During my weekends.  All my energy went to my wife and children.  I didn't have much time for myself anymore. My wife was extremely understanding in that regard and made efforts to ensure opportunities for me play golf and play on my weekly Hockey league. I believe she is an exception and not everyone has this kind of relationship.  These were the main reasons I walked away from this job.  I always felt that I was underpaid for my talents and the service that I provided to Zeiss.   Years later I realize that this was true.  It was frustrating to be required to travel away from family. Then provide a highly technical service to customers.  Only to watch overpaid Union labor sit and complain about their situation when they were being paid a much higher wage than I was while they sat and watched fully automated equipment run.   Very frustrating and discouraging.
Nothing about traveling for work is desirable.  It's not glamorous.  You drive by places you would like to see, but don't have time to stop.  You sleep in a different bed every week.  Some good.  Some not so good.  And you spend a great deal of time alone with your work.  You need to honest with yourself and what you want in life.

My typical day included making the coffee and organizing the 6 kitchens in the morning as well as straightening the 15 conference rooms. Maintaining the 6 monitors throughout the company displaying images of the companies business. Answering phones and greeting visitors in the Lobby. Preparing guests for their visit. Maintaining company directory, IT Email Aliases, Office Supply List, Conference Rooms List, Kitchen Supplies Charts, supporting Finance with their Accounts Payables mail and assisting in any projects. Inventory, ordering and stocking of kitchen supplies and office supplies. Fedexing samples, documents, etc.. Distribution of mail. Maintaining office equipment. On-bboarding and off-boarding employees. Catering lunches and other company functions. Assisting in hotel reservations and any other request from the ~110 employees.
Filing. Assisting Executive Admin in any tasks that they may need. My main task was being the face of the company, greeting our guests with professionalism and a welcoming manner.

I learned to be more productive in my work, coordinating projects in sync of each other so that time was saved. For example, I would make my errands at the same time if at all possible, such as delivering mail, dropping off shipment packages, inventory of office and kitchen supplies and re-stocking the kitchens again in the afternoon.

I worked with some of the smartest people I have every worked with before. I had immense amount of respect for management and my goal was to exceed their expectations and reassure them that I was there to do the best job I could and that I was reliable and trust worthy.

My co-workers were fantastic. I really enjoyed working along some of the most incredible, hard working employees. There were laughs but there was also the time to complete tasks and the teamwork was a great experience for me. 

The hardest part of the job was having the leave the company. But while I was contracting, the hardest part was pulling myself away and ending my day on schedule.

The most enjoyable and incredible part of being the Office Admin is that I got to create the front lobby as I saw fit. I was able to create a warm and inviting atmosphere where I got to make each visitor feel welcomed. I truly enjoyed the day to day tasks I did at this company.

When I first started with this company, I actually enjoyed the exercise aspect of the job, walking miles and miles AND miles everyday.
I got in GREAT shape in a short amount of time.
I always made my quota.
There was a lot of favoritism between one supervisor  and his favorite picker …(a heavy African American women)….. He enabled her bad behavior, even knowing she would provoke circumstances, and she never got in trouble only the ones she provoked would get reprimanded and or fired!
They also had a mandatory overtime, they never had enough staff and that would fall on the ones who were foolish enough to show up for the day. All day it would hang over our heads if we didn't move fast enough (which everyone I worked with moved fast every minute of the day ) And yet fast enough was never really fast enough due to more orders coming in than staff could pick.
So all day even though you are exhausted and sweating on top of sweating all day and OHMYGOSH make it stop....then all of a sudden ….we have to stay an extra 2 hours OT.....CMON...…. then after all that loyalty ,hard work and dedication.....if the sups favorite decided you were more productive than she was, (which wasn't hard to do as she would rarely take 4 steps without stopping to shove snacks into her mouth) she will start trouble and you better handle it right or early next morning you will be getting a phone call to not come back to work. I watched it happen repeatedly. She was the reason we didn't have enough workers.
I really did like this job in respect to running around all day! I tried to keep a positive attitude about it and think of shedding pounds,(which I did !)  … :-)
really though the stress of quota and  the scenario with the SUP and his favorite, made it not worth it!
I ended up finding a much better job that is a lot less stressful and I have been there since leaving Carl Zeiss Hebron KY.

Many of the jobs are easy at this Zeiss, the workload however can vary drastically. From super slammed to basically nothing within the same week. This is because management can't quite figure out how to 'steady' the workflow.
For example, Line A can be backed up with just 1-2 workers, but Line B (the one feeds line A) has anywhere between 7-10 employees.
Why not take a few workers from Line B to temporally help Line A catch up? Well that is a question management can't answer. 

Management doesn't feel guilty about guilt-tripping you into working o/t. One thing I'll say is to NEVER accept a request to work o/t. 
I don't, and they still ask me everyday to stay late.

1st shift is entitled, 2nd is rushed and therefore they produce lower quality items, and 3rd is basically forgotten about in all aspects. 1st shift actively harasses 3rd "because 3rd doesn't do anything." 
H.R. is run by 1 person who is there 1/4 of the entire work week if you're lucky. Some weeks H.R. isn't there. Floor managers also don't know how to fill out a accident report as I had to do the whole thing myself.

One of the few good things about Zeiss is that the benefits are decent. Healthcare is good and you can get a truck load of other benefits you can tack on too if you want. 
Job security is extremely high, just meet or barely meet quota and you're guaranteed to stay. 


An average day consisted of calling renewal customers, and customers, whose equipment was expiring out of warranty.
I sold service agreements on Medical Equipment..I also used fax press, to fax out many renewals daily as well.
I was in a queue and answered many calls for all regions, and handled customer service for my many states and other regions..

I learned how to work in Trade Shows, and learned SAP, along with Lotus Notes and quite a bit about the medical equipment I was selling service agreements on.

I appreciated management and worked well with them.

I trained some of my Co Workers and also got along well in a group environment.

The hardest part of the job was when we were understaffed, and they did not get temporary help right away. We managed and I worked as hard as I could to help the department.

The most enjoyable part of my job was selling service agreements.
 
I love to problem solve as well and was great at solving customers problems and then closing the deals!

I also was the only salesperson asked to do a 9 month project of only calling customers out of warranty in all 50 states. I brought the average 20% take rate of out of warranty to a 40% take rate!! I am proud of that fact!

I recently completed an internship that has truly been an incredible experience. Despite the fact that the pay was minimum wage, the value I gained from this opportunity far outweighs any financial considerations. From day one, I was immersed in a dynamic and stimulating environment where I had the chance to work alongside industry professionals and learn from their expertise. The company's commitment to nurturing interns' growth and providing hands-on training was evident in every aspect of my time there.

Not only did I gain valuable technical skills relevant to my field, but I was also exposed to a range of real-world challenges and projects that allowed me to apply my knowledge in a practical setting. The supportive and collaborative culture fostered within the organization further enhanced my learning experience, as I had ample opportunities to seek guidance and advice from my colleagues.

Despite the modest compensation, the wealth of knowledge and practical skills I acquired during my internship will undoubtedly prove invaluable in my future endeavors. I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to be part of such an amazing internship, and I would highly recommend it to anyone seeking a transformative learning experience.

Each day when you get to work you have to check if the machine is ready for the next person or yourself to do that day. If not most of the time you might help your co workers or even clean the production floor. 

Everyone of the co workers are great to work with. Always had fun helping and learning from each other. 

As for management, they treat employees unfair. Don't want to go into details but hope this will change so people will stay. It is a 5S company but does not  have standards to do things. There is no process and you have to memorize where everything goes. Have to take notes just to remember what to use or where the parts or cables go.

The hardest thing about the job is that there is nothing to do when your job is done. You will have to wait for the next person to finish their part before you can take over. If you help or talk to your co worker, you will get in trouble. 

The most enjoyable thing about the job is working with my fellow co workers. We help each other build the machines and trouble shoot the problems with the machines.

Like I said it would have been a good place to work if the management treat us as value employees and have a chance to get hired on.

The greatest challenges faced at Zeiss pertain to the large volume of AP processing required.  On a daily average, each of the 7-8 AP Specialist are met with 100+ invoices to process through this full cycle AP department.

That means, that as an AP Specialist, you are expected to receive directly the invoice from the vendor/supplier, sort and distribute the invoices for proper approval and then data entry processing of the invoices as well as ensure its payment processing.  At month end, each AP Specialist is obligated to account for the accrual of their range of vendors/suppliers and by use of highly advanced level of Excel (includes VLookups, Pivot Table, formulas, etc.) the invoices are reconciled and accruals are based on the accuracy of this data.

Sounds intense, but I find it very rewarding, for it has greatly improved my expertise in this field and allowed for a ranking of Senior Accounts Payable Analyst if I were to transition these skills to future employers.

I would recommend Zeiss to anyone looking to be challenged and willing to work hard to achieve superiority in the field of Accounting.

Horrible management. Horrible human resuorces department at that time. The CEO was unqualified at the very  top level and uneducated as were most in  top manament over me, when i was there.  They relished  in Firing  long term employees of many years when they wanted to save a buck and not pay out  benfits or pensions.  They in return Hred young inexperienced employees at low starting salaries in replace of these many long term qualified and experience  employees of many years and let them go when these employees needed the job most! Most all  middle aged and  then havng to go back in the work  force when they were close to retirement and collecting their pensions or 401k, and would then find getting another job at their salaries and age, close to impossible especially in this and recent job climate. Thats just one of the many inappropriate practices that were done on a daily basis.  In my opion not an equal opportunity employer by actual examples. I was not a disgruntled employee. Just didnt go along with their hostile working environment so they let me go. Best thing thst happened to me. 

You are required to work 6 & 7 days a week. They have a schedule where you are suppose to get a 2 day week-end every third week.  But they will often require you to work on that week-end off too. It is impossible to schedule any week end outings with family and friends unless you take vacation to cover it.  They ding you for attendance if you are 1 minute late checking in.  Even if you are unaware of this.  They do not tell you of infractions until they are writing you up.  Pay is very low, and their primary focus is on speed rather than on quality.  They claim they are trying to be the best lab in the country and yet they run the company like they are trying to be the worst. they push everyone to go as fast as they can and if customers complain about the quality the workers are blamed.   I am not the only one who feels this way, the entire work force is disgruntled with the company and moral is very low.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Field service engineer 5 salaries reported	$36.20 per hour
Customer service representative 3 salaries reported	$20.00 per hour
Field engineer 1 salary reported	$68,640 per year
Accounts receivable clerk 7 salaries reported	$28.50 per hour
Payroll specialist 9 salaries reported	$68,267 per year

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