When I interviewed with the company in December 2010, I was certainly sold a great bill of goods: good benefits, work-life balance, ability to telecommute, and the hours were only tough during closing. Once I got there, however, things changed within a week. I immediately picked up on a "vibe" of mistrust and fear. I quickly learned that the Staff Accountant position at Allied Waste - at least as it pertains to the Seatle area - has most of the accounting duties placed squarely on its shoulders: Most of the closing, all SOX testing, all account reconciliations (a very complex and overly-detailed process), inventory, and (at least at the time) all the accounts payable for the divisions. I frankly am still not sure what the division Controller actually did. This is in addition to the budgeting process which is, at best, cumbersome and ultimately not worth the inordinate amount of time put into it, because you ended up being given a certain bottom line number and you were expected to work to that number, rather than reality. This made for long days, fear of reprisal if you made even the smallest error, and constant worry about not getting things done on time and the repurcussions that would follow. The Controller at the time had been with the company for many years, 5 years at that division, and was the most inconsistent, beligerant and angry manager I've ever worked for. Because she had been there a while she felt she was absolutely untouchable. She could be nice one d
Decent job when no other option is around (Temp agency)
Keep in mind this review is from someone who was working via the employment of a temp agency, which I do not recall the name of. This job was also worked a significant time ago, and due to the temp agency, I was provided with no benefits whatsoever.
The job itself was extremely fast-paced, requiring at least 30 picks a minute to be done on the job when able, with mandatory safety equipment provided by the agency such as gloves, glasses, reflective vest, sleeves, and helmet. However, at times it can be stressful, especially if you are trying to avoid a needle stick from the common needle or another hazard when your gloves ware away, which by the end of the week is a frequent occurrence as the provided gloves degrade to the point that the protective rubber matting is torn away to reveal either the fabric under it or entirely to an unguarded hand. These gloves were replaced every Monday, but you still had to worry about this when Friday came (Or Saturday, if you had to work then)
I frequently heard reports of understaffing in the job, and I can confirm that this is true, as the temp agency was guilty of being very picky about who they picked and often let all of the would-be newcomers go, despite protests from the other workers about the lack of staffing and the high population of open spaces in the sorting areas, especially that of the main conveyor belt. In fact, come to think of it... I was among 5 who were selected to be studied and trained to work, and I was the only
ProsFree provided water, hires felons, minimal skill required, vending machines with lunches are present
ConsShort breaks, long hours, heavy understaffing problem, lunch is unpaid, similar hourly pay to jobs with less effort and dexterity requirements
I accepted a supervisor position with this company thinking they offered nights and weekends off. When I interviewed with them I stressed this point and was told they firmly believed in a good quality of life mix. I started on MLK day; which is a holiday for the drivers. The management team reported for work on MLK day. On my first day I asked an existing supervisor how many hours a day he averaged. He told me he averaged 15 hours a day. It turns out he was telling the truth. We had to work the Saturday after MLK day and ended up putting in 70+ hours the first week. I noticed that all management above my level took the Saturday off. The supervisors were the only group forced to put in a 6 day week. The next week the 15+ hour days continued. When I got home I had time to eat and go to bed. This left you with an average of 5 to 6 hours of sleep a night. The hourly group had very low morale and even went on strike while I was there. The strike forced the supervisors into a 7 day work week without any days off for 12 days and a total of 180 hours. The operation was in complete chaos and upper management hammered me and another new supervisor without mercy . Both of us ended up resigning in less than two weeks. My experience with this company was nothing short of a disaster. When you divided your salary by hours worked, you realized you were making less than the hourly group. After I was in place I also realized there were no paid holidays off. When a holiday fell on a week day yo
Pros5 personal days and 5 vacation days the first year.
A typical day for a residential driver starts at 6 am, on the road by 6:45, at the route at 7 or 7:15.
What I leaned:
Your customers may live in modest houses, or mansions, and many will fail to follow the simple instructions of putting out the container.
The Republic online FAQ says:
"Yes, typically all trash must be bagged and placed inside your approved garbage receptacle or provided wheeled cart." Good luck with that, and expect to be sent back to pick up anything that falls out of the cart.
The Republic FAQ says nothing about placement of the cart, and the container has no instructions either.
Since the container is manipulated by a robotic arm viewed in the rearview mirror, I consider failing to specify and enforce rules of placement an omission placing a uneeded burden upon the driver.
The city of Indianapolis containers have instructions, one being "five feet from any other objects" If the container is too close, Indy DPW will ignore it, but Republic will radio the driver and tell them to go back and pick it up. Your entire route (700 to 1200 containers) will most likely fail the "five foot" rule.
The shop is notorious for "problem not found" comments when a truck problem is written up. I was told by two employees that "the shop manager doesn't like you" six months after speaking to him once.
Management:
Management is in turmoil, 2016 has seen an operations manager replaced, supervisors shuffled around, the general manager replaced
ProsThe paycheck, that's it.
ConsA succession of customers failing to follow simple instructions.
The AAM does it all for little pay and less respect
The AAM role is abused and unappreciated with no clear purpose and with unrealistic expectations. You’re hired to maintain and retain existing commercial accounts (your book of business), but what they don’t tell you is you’re also expected to handle billing, collections, dispatching, operations, sales, residential customers, and anything else leadership/management decide they want to pile on because the AAM role is really just a catch all. Under recent restructuring, you’re also expected to handle calls and accounts from business units that could be in a different state from you, but you’re not part of a call center or customer service center 🤨Change is constant with no rhyme or reason, and presented under the guise of “improving customer zeal”. There is no support for the AAMs to provide customer zeal. There are constant glitches with the software, the phone system has been changed for the worse, and there is little to no training, resources, or onboarding; especially not for new AAMs. In fact, you’re expected to start working with customers right away, and then months later put through sales classes and expected to certify in the sales process like it’s important all of the sudden. Very backwards. The little pay for the immense amount of work and stress level is not worth it, and the commission plan leaves much to be desired especially because it can change when and how management sees fit. The role is remote, so if you want to work from home that could be a benefit. Ther
ProsRemote, good insurance, overtime available but not mandatory
ConsResponsibilities don’t align with pay, commission and role can be restructured at any time, poor leadership/management
All was well in the beginning started making really good money, great benefits, paid vacation. Then after 1 year we had a major restructure, it seems of the whole company. My pay was cut in half with no explanation. After several MONTHS of trying to get in touch with management about this I was told the pay cut was due to the new pay structure that we switched to, which when I spoke to the CFO he could not explain to me how exactly our pay was structured! Mind you after my 2nd year the GM and the CFO where fired and escorted off the premises. So that situation was never resolved but even with the pay cut i was still making decent money so I stuck it out. Now at year 5, I received a new to me truck that was better than my previous truck, mind you at times the old truck had no A/C and I'm in Houston with 100 degree summers in the cab it was close to 130. I drove the new truck for right under a year then the last few months that i was at the company was told that they were sending my truck to another yard and I was getting another truck. This was very upsetting so I spoke to my manager and said that's fine what truck am I going in. I was told that I was to go back into my old truck. I told him that it was not acceptable and I would be willing to go back in my old truck if I had the opportunity to get a newer truck when they arrived in September. I was told that was not gonna happen because seniority had those trucks allocated to people already. After this I said I will not work
I ensure all facts included in this review are true and accurate. Best part of the job was walking to my car every night to go home. Worst part is everything below. Ultimately, I learned a great deal and bettered my skills from the great co workers here. Without them I wouldn’t be the mechanic I am today.
I left an awesome company to work here. By taking that leap and starting my job with this company I envisioned something completely opposite from what I got. Going to work with a positive attitude and busting your bUtT gets you know where here. In bad faith, management will put you on the back burner. They go against all company culture and values, while pinning workers w/ problems out of workers control. Like literally read the hand book they don’t follow. Driver’s errors and negligence while operating vehicles ultimately get blamed on mechanics. Have a safety issue a driver reports weeks after the work order date becomes your problem and mechanics get reprimanded for it.
Need a day off? Have an emergency? Just forget about it. If you have no time off available which can’t start accumulating until your annual start date.
I know I was drove off, I know this company looked for ways to get rid of me. When I was threatened day by day that I was going to be fired. I was walking on eggshells and was forced to put my two weeks in. But wait doing that makes them mad and they WILL fire you on the spot. Leading to unemployment denying me because according to them I “left on
Misleading, unprofessional, will take advantage of you
I worked here as a temp for 8 months. A month in my job responsibilities changed, was given more to do with no pay increase. 2 months in, I have more responsibilities due to someone leaving (hated Republic and found a better job) still no pay increase but receiving glowing reviews from management. 3 months in I'm being promised permanent positions as soon as temp agency releases me. From this point on I'm given way more responsibilities, pretty much the office manager ordering office supplies, completing reports I received no proper training to complete, still being patted on the back and now I'm asked to please not look for another job because I have an incredible pay increase and permanent job waiting. Finally able to interview for a job, according to the sup I'm the best candidate, have the best interviews and she tells me I pretty much have the job. One day I'm asked to create a spreadsheet for the manager, he asked how long it would take to complete. I gave him an honest answer and expressed I had one major pressing thing that I had to finish up, but would get to his task immediately after. According to supervisor, the manager didn't like my answer. From that moment on (while still performing the same, producing the same quality work) he didn't like my reports, or my work. This man never approached me to inform me that my work was lacking, or was subpar, or to complain about anything that I was doing, but because he did not like literally one response from me (which by t
ProsThey sometimes provided free lunch.
ConsUnprofessional and underdeveloped management
3.0
Operations Supervisor | Houston, TX | Mar 26, 2017
The smell of trash is really the smell of money
Benefits overall are above average. The weekly paychecks make managing a family budget easier. The waste business is recession resistant.
Cons
The division I was at had some deep cultural issues that can only be fixed with time or bringing on an entire new group of employees. The maintenance shop would start to gain traction, that meant they were spending money. Then someone higher up would put the brakes on the maintenance spend and you would have 25% of your fleet down for repairs. The focus was often on the budget and not the long term payoff for a a short term spend. The billing process was very archaic and manually driven. They use multiple software programs that do not talk to each other. The software they do use is cumbersome and requires a lot of tribal knowledge versus a clean organized one stop depository of information and functionality. For a multi-billion dollar company some of the management behaves like they are going broke. Plans are made and then dropped with no communication. They talk about work life balance, which means the guys who actually know how to work and accomplish the daily task of getting up the trash and making hauls do the work and the slugs get to have a life.
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Advice to Management
When you do not see any upward mobility for a legitimate career path people become frustrated. Do not be so worried about the penny on the ground focus on the dollar you just stepped over. Safety, service then worry about cost. If you p
Too much overtime and management unwilling to change anything
The pros- they recently raised wages so the pay is pretty good now and they give you a good amount of PTO. You can move up the ladder if you want to. There is job security even when the economy was weak and throughout Covid shutdowns. Sometimes they get food trucks and buy you lunch.
The cons- #1 you work your life away. They tell you right up front that they expect 53-55 hrs a week, but often it is pushing the DOT maximum of 60 hrs, especially spring through fall. It used to slow down to 40-45 hrs in winter but that doesn’t happen anymore. Maybe would be a good job for a single person or someone who doesn’t care to see their family much or needs a lot of overtime hours. Constantly understaffed. You punch in and you are expected to go until your route is done no matter what, and if you really bust your butt and finish in a reasonable amount of time, guess what- your reward is to help another driver or take on more work. An 8 hr day is considered leaving early. Then when guys get burned out and quit, the bosses’ mantra is “nobody wants to work.” Often you have to work through lunch break just to finish on time and supervision turns a blind eye to it as long as the work gets done. They preach a “safety first” philosophy but in reality there is always a demand to do more, faster and with less. The turnover rate is horrendous because of the hours, even among supervision and upper management. I have had 3 different supervisors in 2 years. Benefits are not that good and they’re
ProsJob security
ConsWay too many hours, perpetually understaffed
Questions And Answers about Republic Services
What is the best part of working at Republic Services?
Asked Nov 30, 2019
The paycheck
Answered May 20, 2022
Safety Meeting.
Answered May 17, 2022
Why did you leave your job at Republic Services?
Asked Mar 22, 2017
Not only are the “higher ups” uneducated about policies and procedures they also don’t seem to care about safety. I was written up for a faulty tire that blew out on me while working there . Not only had they known about it for months prior, it was also steadily getting worse. When the tire blew I was blamed for a misuse and abuse and told that it was preventable.
Answered Sep 23, 2020
After 11 years there I was targeted by human resources and supervisor after a small injury. They accused me of lying about the injury and then accused me of not working up to standards . I was terminated shortly after that.
Answered Mar 17, 2020
If you were in charge, what would you do to make Republic Services a better place to work?
Asked Feb 1, 2017
If I was in charge I would make training for mechanics a must everyone wants money but you can’t expect a company to invest thousands of dollars in a person that would not invest 15 min of their time to get a certification on their own or at least offer it to the people that really want it then maybe the people that think just because they can remove a part off a truck that their the best tech in the building education training communication would take Republic service to the next level
Answered Mar 13, 2021
More loyalty to the mechanics. There is definitely this feel that the mechanics were tools in Republic services toolbox. Expendable at the earliest convenience
Answered Dec 5, 2020
What is the work environment and culture like at Republic Services?
Asked Jun 27, 2016
Employees are harassed, some workers are treated like trash even when said person is the only one actually working %90 of the time. Favoritism towards the ones who don’t work and special treatment for those who don’t deserve it, I wear corrective lenses and had to repeatedly ask for corrective safety glasses so I could work safe and instead of them getting them they just didn’t. I asked for about 9 months before giving up. I was “let go “ shortly after complaining about it to HR .
Answered Sep 23, 2020
Management is uneducated and dishonest at best and they seem to support negativity in the work place. They do little to help employees succeed and they are known to start rumors from the top down.
Answered Nov 9, 2019
What is the interview process like at Republic Services?
Asked Jun 27, 2016
The interview process can be pretty slow. Background checks sometimes take a while.
Answered Apr 14, 2022
Interview process was easy they never have enough help so as long as you show up for the interview you’re getting a job