Pros
Tom Sullivan, who is in fact the owner of the company, but not overly involved in day to day operations is a genuinely good guy, who made the unfortunate choice of hiring Jeff Linden to lead the company. This company will once again be a good company to work for, once Jeff has been relieved of his position, and his numerous errors are corrected, and the customer is made the priority instead of false EOM numbers. I guess the greatest pro was to have worked for Tom, although indirectly. There are a great many good employees within the company...intelligent, helpful, team oriented players. I believe I have made some lifelong friends during my tenure with CTG.
Cons
Where to begin? Struggling with inventory issues, and poorly planned supply chain transitions has been an issue for well over a year at this point. The President of the company, Jeff Linden, has little to no understanding of the industry,has seemingly made no effort to learn it, and repeatedly fails to learn from his mistakes. He takes absolutely no ownership of his mistakes, but instead blames everyone else for the outcome of his failures. He tends to surround himself with those that will parrot him, and has absolutely no tolerance for constructive criticism, and in fact will bully and attempt to intimidate anyone that speaks up with a view other than his. The result of his poor planning and decisions has left the company in a free fall. Customer orders have gone from a 1-2 week lead time, to 3 week lead time, then 4-6 weeks and as of June 2014 are at a 6-8 week lead time. 80% of a customers order can get filled...but vital pieces will be missing and on back order, with Purchase Orders constantly being delayed by weeks and months, with no advance warning. This leaves the store employees as the front line and face to the customer, dealing with dissatisfied, frustrated and at times, hostile customers. The first half of 2014, 90% of my job became crises management....dealing with irate customers...phone calls, emails, etc. My stress level as well as that of my employees was off the chart. When your whole body tenses at the sound of the phone ringing....you know its going to be a long day...week...month. Promises month after month of getting ahead of the inventory issues were just that,,,promises..empty promises. National sales calls that are twice monthly became a waste of time......rainbows and unicorns, eventually no one would speak up and ask questions because we had all learned that Jeff is intolerant of criticism....or even questions for which he hadn't been given advance notice and didn't have a "canned" answer for. Implementing new software that he swore had been tested with every possible scenario...finding out time and time again that it just isn't compatible with the POS system. Having stores close out orders that haven't been received by the customer in order to make EOM #'s.....really just unethical practices. What good is falsifying EOM #'s to reach an arbitrary "goal" if that goal isn't truly met? Ahh...I guess I could go on and on....but the truth is..until Jeff is removed and replaced the current state of affairs will continue. Sad, but true. For work-life balance I would rate this job as a 0....working 50-70 hours a week, one day off a week and even that day is interrupted by calls about issues from the store/customers. Low pay/salary vs industry standards, and no cost of living adjustment based on geographic location.