Pros
This company was a dream come true when I first started and continued to be everything I could ask for an more even after the first 2 half years of working with Custom Ink. I was challenged, paid very well for what was asked to accomplish day to day, easy to understand and achievable pay structure, almost 100% paid for benefits, extensive Paid Time Off, free meals twice a week, game room, gym, fun caring atmosphere, opportunity to grow, a lot of Overtime, as well as fun summer company BBQ's and holiday parties. The fun, genuine, caring culture was something I did not think any company was capable of producing based on my past experience from corporate businesses. In short I excelled, thrived and quickly felt like I was in apart of a company who truly cared about me as a person and saw what I was capable of when others had not. This was all based on the three morals of Custom Ink, Ownership, Golden Rule and Innovation as well as strategically positioning myself under a smart, capable manager.
Cons
About a year ago we experienced a big change in leadership specifically in the sales dept. and nothing has been the same since. Change is not something most of us come easy by but we all understand that it is necessary. Most Inkers are champions of change and can role with the punches especially when the company is growing at such a large rate. However what is more important than how employees handle change is how the leadership team manages it for their teams. New bonus structures were introduced, which were initially described as simple, easy to understand and for our benefit. The idea was great but the implementation was nothing short of a disaster. Sales employees no longer know how much in bonuses they will make until the last minute before their paychecks are issued. The managers for each team do not have the power to control or make exceptions for their team when situations arise that are out of the reps control such as a spam customer rating an employee low which results in the employees bonus being taking away since they did not have a high enough customer rating at the end of the month. Examples of this are a daily and multi employee problem. When managers went to upper leadership to be advocates for their teams they were met with answers such as No we cannot make an exception and run around responses which did not resolve the issue at hand. Changes to the pay structure were sent out to team without little notice and were heavy in business jargon and difficult to understand. The sales floor mentality of the Golden Rule, treat others like you would want to be treated went out the window and it became a shark eat shark sales environment. Reps cancel other reps orders, they trick customers into placing orders so they can bump their bonus and would use unethical tactics to make sure they had a sizable bonus at the end of the month. When Managers and team Leaders would see this happening on a daily basis and brought it to the attention of the Upper Leadership teams, no guidelines or rules were created. Instead they were asked to provide feedback to those representatives and hope it would not happen again. Custom Ink once was a company who equally cared for its customers, the business and the employees and now has turned into a company who has forgotten how to properly care for the employees. It has created an emotionally unsafe and discouraging environment to work in. The bottom line is the new target and it shows in every decision that is made recently. It looks great on paper but is dying on the inside, and at what cost...
