Pros
The best thing about working in the Kansas City office was my peers in various departments. The people in customer service and sales really look out for each other and help each other out immensely because the job can be demanding and stressful and they truly operate as a team to make everyone as successful as possible. There is a divide, I felt, between office staff and operations that made things a lot harder than they had to be but overall the office staff were great and the only real thing I will miss about working there. The only reason why I am giving 2 stars because of the rest of the office staff I worked with there, Fry-Wagner has a great group of people working there and I feel they go greatly underappreciated. Monetarily speaking that is..
Cons
As great as the office staff was, I felt upper management was lacking heavily. When I first started, the training and support was average at best, they really throw you to the wolves there, but allow you to make mistakes because there is a learning curve in the moving industry. But once the initial love affair is over I felt upper management's support and availability really started to wane. There would be times where my supervisor would be out of town for several days with no notice (not that he has to clear it with me first or anything, it was business related) and completely unavailable during those times, maybe a heads up would be nice? There are certain individuals in operations management that are allowed to be rude and belligerent to members of customer service. I know in the 18 months I was there, one particular individual had 3 separate complaints on them for the way they treated other office associates. As far as I know, nothing was ever done about any of these complaints because that individual had been with the company for 20+ years. On one occasion, this person told me that "If I had been in the office when he received that (an email about a change of service for the next day) I would have been going to HR because he would have yelled and screamed at me so bad." Who says that? Why are people allowed to talk like that to fellow co-workers? These types of tirades were commonplace with this individual and whenever I confronted my supervisors about it, the answer I was given was, "That's just the way (he) is..." But my biggest reason for leaving was when I received my annual review, I met or exceeded expectations in every single category possible and was given a 1.5% raise (maximum was 2%). This 1.5% amounted to a whopping $16 more a paycheck or $500 more a year. I felt this was an insult to how hard I had been working. My job had turned into covering multiple desks outside of normal duties, which I had no problem doing because I felt it was beneficial to my career, I was doing a lot more than others in my position and felt I deserved to be treated better than 1.5%. If there was more opportunity for advancement in the company the low raises wouldn't be a problem, but there isn't, I figured I was going to be stuck with the same salary basically for a few years before I would actually start seeing a difference in pay. The company, and the moving industry as a whole, is ran by dinosaurs. There is nothing new and innovative happening at Fry- Wagner or any other moving company or agent of United Vanlines. Upper management will say they want new fresh blood and new ideas, but that is not the case, and once the people who are currently working there begin to retire, it will be hard to replace them because they do not appeal long term to younger professionals. Working at Fry-Wagner was like watching a movie that's pretty good, and then the ending is so bad the movie is totally ruined. I went in to give my two-week notice with a letter of resignation, trying to be professional and do the right thing, and I was fired immediately. I don't know of a lot of other legitimate companies that have such a practice, but if anyone who currently works at Fry-Wagner is reading this, you're better off just walking out and bailing on your job than to do the right thing a give notice.