Pros
-Complimentary holiday beer. Grey Eagle gives their employees beer from a new supplier brought in and/or older beer that is set to expire in the warehouse. Expired beer: There is no organized way to monitor expired beer that is written up. Either throw away, give away, or take home and drink yourself. -Decent benefits. 50% match on 401k up to 6% contributions. From others I've spoken with, that's a generous benefit these days. Companies across the U.S. have really cut back. -The use of the company van for personal use is a real benefit. Grey Eagle allows their employees to take the van home during the week and weekends. It helps save on time from coming to the office everyday during intense traffic hours. This helps the reps get their days started earlier and helps end their days quicker. Much more efficient for all parties. From my networking experiences in the years working at Grey Eagle, the reputation of being an employee there seemed to carry well throughout the community. It's a great resume builder. Use their name! They use you.
Cons
Where do I begin..... -As a person who worked hard, showed up to work consistently, and put in many good years, you would think that would translate to real dollars for my pocket. Not the case. Grey Eagle is a penny-pincher company whom only cares about their bottom line and doesn't realize that investing in their employees, both financially and emotionally, would benefit them in the long run. Oh and interviewing for a same-level position every few months and providing the same resume that hasn't changed over 4 years, is a head scratcher to me. I understand following guidelines and protocol, but it was near laughable when the interviews actually took place. I had to keep telling myself in my head not to laugh in most interviews I was taking a part in. Unless you catch the eye of one of the few in charge of making such decisions, you didn't have a chance. Again, the way they conduct their interview process is strange to me. You have turnover sky high, but still conduct your company as being an A class organization, while directly and indirectly being a part of or witnessing such strange and unorthodox behaviors with hiring, promoting, and rejecting positions. I would love to be a fly on the wall when these few discuss who moves up and who stays put. It's not rocket science, it's beer sales. This is why this is so insanely laughable. And even if a promotion does occur, it is very difficult to have a secure and steady financial foundation with the low amount of annual salary you receive. I look at Grey Eagle as a beer school. Get a job here to get your foot in the door to the beer industry, network yourself with your supplies, and hopefully an opening with one of those suppliers will open up. Jump on it, if that opportunity arises. Financially, you cannot sustain longevity at Grey Eagle. Salary and holidays... -I've never known another company that handles it's holiday and weekend schedules the way Grey Eagle does. For example, if the company is closed on Memorial Day, sales reps. still have to work on Memorial Day, no matter what the reason is. Even though in the employee handbook it states all employees are off on Memorial Day. Another problem i've noticed is a reoccuring habit throughout the sales departments that the sales managers pressure their suborbinates to work on Sundays, even during non holiday weeks. Even if the pay was respectable, no amount of money should equal working 6 days per week and getting work related phone calls and texts on all 7 days per week. Since it is salary, that doesn't equal time and a half or overtime. 5 day work weeks equal 7 day work weeks. If you refused to work on Sundays, you still had too. By not working, the hard work you put into the Monday-Friday work week would be thrown by the waist side and you would be known as the person would didn't work on Sundays. I guess I'm the only former employee who has a wife and family at home wanting to spend time with me on Sundays. As you are reading, you're probably picking up on how my frustrations are mounting as I type. Another issue is the sales staff has to be on call every weekend. If a bar blows through a keg, guess who has to deliver them a new one? Yep, you guessed it, the rep. If Grey Eagle wants to run their business as a 24/7 beverage distributor service, that is perfectly fine, but don't put all of the responsibilities of weekend sales service on your sales staff. Doctors have rotations and are on call on weekends, but they are compensated handsomely for this. Grey Eagle is not. 28k annually isn't worth this service. I am fuming as to wonder how Grey Eagle sleeps at night conducting their business this way. I hope Grey Eagle is reading this and will for once in their life, think of someone other than themselves. We all aren't fortunate enough to be born rich. And you want to keep yourself rich by compensating your sales staff, whom are the foundation and heartbeat for your company, by pressuring and celebrating the ideals of 24/7 sales service. 100k annually may be enough for such an unorthodox business model. My advice would be to have a trained sales department to cover these glitches. This staff covers the non M-F sales staff responsibilities and duties. They also cover holidays that every full time sales employee that is granted according to the employee handbook. This means Grey Eagle will have to invest into their staff. Oh boy! LOL. Good luck with that. Have a team trained to cover holidays and weekends that sales reps. are suppose to be granted off for. OFF of work where we are home with our families. We are not working, worried about work, or dealing with work. Incentives and perks.. -In an interview once, I was told my pay would decrease from a sales assistant to sales rep. What in the heck does that mean? I know what it means, but geez? My perk would be getting a Dodge Caravan. Holy smokes! Did I just win the lottery? No. Instead, I had to go home and tell my wife that I got a promotion, but my salary is decreasing. Her head turned in a almost 45 degree angle. Saying to herself, my husband is a moron for working for this company. It's the same look that my dog does when I ask her if she wants a treat. Geez. It's embarrassing to have to explain this to my family. Anyways, back to it. I was told my salary decreases, but I get to have a van. This means, I get to take a minivan home and have it for 24/7 service. A positive note, it is nice to have a vehicle 24/7. It is nice to have an office on wheels, since I was on the road a lot. It doesn't warrant taking advantage with decreasing pay to your employees whom basically work 24/7 and have 4 days off per month. Grey Eagle's mind=Van for sales rep. Under entry level annual compensation. Sales assistants a little higher, but not entry level either. Now, that's not my entire pay. I do have incentive opportunities. Two consistent monthly incentives. The first one can put extra cash in your pocket every month, not enough to get overly excited about. Second, is the monthly quota payout. If earned, can be decent, but read below before you get excited. I struggle with this incentive morally. Grey Eagle quota payout structure is the entire sales staff has to achieve a sales volumn quota goal. The other portion of this incentive is each sales team has to achieve a sales volumn quota goal. A two parter. I've never heard of a company setting their sales quota as a team and not individual. For example, I can ask for an individual monthly total volumn case count for what my route sold for that month on the previous year and shoot for that goal. Seems reasonable and simple. Not overwhelming. If my route's monthly volumn case count was 20,000 cases of beer sold for that month and I sell 21,000, but my sales dept. team falls short of the sales quota goal, I get $0. Then, the same month, let's say entire sales staff falls short of the monthly volumn quota goal, I receive $0. I bust my butt for the month, no, DO MY JOB, I get $0 reward for this. I have to go home and tell my wife, my salary for the month is all we are getting. It's a difficult conversation to have with a mortgage, blablabla, and more blablabla bills. You get my drift. Grey Eagle is smart and this incentive structure is flawed and benefits them only. You see, it's like gambling. I play 10 rounds of blackjack. I win 2 of the 10 rounds, house wins. Same goes for Grey Eagle's sales quota structure, the sales staff may make quota 3 out of the 12 months, but fall short the other 9, the house wins. Grey Eagle wins. They know of those 9 months or whatever months we fall short. The sales staff will be very close in monthly sales case volumn to make quota, but most months, seem to be short by a few hundred to a thousand cases. In the head of Grey Eagle, they are happy. Publically, they will let us know, along with the sales managers, how disappointed they all are. It is a twisted system. Meetings.. Grey Eagle loves their meetings. Meetings are very informative and beneficial. They want the sales staff to have meetings every Friday and some supplier meetings other days of the week. I would say, half of the meetings should be cut completely. These can be communicated through email. We are educated adults, stop the controlling tactics! 2 sales meetings per month are more than adequate. Annual performance reviews and raises.. -Another abusive tactic by Grey Eagle. No matter how many gold stars you get, I'm kidding. How well your annual performance review was, every sales rep. gets the same percentage raise. Hard pill to swallow. No need to comment further. Laying out the facts for you. If you want to challenge the raise or have questions as to how the sales management came to their reviews of you, your frustration will mount. It will be like talking to a wall. They are trained to take it and give minimal responses. Very similar to getting responses from politicians. Supplier Incentives-This is both a positive and a negative. Positive being most supplier incentives are in the form of trips. I would say most, but at least 50% and the other 50% is in the form of cash. Not too bad. The trips portion is both positive and negative. Who wouldn't want to go to Breckenridge, CO to visit Breckenridge brewery, if you were the top sales person and won a weekend trip! The negative is Grey Eagle uses suppliers as a form of potential compensation or part of the sales reps. total salary, including potential incentive payouts. For one, trips do not equal cash and will not pay for my mortgage payment every month. Two, shame on them for taking advantage of your clients/suppliers and taking advantage of your employees. Pay us! I'm sure I missed something or butchered a topic. I apologize for sentence fragments, poor punctuation, and misspelled words. I hope you get what you need out of this review. I am not here to bash a company, I just want applicants to understand what they are fully investing in. Both the positive and negative.