Pros
401k match, company car, decent health benefits
Cons
I started this job with a lot of excitement and really enjoyed what I did and Reynolds’ approach to the business, especially when compared to our competitors. I felt like I was a business consultant, rather than just compliance police but those days are long gone. Since BAT has taken over, the shift in this position has been palpable. It is very obvious that management, both corporate and field, do not respect or appreciate the work that TMs do. You are not given the autonomy to make decisions that are best for the relationships you have worked to build up over time, and you’re forced to push products into stores knowing that it isn’t right for the stores. There has been a massive increase in workload, in the middle of a global pandemic. They have the audacity to send emails about caring about the health and safety of their employees, and extending work from home for corporate employees, while the field employees are expected to be in stores for hours, surrounded by people not wearing masks, coughing on you, just so you can change the merchandising that you just changed the last time you visited the store. If you bring up your concerns with your manager, they are minimized and ignored. We’re told to be happy to have a job at all, even though they continually find ways to screw us on our bonuses. Bonuses: this was the one thing you could pretty much count on. Now, you count on getting maybe half of what you previously earned. You’re doing more work, every year, and somehow, you’re earning less! How do they expect to retain talent or keep morale up? No hazard pay for being in harms way daily, and then they screw you on bonuses by forcing out a bunch of product and then setting the goal ridiculously high because technically, your “sales” are higher, but it’s all inflated. Stores are loaded with so much product, they don’t have to order for weeks or even months so it looks like you have declining sales. If you want to move up with the company, be prepared to do double the work for years and know you have to be able to move. If not, you’ll be a career territory manager, watching less than qualified people become your managers because they can move and they’ve never said a bad word about Reynolds. They don’t see constructive criticism as a positive. They don’t understand that when employees provide feedback, it’s because they are passionate about their jobs and care about the company and want to see things getting better. Transparency is a word they use a lot but opacity is one they should get more familiar with because there is only opacity. You will no longer have access to behind the scenes information. Your customers have access to the same information you do, and it really hurts your credibility, especially when your customers have more information than you. Imagine how embarrassing it is to find out about prices going up from your customer instead of being the ones informing them. You’ll launch new products but have no idea what you’re selling because everything is so hush hush. It’s depressing because it’s obvious that we are no longer trusted with information. Your intelligence will be insulted daily, and you’ll be gaslit on a constant basis. I read reviews of companies all the time, and I question if there’s disgruntled employees writing them. Please believe that the negative reviews you see on here are 100% accurate and you’ll be better off anywhere but here.
