Long Hours Leads To Terrible Home-Life Balance
Pros
Earning potential is rather unparalleled for someone with no college degree . My best years I was around $70k. Largely independent workload. Workload was digitized in the last couple years I was there. Big improvement over paper work orders for every job.
Cons
Piece rate work means you're not earning unless a job is completed. Drive an hour and no customer home? Sucks for you, you just lost a few hours of your day. Driving your own vehicle used to mean getting routed closer to home. Company changed their routing procedure to route everyone evenly. This led to a more even driving load among all employees but also means more time and gas, and less time earning for those of us who used our own vehicles. Essentially a decrease in pay for more time on the clock. I sensed the company's motive was to get rid of personal-vehicle employees. Work life balance is very difficult when you don't have any idea when you'll be done. Who can say whether you'll make the dinner date, or the kid's ball game, etc.? Opportunity for advancement is the biggest downfall. I put in many hours, many weekends, and many missed dinners but never 'advanced' due to the pay structure. Essentially, to take an Assistant Manager job would mean a large pay cut for the better hour structure. You could tell the Assistant Managers were just taking an easier course of action than field work until something better came along.