Border States Reviews

3.5

63% would recommend to a friend

(210 total reviews)

Jason Seger

76% approve of CEO

52% positive business outlook

Border States has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 210 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Border States employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail and wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

210 reviews
1.0
19 Sept 2016

Welcome to the 1950's American Workforce!

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Even though it is a large company, you feel like you are working in a small company because of the size of each branch.

Cons

Over promise and under deliver. When I started my interview process I gave them my salary requirements and throughout the whole process said that it was not an issue, after 5 interviews they offered me $10,000 less then the minimum I told them, then told me not to worry about it because they would make me hourly and I could get as much overtime as I wanted...I was super uncomfortable with the whole situation, but decided to give it a try. After about 5 weeks of employment I was brought into my bosses office and told that I was not allowed to get any overtime...so now not only was I an unwilling hourly employee, I couldn't supplement my low income with the overtime they promised. If you like printing 1000's of sheets of paper a day, working via fax machine, the US mail and communicating mostly over the phone you will enjoy BSE. You will be the personal secretary to all the men in the office if you are a women and they will introduce you to customers as "my gal" or "my girl". My boss was making 3 times my salary and I had to show him how to add a column to a spreadsheet and was his personal "go-to" on giving him advice on how to be a boss. Quintessential 1950's offices with men making big bucks doing little to no work, except smooshing their customers and treating the women employees like housewives. No laptops, no working from home, no digital tools, just basis phone and pen and paper work. I was actually surprised that they did not have a switchboard operator answering the phones and we didn't have rotary telephones at our desk with a pad of paper and a pencil. Also could not figure out how a women was running the company, without every having met her, I can say she did seem like a bright woman trying to make improvements to the growth of the company. None of the employees know how to use technology and they are totally okay with it. My team was working in an excel sheet that took about 15 minutes to open and save, I asked them if they tried to fix it and they said that they had had the corporate IT team look at it multiple times. I opened the sheet and saw they had the margins set out to column XXY and row 86,999, I reset the margins and the document was fine. No one wants to change or improve anything, they like to come to work, do their minimum job and leave. Tried to offer a ton of improvements/ideas and implement new technologies and no one was interested or followed them, their way of business as worked for the past 50 years so that is how they will continue to do it.

3.0
18 Aug 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Financial insights are shared, at least they have a bonus structure. Annual cost of living pay raises are typical. Scheduling flexibility (if you're just a cog).

Cons

I could write a novel... There's two tiers of leadership that aren't contributing much value - just glorified layers of project management. Management style is top down; so don't expect to exercise your brain. Clusters of management operate like a clique. From a technology standpoint this company is in the process of getting stomped. Insurance deductibles and premiums are going up rapidly. Changes to benefits are poorly communicated at the last second before open enrollment. (Quite a few of us had to change dentists, for example). There are many employees waiting for turnover of the 'old guard' to see if new leadership has the guts to clean house and start calling out top-heavy structure and blame-shifting strategies of the BSE IT leadership. Heavy amount of contracting work = no accountability. Blindly following SAP's guidance on whatever dumpster fire they're selling = IT strategy. Talking about ideas = innovation. There will be a day where BSE can't squeeze employees, contractors and processes for more efficiency. The hyper focus on efficiency and ignoring risk for innovation will make you prey to smaller fish.

2.0
23 Jan 2024

Much Room for Improvement

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

A lot of the people are great to work with. ESOP is a nice benefit for those that stick around long enough.

Cons

Leadership is going back in time instead of working to remain competitive and listen to the “valued” employee owners. Lack of remote work options and a Fargo first mentality for Corporate employees drives off very talented employees or potential employees. Lower pay than most competitors and not much other than ESOP for benefits. Don’t plan on any career advancement opportunities unless you’re a white male with the new leadership.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 210 Reviews

Glassdoor has 222 Border States reviews submitted anonymously by Border States employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Border States is right for you.