Culina Group Reviews

Bad management Drivers treated like dirt Will push your hours to the max then ring and pester you to get back as they dont have enough trucks to go around. Can sit around hours waiting for a unit. Useless transport staff that deliberatly aim to make your shift worse in some cases. Actually witnessed this first hand whilst in the office the once. No set start times. 12 hour window and when there i had awful weeks where my start time would span the full 12 hour window then they expect you to reduce your rest to help them out after they just done you over (and laugh about it) Badly planned runs. Clearly planned or routed by people that have no idea or any road experience. Will start you early by 4 hours in some cases so your shift isnt a short one. You will sit around hours and hours waiting for trailer to be loaded when they knew full well it would not be ready when they asked you to start. When you get back to the yard ready to go home after a 11/12 hour shift they will send you back out with no warning to do more collections. Will route you to a night out run and not even tell you until your in the transport office. Paperwork is through the roof. Most of it is not needed and if you make the slightest mistake prepare yourself to be dragged in the office. I was taken in the office because i stated my break started at 20:15 but the tacho recorded it at 20:16 Will plan runs they are impossible to do following the law and tacho rules. Unless you can fly you have no hope. You will get dragged in the office over the slightest of things and i mean the slightest of things. Some of the supervisors in transport are quite amazing in how they think it is acceptable to speak to and treat staff. Well i hope i have helped with my review. I have missed loads of things to say about this place. Job was fairly easy but the BS will quickly overcome you. I have never worked in such a worse place. The only hope you have with this place is if your on the agency paid by the hour, in which case your quids in because you will have plenty of time sitting around due to the bad organisation. I could easily write a book about this place. Some of things that happened while i was there would shock alot of people. I honestly wish i never took the job when it was offered to me.

Shift pattern. The 4 on/4 off rotating day/night shift pattern messes with your body's biological rhythms and makes you fatigued and run down. The 4 days off sounds nice, eh? Trust me, you'll need them, you are on your feet 10 and a half hours a day/night doing physical work. The first nightshift is always horrible. You're lifting boxes at 4am and your body is screaming for sleep. And when you come off nights the first day off is basically a write-off because you either need to sleep, or stay awake feeling wretched to try and reset your body back into dayshift mode again, which takes a few days during which you never feel 100%. Good luck sleeping well during the day in a hot summer. I've seen this shift pattern take its toll on people's relationships at home. Work culture for pickers. Extremely busy and target-oriented. You are a robot not a person. The team leaders/shift manager are watching you all the time. Just picking the expected amount is frowned upon, and the ones who break their backs exceeding their targets become the golden boys. There's no bonus for exceeding targets, so fast workers basically get exploited by the team leaders/manager. However, camaraderie between pickers is generally good. The company is not lenient on sickness or lateness at all. No chance in hell of getting unionised. Health and safety. Management are happy to turn a blind eye to unsafe practices to get the orders out of the door. I personally witnessed managers being raised up on a pallet by a forklift to check stock on the higher racks. If all the forklift drivers stuck to the safety rules the warehouse wouldn't be able to meet its targets. Work/life balance. Not much. The 12 hour shifts only give you about 2/3 hours outside work to do anything, including cooking and eating your dinner, and you're usually knackered anyway. Yeah you get 4 days off which can be useful sometimes, especially if you have young kids, but some of that will be taken with overtime. And you'll be working at least one day of the weekend for 5 weeks out of 7. Most of the time you'll be at work when your mates are off, or stuck at home watching Loose Women when everyone else is at work. Management have no respect for your wellbeing at all. You will be guilt-tripped into overtime. If you ring in sick they will sometimes try to convince you to come in anyway "just to see how it goes". Career prospects. The pathway to management is narrow and the journey can be slow. You can work your way up, I've seen it. If you brown-nose the manager, play golf/become drinking buddies with them you will become team leader easily. But there is rarely a vacancy for management. Shift managers tend to stay in their positions for quite a while, because as management jobs go they're quite cushy. If you're breaking your back on the shop floor hoping for a promotion you could be waiting a long time unless you're good at kissing posterior. Occasionally admin jobs become available, and that's your best chance to get off the shop floor if you have half a brain. Environment. It's a refrigerated warehouse. You are given adequate clothing. However, there's no escaping the cold. You are literally working inside a gigantic fridge.