Pros
-There is nowhere else you will get such incredible experience as a young engineer. Managing union employees and making huge decisions -The non-packaging departments can be great places to work, depending on the people. Although all departments are high stress, high hours. No real engineering to be had.
Cons
Packing is like getting sucked into a black hole made out of all the worst bullies from all the worst 80s movies. If you're successful there, none of the other departments will want you because they'll know you're slimy. It's almost unreal what goes on there- I won't blame you if you don't believe me. I counted the days until I could quit and called my boss from my old department absolutely appalled my first day when I saw a mind boggling number of safety violations. During my 3 years with the company, I watched 3 rounds of 10-15 new hires start in May, and within 3 months 50% had quit or been fired. Only 1-2 made it the full year, and it wasn't because of their business ethic. The managers tell every person that after being a manager for a year they'll be promoted, but there's only room for a few promotions- you do the math. The managers encourage (or at the very least turn a blind eye to) infighting, and everyone is constantly trying to back stab and climb on each other to get to the top. The union is extremely strong which can result in some truly bad eggs that bring down the morale for the good ones. When things finally get too far and you need support from HR and senior management, you don't get it. Actual circumstances where absolutely no discipline occurred is 3 men surrounding me and screaming at me and refused to let me leave because I disciplined one for repeatedly refusing to wear ear plugs, a group of men repeatedly sexually harassing a female coworker (walking into an office where she was working midnight shift alone and saying "I just wanted to get a look at the hot young thing everyone was talking about", calling her "sweetie pie" in response to direction, complimenting her "assets"). Absolutely refusing to acknowledge or speak to a direct manager, to the point of running away from the manager when he tried to initiate contact in person for months on end. Not even a verbal warning was issued to any of these people. HR is just as useless for quarrels between managers. Once, I called the warehouse manager to tell him to hold a truck, he swore at me for a minute straight and hung up and refused to take any more calls- for all I know, hold beer went out the door. I sent an email about the incident to my manager and HR (it was the weekend), and never received a reply from either. Actual conversations during shift turn over meetings that were attended by managers included sentences like "I drove the bus over him tonight. I let him mess up and then gave him a bad review so we won't have to worry about him for long. That girl is only good to look at but hey that's better than I can say for half the other people we have. Here's how to get her fired _. Don't worry, I'll show you how to write your shift end report so that it looks like it's the previous shifts fault."