Pros
The role was Invoicing. Invoicing was incidental to the work we did. Far more accurate are Quality Assurance and Outbound Logistics Coordinators. Most diverse set of people I've ever worked with. This is coming from someone who taught English in Jilin, Jilin China and figured that experience was the pinnacle of diversity. People from all walks of life. Very different and new points of view and living experiences. Very laid back. Sometimes overly laid back. Relaxed. I was lucky enough to work with a team of people who I looked forward to seeing almost every day. I say almost since there were a few personal differences and life-stresses that carried their way to work for a few of us and there were times where I would have gladly turned my phone off and not come into work. Ultimately we were a great team and managed to look past our personal struggles and disagreements and that made us much stronger and more determined as a cohesive unit and team. After the in-fighting I would gladly use that point in our career as a reference to indicate not only how well we were doing now but how much better we could get in the future. There were times where I had not the slightest clue what my supervisor was trying to tell me so I just nodded my head in agreement. He'd have an underlying morale to the analogy and/or story but it wasn't always clear. He would provide an analogy that made no sense whatsoever. I nodded my head and interpreted the situation as “This guy's got my back. So do the guys next to him. This is my team”. They did too. Helping each other as much as possible. Dividing work in order to accomplish our goals. Meeting deadlines that upper-management did not think we would make on such short notice. Receiving little or no support from upper-management but achieving the goal regardless. Breaking records across the boards. We were a fine team. I miss the team!
Cons
You are going to hear a lot of "We're working on it". You are going to look at multiple avenues in order to accomplish your end goal and when you feel the task is important enough to escalate and have a supervisor/manager look at it you are going to watch your task fall on deaf ears. There were problems I noticed from the start that I immediately started attempting to alleviate. These problems, after 3 years, are still there. Last I heard about one specific problem was "We know. We're still working on it". Very disorganized. Simple problems were only fixed after bringing it up multiple times. There were many times when we did not have the materials required in order to get our job done. There was a three month stretch where that happened and I about lost it.... I think I did a few times. If we don't have what we absolutely need in order to do our job then how do you expect any of us to profit?? That's embarrassing and I felt embarrassed to bring up such simple and obvious problems repeatedly. Decibel levels in the 80+ range on some days making it almost impossible, and impossible in some small cases, to have a conversation with a carrier to pick up LTL. Retention rates were terrible 3 years ago. As of now (2015) they are much better. Because of constant expansion there is a lot of instances of Overtime Drought while lesser experienced workers have an early end of day. Growing pains. Pay was never great, nor would I expect much better 5 years from now. Being a single male with no dependents I was living comfortably. That was not and is not the case today as some people are going paycheck to paycheck. I say these things having really spoken to my coworkers and checking in on their situations from time to time over a three year period. I feel hesitant writing this down but these are the things I heard and saw for three years. Near the end the shared mentality among what I considered to be the "veteran workers", 2 years+, was that everyone really liked working with this diverse group of hard working individuals, the job is convenient, they knew the stresses, and it's a paycheck. That is, to directly state that this is not an exceptional job, nor is it a 'great' job. It's a job. My hope is that as I continue to speak with my former coworkers and friends over the next few years I'll receive statements like "Yea, they've made serious improvements!" and "They're paying a lot better these days". Time will tell. I'll make no assumptions and I'm not holding my breathe.