Pros
They hire a lot of artsy types of people and there’s a vast majority of LGBTQ+ employees and allies, which is a huge plus for inclusivity amongst your peers. You get to borrow the camera gear up to a certain dollar amount which is pretty cool.
Cons
Only good, mindless worker bees need apply. Anyone with a love of cameras might want to reconsider working at KEH. As with any job there are definitely pros and cons, and I’m not trying to be a negative person because KEH does have some pros, but in my opinion have quite a bit more cons that heavily outweigh any pros. I write this from not only the experience of things that happened to me but also from things I’ve witnessed happen. I worked at KEH for about 3 years. I started toward the end of 2019. I went into the company quite hopeful and in love with all things photography, so the idea of working with cameras everyday seemed to be a god-send. Over the course of those 3 years this company ate away at my hope, my mental health, and my love for cameras. I realized I was lured in with false or inaccurate promises. To start, this company severely underpays their technicians. You’re brought on at an entry level despite the fact that management strongly suggests that their techs have some type of schooling for photography. Furthermore, those with a Bachelor’s degree or higher do not make anymore money than those with no degree/less prerequisite skills. Everyone starts at the same level, most recently that was $15/hr. You do get to test up skill levels after a certain time working there but you are capped at $20/hr, a wage you can’t reach until at least 5 years of service there. So to counter such low pay they tell you that you have the “ability” to earn a bonus. This bonus, however, is speed based. There are different levels of bonus that you can reach: $1, $2, and $4 extra/hour worked. The criteria for reaching these bonuses require you to up your production numbers which in turn really requires you to sacrifice the quality of your work as well as a healthy work-life balance. To make matters worse, mandatory overtime is almost always enforced. In the three years I worked at KEH, there was only a small window of time (maybe a month or so) where we didn’t have the mandatory 4 hours/week of overtime. Just recently they did away with any merit-based raises. Which honestly makes any yearly goals seem almost moot at this point. If you are the best of the best in the tech department, you are seen, on a merit basis, as the same as someone else who might not be pulling their weight. Of course they aren’t required to give merit raises, but over the years they’ve hardly given raises to keep up with inflation. All this to say, if you ever feel like bringing up the fact that you aren’t making enough money, management turns around to say that you have the “ability” to make more money, the “opportunities are there, you just have to want it” (actual words that were spoken to me). Of course yes, the opportunities are there, but at the cost of overworking yourself, and only to get the pay at which most places are already starting their entry level workers at. Mind you, this company had been on the up the entire 3 years I was there, with the exception of maybe a month. We were constantly being told at every team meeting how massive the inventory was and how much we were selling; each month’s record beating out the last. In turn this brought morale down quite a bit, it left the tech wondering how we could be making so much money as a company, yet they couldn’t give us even the slightest bit of a raise. There is an overall problem management wise. They make you feel unheard and belittle you if you aren’t selling your soul to the company; you’re not a team player if you aren’t a mindless working machine. Keep your head down, be quiet, get your job done (and more), stay late, don’t question anything and you should get through just fine. But speak up in the slightest and you’ve put a target on your back. They’d rather spend their whole day watching and listening to the tech team through the security cameras, making sure they don’t step out of line, than actually lead a team and make sure everyone feels appreciated for the work that they do. Next, there is no room for movement, at least in the tech department. Moving cross departmentally is allowed, even encouraged…for most other departments. In tech you start low, after a couple years you can get a raise and eventually cap out. When you are tired of being in tech and want to move departments they put you through the ringer. Multiple occasions I saw this happen, even experienced it myself. Despite some people being extremely qualified for a new position, their efforts were thwarted. Tech wants all the workers all the time. They hire training classes of up to ten people at times, train them for a couple weeks and throw them out to the production floor, ill-prepared (granted this covers them for the high turnover rate). This ties back into the fact that this company only cares about production numbers, and they will do anything to keep them going except give the techs what they want, nay, what they deserve: more money. As much as they say they care about quality, through efforts like these it’s pretty apparent that they only want quantity. Yes, sure this is a business and in the end pushing product is what has to be done, but the route they take is borderline unethical. The success of this company rides on the backs of overworked/underpaid technicians. If you are desperate for a job and don’t mind just being an underpaid cog in a machine, being rewarded with Chick Fil A sandwiches once a month instead of a bonus or perhaps a raise; if you are okay with management that pushes workers to the edge while letting their favorites get away with whatever, and don’t seem to understand the needs of their own workers and focus on the completely wrong thing then this is the company for you. This place is toxic. Let me paint a picture: a worker says in passing that a place like Buccee’s has a starting pay higher than that of a technician at KEH. Someone in upper management decides to say that they “wish [said person] would quit and go work for Buccee’s then”….highly inappropriate right? I would say so. Don’t waste your time trying to speak up about any injustices or discriminations in the workplace, the management barely listens and then does nothing afterward. There’s misogynistic management that never get reprimanded. Favoritism here is real, and that’s more than just me speaking, I speak for multiple people that try to speak up but aren’t being heard. The gaslighting is real; management likes to say that things don’t happen or aren’t as bad as they seem. They hide behind “well if you would just talk to us we could make an effort to fix things” when in fact multiple meetings are held, multiple managers are told; they’re well aware of problems and just don’t fix them. They love to advertise how they have an open door policy, but that’s just a front. These are all things I would’ve gladly told them again but they chose not to give me an exit interview. I was not the top of the top, but I did put in a lot of work here and even attempted to spearhead a new branch of the tech department; I was one of few that had a lot of valuable information concerning certain types of camera gear. I never rocked the boat until things started becoming unfair, then I stood up. Don’t expect to make a career out of this place, you’ll drive yourself mad. Your mental health will plummet from being overworked in an extremely toxic environment. PTO is fairly standard, nothing to brag about. Sick time would’ve been nice though. I hear the other departments are alright, I can’t speak for them, I just speak for the tech department. Apply for anything but tech.
