Horrible place - Customer Service Representative McMaster-Carr Employee Review

1.0
7 Mar 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Benefits, pay for your education and your children's

Cons

Where do I start? All the negative things have already been said. Being managed by 21 year old ivy leaguers who never worked before in their lives who make twice what you do. These kids think they are above everyone else. They literally walk down the hall with their noses in the air and don't even acknowledge us "lowly" workers. None of the supervisors or managers have business or managing backgrounds, most are art history or some nonsense majors who probably couldn't get a real consulting job. Everything is micromanaged. If you take your break at 9:03 am instead of the 9:00 am you're scheduled, you get chewed out. Don't even think about calling in sick or going to the bathroom in between breaks and lunches. They monitor and dock your pay and it shows up on your reviews for taking bathroom breaks or calling in sick. Use your vacation day to schedule your doctor's appointments. If there's a death in the family? Too bad. Use your vacation day to take care of those matters. If you get injured? Get a lawyer because the company will use your "time off to recover" against you in a later review and fire you. If you have kids? You better have someone else take care of them during school hours. Heaven forbid your child has a doctor's appointment or needs to leave school early due to an illness. That's on your review as well. There is no room to advance. Probably 1% of management were actually promoted from within, and those people have worked for several years before that happened. The rest are "management trainees" straight out of college. On the good side, they pay for your school and have good benefits. Just do your job and don't worry too much. Being fired and getting your "separation agreement" will be the best day of your life at this place.

Explore other reviews about McMaster-Carr

5.0
7 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Salary, benefits, coworkers, work/life balance

Cons

micromanagement at every level and job is boring at times

4.0
16 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Pay/benefits are incredibly generous - People are generally easy/nice to work with - Note that the Systems department seems to be fairly isolated from the negative issues discussed in other reviews (e.g. tension between warehouse workers and management) - I haven't experienced any of those issues within the systems department. In my opinion, Systems is a great place to work and develop as an engineer. - Hybrid work style (3 days in office). Personally, I like hybrid more than both fully in-office and fully remote styles. - Great cafeteria with good food and cheap prices. - Good work/life balance (outside of being on call, I can leave work at work).

Cons

- Work is not super interesting to me. I come from a highly technical, but very different (not ecommerce/industrial supplies), background where I was doing work I was much more interested in. No doubt there are folks in Systems who love the domain though. - While I'm not on call a ton (1-2 weeks every few months), I really hate being on call. I like to leave work at work. Note that joining at least one reliability team is expected within your first year or so.

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