Pluspunten
The pay at Mars isn't bad, especially for what you will be doing which really isn't very hard, it's just a lot to learn. Learning it however will be a serious issue. They recently hired a trainer to try to help fix some of the enormous issues they are having in the plant. Great cafeteria if you don't mind waiting most of your break in line. The company is very generous with break time, but by the time you're starting to really get moving and into a rhythm, you will be out on break again and come back in to your "relief" either having been the best person possible and having set you up for success or having completely slacked off and leaving you to race to solve the issues they could have taken care of during the half hour they were watching it slowly unravel. I wrote an email to Grant Reid about the way I was fired (which was predicated on obvious lies) and I was contacted by the company the following day. While nothing helpful came of it, I was and am respectful and grateful to him for making sure attention was brought to the issue rather than it being ignored.
Minpunten
I'll start with the worst of it. I was fired because the people on my team lied and fabricated an incident. It's easy to prove they were lying because they they waited over a month to bring it foward. The matter was either A they chose to lie to the company and hide a new employee having had this incident for reasons that are beyond me instead of escalating it and being sure I was trained correctly, or they lied that it happened at all. The people who onboard you will get your information wrong, sent emails to people in my orientation that they "weren't chosen for the position" during their first week working there, which is ridiculous, and because of them I was unable to sign up for my benefits as easily as others so on top of learning an outdated time clock system which is absoutely preposterous, and learning the job from my trainer, I also had to figure those issues out which was anxiety inducing to say the least. Beyond that, there are no trainers. The longest tenured person of the three in my area was 1 year. The following two had been there 8-10 and 3-5 months and neither of them correctly knew how perform their functions. From metal detection check instructions (which are plainly written on the paper for them to reference,) rethreading a pack machine's candy bag roll (with identical examples of how to do so right beside it,) and even simply reading a work order and cleaning the parts listed there in rather than the whole machine listed every single time which simply isn't the task. You will be berated the entire time you're trying to learn from these "trainers" and expected to learn something by watching it a single time instead of being shown how to perform your task and observed doing so as you should be. Fortunately my trainer was willing at least to write down what needed to be done through out a night, which I then used and started making strides towards actually succeeding, butan incident occured with a machine that I had believed I was using properly, but in fact was not due to the exact lax in training I'm speaking of. Very few lifts and power jacks are up to a reasonable standard of safety. It was a constant issue and stressor as well as being unacceptable that a company with as much money as Mars doesn't have them completely repaired, let alone replaced entirely for safer more modern models like the new Crown series. My supervisor assured me for several weeks in a row we would sit down and have the discussion we are supposed to shortly after your orientation but never got around to doing so practically until my first thirty day review. The retention rate is horrible so you will make the decent pay for a short time. The benefits are dissapointing and restrictive. The schedule you will be working is four shifts of twelve hours, two days, two nights, then four days off and repeat. I liked it but it's not for everyone. There is no SOP. The company calls it "freedom" but all it amounts to is that you will be taught several wrong ways to do something and one useful correct way and you can choose for yourself which one you like best. Even the schedule of orientation won't be followed and some things you will simply not be taught, or they will use so many acronyms that have no context that you will leave the room with a new found hatred for the alphabet. Palpable inequity between plant workers and corporate. The people who built the plant decided in some utopian dellusion that putting corporate in the same building was a great idea and that having the breaks at the same time for both (or at least is seems they're the same times) was a good idea. Corporate gets an hour break so they will often times fill the line at lunch while you get a half hour to brave the line and woof your food down. *********ACRONYMS**********
