Pros
This company pays good for starting positions. If you apply directly through the company you'll get a direct hire day one (so they can legally train you on forklift.) If you come in around late in the year you'll get paid breaks and vacation pay for the three or four days off. HR and Head Supervisor are nice and understanding. Only HR has your phone number so you shouldn't be getting any unexpected calls to come in on days off. Be sure to find their call-in-line number so you can do that. Benefits are pretty good for factory work. Free busing to and from work if you need assistance with transport. Free preventative extra PPE like boot insoles were greatly appreciated. 1st shift probably has the best team and manager by far.
Cons
This place is bleeding workers. My first month here I saw a new person come and go everyday. If you are a temp you are 100% expendable. The job is incredibly physically demanding. The physical they have you perform before hire is lift 50-75 lbs unassisted. However, especially with finished doors, you could be moving anywhere from 80-140 lbs unassisted if you're placed on the freight loading docks (which you probably will be). You will be hounded for not moving at what management perceives as a swift pace despite this. I was going home every day, eating dinner, and going to bed- Rinse repeat. Literally no work life balance what so ever. Every day someone, from managers to employees, would ask if I was okay because I always looked hurt. I was limping everywhere. I even went so far as to buy new boots to help with feet pains which did not relieve the problem. One of the biggest hurdles was dealing with the "work debt" that has accorded over time. It felt like we were always a week behind schedule at all times. This trickles down from 3rd shift to 1st and to 2nd. 3rd Shift keeps losing people, for one reason or another, causing new hires to handle everything important. Obviously they make mistakes because of so many new bodies. This leads to problems, for example, where parts are loaded to carts improperly for 1st shift to send. This causes things like 1st having to play needle in the hay stack where the first loaded parts are buried under twenty parts that go on last. 1st was working nearly 10-12 hours a day. Management seemed really out of touch with their expectations. Tasks that managers expect to take 10-20 minutes end up becoming 30-60 minute ventures. We had to regularly clean the part warehouse before we were released to go home. The bins for wood stick, recyclables, and trash in the isles just had everything dumped in them; at least 20 cradles of parts had to be emptied every day with three bins per isle (that were spread over about half a football field in length). Workers told management many times that we need more bins but it seemed low priority. Of course the isles had to be spic and span... At only 10-15 minutes per isle (A thru G). I felt like I was lied to everyday by someone in management. The erosion of trust in team leads took me from looking forward to coming in and working hard every day to just quitting.