Pluspunten
Good medical benefits. No set number of sick days to care for yourself or your spouse/child with doctor’s note. Clean work environment. Convenient, company-paid parking. There are groups of kind people who are easy to befriend and get along with. Monthly happy “hours”. Ability to flex your time. Monday through Friday work schedule. Paid holidays. Special perks distributed at beginning of the year (gift cards, memberships, time off, etc).
Minpunten
Depends. Possibly very few if you have a decent human being for a manager and your co-workers aren’t poisonous pit vipers. It’s a slippery slope with a culture so closely mimicking high school. It’s all about the people, so the cons largely depend on what position you’re in and who you work for/with. Unlike high school though, at Pep not “fitting in” doesn’t cost you a social life, it costs you a living. I could go on and on with examples, but it all boils down to an obvious double standard. If you’re at the cool kids table, you’re loving life; opportunities for growth, training, face-time with management, work = social life +1, 20 minutes late every day = promotion, mistakes = “no worries, we’ll find a scape goat”, gold stars, A+, etc. Not so cool? Well then expectations are as they should be in a professional work environment for you, but management still has no responsibility. Don’t want to blabber on and on about what you’re going to do this weekend, omg? Don’t think, speak, act and learn just like they do? Not a mind reader? Then you’re the problem. Management can’t be inconvenienced by such menial management-type tasks such as coaching, teaching or even bothering to show up to regularly scheduled one on ones. No. Their solution is passive aggression, humiliation and bullying. Professional attitudes in my department were non-existent. My co-workers and manager regularly spoke terribly of good people behind their backs. Communication was rarely professional and regularly demeaning. Co-workers in my department regularly made our internal customers uncomfortable with their abrasive and belittling attitudes. I will never understand where the horrible people I worked with got their sense of entitlement to treat others like “lesser thans” but more and more they seemed to be getting rewarded for it in their careers. So it appears that’s what Pep values. In general, Pep replies to these reviews to have the last word, so take it all for what it’s worth. I think it’s obvious that 90% of the cons fall directly on a handful of nasty people with too much power and not enough experience dealing with the people side of managing. Many people are happy at this company and have successful careers, there’s no debate. And there are a lot of really great people, that’s certainly true. But there’s no denying that there’s a strong theme. Despite Pep’s “apparent” attempts to turn their ship away from this reputation, there are still individuals wielding enough power to keep the catty, cliquey, downright “Mean Girls” culture very, very alive. I’m sure when they see this, they’ll promptly IM each other to go to Starbucks and discuss at length. About the company as a whole: I know there are other pockets of individuals in similar situations, so it is not an isolated situation. But there are still good, decent people that are very friendly and want the best for others. It only takes a few bad apples…and Pep has more than enough. The monthly happy hours are designed to be two hours long, but don't stay more than 20 minutes. I have heard of management holding this against good employees. The turnover seems pretty high because a lot of people have similar experiences to mine and see what Pep is really about. Either that or they leave for more money, which can be another con. Also, if you work for Pep and decide to leave…be very careful to whom you disclose where you’re going. It has been said that management will call your future employer in an attempt to tarnish your reputation before you get there.