When you start off the pay isn't very good and the work (after training is complete) is hard. It generally takes 3-6 months out on your own to get comfortable doing the job.
Getting a route is a crap shoot. Can take anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 years. No way of knowing. More than likely to start you'll get a crappy supermarket route with crappy days off (Tuesday and Wednesday, or if your lucky Thursday and Saturday).
Before you get a route your basically a route runner. You cover other guys vacations and each week your days off are different. Sometimes you'll know 3-4 weeks in advance, other times you'll know 2-3 days in advance. This will depend on the location your at and who is making up the schedule (even then, it isn't always consistent). Covering vacations is not fun at all, especially if the guy who's vacation your covering isn't good. Bad directions, unhappy customers, bla bla bla.
Lets say you stick it out and down the road you end up with a decent route. The way management treats you will make you sick. They say one thing and do another. They say safety is important and that family is important. Then they add 3 more stores to your route so your working 11+ hours a day and on a good night you get 5 1/2 hours sleep. They put out brochures saying how important it is to get a good nights sleep and eat properly and that you should work smarter not harder. But then they expect you to sell more and bigger displays in all your stores and spend more time talking to store managers about how to get more business but they don't give you any help. God forbid that you decide not to build a 10 tower display because if you do you'll miss your son's baseball game.
When my DSL told me not to long ago that I had to adjust my route and do 2 more stops a day on top of the 11 I was already doing and working 10 1/2 - 11 hours I asked "How many hours am I supposed to work?", I was told "Until the job is done!" No sympathy to the fact that I had a family and was spending less time with them and getting less sleep at night.
One Zone Manager told me an RSR should be working no more than 10 hours a day. HA. Right now in our barn we have at least 20 guys working 60+ hours a week and another 40-50 working at least 50 hours.
They build the routes for 50 hours a week, but then expect you to grow it. So if your already working 50 hours to start, growing it will only get you more hours. Sure you'll make more money, but is it worth the loss of sleep and the loss of family time.
Communication from upper management to the sales team is poor at best. Yet expectations on execution are high. When you can't communicate what the execution is supposed to be, what are you expecting.
If you don't perform at a high level each and every day, you are questioned. Each week you are given a sales plan that is created by upper management and you have NO say what so ever on this number. If you don't hit it you are questioned as to why. They go over every detail of what you sold and what you should have sold. If they think that near the end of the week you aren't going to hit your sales plan, they will force out product onto your order's to "Help" you. They've gotten to the point that if they expect a store to have a certain product and the store doesn't want it you as the RSR have to provide in writing from the store why they don't want it. It almost to the point that they think every store in the United States should be called Frito Lay Convenience or Frito Lay Super Market. Many stores are getting fed up with their forcing out product. I've heard a number of store owners say "It DOESN"T SAY FRITO LAY ON THE SIGN OUTSIDE!" or "THIS ISN"T A FRITO LAY WAREHOUSE!"
At one time, this was a good company to work for. The job itself isn't bad if you like working alone. however, over the years it become harder and harder to like this company. They treat you like a number no a person. Trust is non-existant and there is no respect.
If your considering working for Frito, do yourself a favor and RUN AWAY! Far away!
Oh yeah, prices are going up again. $4.29 for a bag of Lays, Ruffles and Dorito's that 3 years ago was $2.99. Thats going to go over well. NOT!!!
