The downsides to this job are:
1. The long, long hours you work - I averaged 50 - 60 hours a week as an RSR with a route with no breaks or lunches running like a madman from account to account. I could take my breaks or lunches, but I didn't want to be out longer than I already was during the day. When you begin employment as an RSR, you are a relief driver (filling in for drivers on vacation, sick, etc) you can expect to work longer hours - between 60 - 70 hours per week because you are not familiar with the routes you are running. When I was a relief driver, every week I had a different route, rarely was I on a route for more than one week at a time which makes getting used to a route difficult. Being on relief totally sucks! It took me 9 months to get my own crappy route. On my days off, I would be exhausted and not really want to do anything but relax and recover for the coming week.
2.The way they pay you for the overtime you worked. It is not overtime pay in the tradition sense - 1 &1/2 times hourly pay. You are not paid an hourly wage as an RSR, but a starting weekly pay of somewhere between $600 - $800 a week depending on the location that you work in the United States. For overtime pay, they used something called VROT (variable rate overtime), something I had never heard of as a California worker. This is how VROT is calculated: for the sake of simple math, say you have your own route and you generate $1000 in sales commissions for the week and you worked 50 hours that week. Your VROT pay is $1000 divided by 50 hours equals 20 and that 20 divided again by 2 which equals 10 dollars for every hour you worked overtime. So you worked, 50 hours that week, 10 hours was overtime, so you made a whopping $100 dollars extra for those 10 extra hours. If I had been fully aware of this policy for overtime, I probably would not have taken this job and believe me you will work plenty of overtime as a new RSR and your overtime pay will be less than 10 dollars an hour based on the starting wage of $600 - $800 a week. This job is a lot more physically demanding than I thought it would be. Only guys who stock soda or beer have it tougher in the food industry.
3. Dealing with receivers at major chains stores such as Walmart, Safeway, Lucky's, etc. Some of the receivers at these stores (not all of them) could really be a pain. In my experience, sometimes they way you were treated were grounds for a harassment lawsuit. Frito-Lay doesn't seem to care too much about how their RSR's are treated by these stores too (as long as those shelves were full). How some of these receivers were allowed to remain employed in this position is beyond me. Other RSR's commenting here will know exactly what I'm talking about.
Some of these receivers think they can walk on water. Hello! You're receiving product into a store, you're not performing brain surgery!
At all Safeways, Lucky's, FoodMax's here in California, they want you to open every box to check if everyone of them is full. At some of the larger stores such as FoodMax on the bulk routes you could be there for an hour opening boxes. A major pain in the butt! What a waste of time!
4. No union representation at this time. They had a union before I started there, so I don't know what they were like, but it seems to me that they need to get one back in there.
5. Too much route re-engineering. I was there for two years and they re-engineered at least three times! So you could be making decent money and than all of a sudden you have to rebid on a new route that might not be making as much money. No wonder the big chain stores don't care for Frito, their is a new route driver to get to know and work with them.
6. Shared routes. Most of the routes at Frito where I worked were routes that were run by two people. So most of time, you would have to worry if one of the drivers you worked with was a slacker and didn't give crap if he left a lot of work for you to do on his days off : lots of stales on the store shelf, tons of backstock he didn't feel like working up ("I'll just leave it for my swing driver so I can get home early"), lousy communication between drivers on shared routes. I saw this time and again there and it happened to myself. Unfortunately, rarely did a driver get fired for pulling these kind of stunts.
7. Lousy equipment. The box trucks you drive for the most part are old and falling apart. No AC in them! In the summer, its like driving around in your own personal hot box! Drink lots of water. I feel sorry for people that work in the humid states - Texas, etc.
8. Disconnect between departments. It felt like an us versus them environment there, instead of everybody working toward a common goal. Communication between warehouse and sales was lousy and never changed when I was there.
9. High turnover. There must be a reason for the high turnover. Look at my examples. Its too bad because with a little caring on managements part, they could reduce this even more and make it a better place to work.
