Fastenal reviews

Employees do not have visibility of work both near term and long term. Most of the people leading various teams are not capable & are promoted just like that. Expectations are high with very less rewards. Regarding the hike, there is no process, its the Director's call, he decides a number which is told to you (mostly depending on his mood). No matter what you do, you will not get more than that. There is an HR Team who has no say whatsoever in any matter. No policy for anything, policies vary from person to person & time to time. They have a strict everyday 9 hour working policy which excludes the time spent in washrooms. Nobody with experience is joining the company. Very less job security. No work from home policy

Again, I could probably write a book for this section, but here's the bottom line: The same decentralized business model that has had a hand in Fastenal's success is also it's single biggest weakness. It trickles down through all aspects of the business and makes what should be simple tasks into massive headaches. I have a lot of cons, but I'll try to keep this focused on more generalized issues rather than the specific internal gripes I have: -- STAFFING. The single biggest complaint for the last five years in this company is staffing. New hire recruitment is driven by district managers who can either do it, or they can't. Many farm out the job of recruitment to branch managers who already have too much on their plate to begin with. Some stores are understaffed to the point that GM's and their teams are forced to work 50+ hour weeks to keep up. Additionally turnover is high due to many factors (see below) and burnout is common. Part-time hours tend to get cut near the end of every fiscal quarter to cut costs and near the end of every year there is an all-out spending freeze including new hires. Many full-time employees don't take their lawfully-mandated lunch breaks because there isn't time, and Fastenal has faced lawsuits in the past for unpaid overtime wages. -- Training & development ranges from halfway decent to non-existent, again, depending on the culture in your district. There are many great DM's and GM's who take the time to mentor their employees and get them on a fast track to success, but there are FAR more who sit new hires down in front of a computer, alone, for two or three days' worth of automated computerized tests and then expect them to start posting huge sales figures. There IS an extensive online "school of business" but there is rarely enough time in a work day to complete those online courses. The lack of clear direction and often overwhelming expectations leads to many promising employees quitting before they reach their potential. -- Fastenal is frugal which is a politically correct term for "cheap." The absolute worst way this shows is in the buildings the company leases. There are many branch locations that are just awful places to work. Water damage, mold and mildew, no heat in the winter, no A/C in the summer, crap lighting, cramped (sometimes no) offices, terrible landlords. It is the absolute definition of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. It doesn't matter what condition the building is in as long as the price per square foot is right. Also, because the technology is expensive you may occasionally find yourself without the tools you need to do your job as effectively as possible. This is the difference between having a handheld scanner that you can use to take orders in the field, versus writing down orders by hand and typing them into a computer later. -- Along with being frugal, the pay and commission structure is downright confusing, mostly because it changes so often and because your sales opportunity is directly related to the market you're located in. Base salary increases are extremely rare and there's no such thing as a cost of living adjustment. Also, your commission is affected by a number of different factors including some that you just don't have any control over, and your priorities can shift on a dime depending on what goal the company is pushing at a given time. Lastly, overtime is an extremely rare occurrence. District managers will sometimes approve OT, but only in very limited quantities and not for any great length of time. The reviews talking about working nights & weekends for free are unfortunately true in many cases. -- There is effectively no "operations" position at the branch level and the company as a whole places very little value on support roles. This is my biggest single con. What this means is that branches tend to be staffed with nothing but sales people and the infrastructure suffers because of it. Someone needs to be responsible for the day-to-day operation of the store including processing orders, sourcing product, answering phones & emails, managing inventory, etc. In most stores those responsibilities are shared which cuts into EVERYONE'S time. -- Lastly, and this is more of a personal gripe, but there is NO reason that Fastenal stores should be open to the public. The company doesn't advertise, it doesn't have "sales" in the conventional retail term, and walk-in business accounts for something like less than 1% of total sales. However, walk-in customers are far and away the biggest drain on branch employees in terms of stress and time investment. We're talking about the guy who needs five or six really specific odd-sized fasteners to fix his imported antique Hungarian bicycle totaling about a $10 sale for 20 minutes of work. In that time you could have made three or four phone calls and brought in $2000 worth of orders from contract customers. It's silly. That's why we have Lowe's and Home Depot.