Sales Trainee - Anonymous employee Graybar Employee Review

1.0
28 Oct 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

There are not many pros unless you have an electrical background.

Cons

Management at the branch level is horrible, they are a terrible resource for your growth with the company. They only care about themselves. My manager was never in the office, would never have the answers to my issues or questions involving the daily tasks. My manager did anything and everything to avoid helping me. Always told me, to “Ask someone else.” During my training, I had a manager called me a derogatory name and the company acted like nothing happened. Also another incident, during my training out in the warehouse, one of the material handlers was drinking beer on his lunch break. This is completely unsafe as this person was operating heavy equipment. Brought to management attention , and nothing was handled. The online training was okay but about 5 years outdated. Most products and ideas I was learning about are not current. Everything is ever changing in this industry and the training did not align with my overall goals to becoming a successful sales rep. They really “throw you to the wolves” and let you figure it out yourself, some of the co-workers are helpful and do more than a managers role to help see other exceed. This is my experience with my branch. Not speaking on a company as a whole just my specific branch.

avatar
Graybar Response
6y
I’m sorry you had this experience at Graybar, and we take your feedback very seriously. We strive to treat everyone fairly and ensure that we set our employees up for success. Please email us at glassdoor.feedback@graybar.com as we would like to learn more about your experience and concerns.

Explore other reviews about Graybar

5.0
11 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Strong department leadership in current role

Cons

Many senior team members with decades of stored brain knowledge that is hard to share

3.0
6 Apr 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Many opportunities to learn about distribution and management. Pto is three weeks per year plus holidays and over a s Week of sick time. If you work here longer, you can buy enough company shares to receive a sizeable dividend each year. You are allowed to buy about 5% of your salary in company shares per year and then receive usually 20% of that back per year. The profit sharing plan contributes 10% of your salary to your 401k account but you need to be vested to keep it all.

Cons

You will need a second job to live. Sales reps make way more and do half the work but they report to their managers much more. If you are a CSR, sales people feel entitled to treat you however they want and their manager will back them up. You are watched by coworkers and management like a high surveillance prison especially when you're new but they will leave you alone if you're good at your job after a year or so. Graybar brags about how much revenue and profit they make but middle and upper management suck it all up leaving scraps for the workers who made it for them.

1
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All