Menards Reviews

Many to list; sorry for it being lengthy. All in all, Menards is a "dead-end retail job" that acts unprofessional toward employees, doesn't give them the tools or the training to succeed, and think they own you and your time. The company culture and the management made the working environment very toxic, hostile, negative, and very stressful. The company operates with a top down, fear-based management style where the workers are considered easily replaceable. Management uses fear of job loss or threat of demotion to motivate on a daily basis and isn't afraid to fire or demote you without valid cause or over something trivial. Also, there's virtually no positive reinforcement and not very much appreciation or recognition for your hard work from your superiors. There's no loyalty to the hard working employees with a strong work ethic. They allowed blatant examples of favoritism by superiors and verbal abuse of employees by both customers and co-workers. They criticize your efforts by being rude to you and berating and belittling you. Also, they allowed customers to get someone fired or demoted when they were courteous and following standard/corporate procedures, because customers can get away with literally anything. Micromanagement is a horrible issue with Menards which can be demoralizing and frustrating, especially when it gets in the way of the employee doing their job effectively and efficiently. Another big issue is that corporate penny pinches and cuts corners on everything and focuses more on catching mistakes then improving stores. Corporate expects a lot from employees, but offers little support to help them do their job efficiently. There’s a lack of adequate equipment/materials to do your job well. Their technology and equipment is severely outdated and constantly breaking down. Also, every department in the store is understaffed and messy. The payroll to sales ratio (which is dictated by corporate) is so unbalanced that most departments can't afford to have enough people working to take care of all the freight and other tasks, train new employees, and help customers. This contributes to the overall messiness and disorganization of the store and poor customer service. Corporate continues to require more with less and can't seem to comprehend why stores are messy and understaffed. Essentially, this led to employee burnout from the overworking of workers with little time off to recover. You can tell that most of the people at corporate where out of touch with the reality of the daily operations of a store by the tasks they assigned or their solutions to fix issues that arise. Corporate also set up some of the craziest, write-up happy rules and attendance policy I have ever seen for a workplace. They are ruthless. If you make one minute mistake, you’re written up or even fired. As a result, this made everyone constantly worried about getting in trouble. Also, there's a lack of trust by corporate and management. Security cameras were more focused on employees' productivity rather than actual thieves who walked out with product. Policies and procedures (half of which are ignored) are ridiculously extensive and management is inconsistent in enforcing them. This again caused more disorganization in the store. Teamwork is almost non-existent. If you ask for help from another employee, management scolds you for using up spare employees. Overall, very low standards as far as promoting employees to jobs they are not qualified or trained to perform. I admired the culture of hard work at Menards, but the overall talent level of the company is lacking. Most people working there have very little education or no real-world working experience outside of Menards. Generally, about half of your co-workers are immature and either lazy workers, liars, scratch one’s back, or back stabbers (or all the above). There's a lot of clicks and gossip/drama between co-workers, which would remind you of high school. The overall management is very unprofessional, incompetent, and ran by people with no degrees or any knowledge of business what-so-ever. I would venture to say that 75% of the managers have no business being in these positions. Most promotions into management are based on favoritism rather than on someone's qualifications. Managers are usually always irritated or annoyed, because corporate is always switching policies on them, auditing them, and other general nonsense. Upper management is only helpful when they want to be and there's no leadership from them. Employees, especially new hires, are given too much misleading information by upper management, so they can secure their jobs. All in all, managers are totally taken advantage of by Menards. Most managers work close to 3,000 hours a year and make less than $50,000. Relocation to other stores is also a must if you want to you move up in the company. Basically, training is all on you between doing massive amounts of mundane training paperwork with little to no direction from management and the useless in-home training courses which is not paid for and voluntarily done on your own time at home. On-job product training is non-existent. The only way to learn is by reading the info on the package. This made it difficult and frustrating to perform your job in assisting customers on a purchase. The staff (in some departments) does not promote growth in their employees. Also, they played musical chairs with the staff, so no one knew anything about the department they worked in. Complaints or suggestions for improvement by subordinates are not taken seriously, simply swept under the rug. FT benefits are mediocre (expensive health insurance co-pay for little coverage, no sick days, vacation time was minimal and required too much time to build days, the holiday bonus is store credit instead of money, employee discount is PRD, and no 401K match). FT hourly pay is a joke and is not enough to make a living on let alone support a family. Pay raises are a meager 10 cents every 6 months and only if you pass a test. Basically, you will not have a work/life balance (especially managers) due to an outdated culture of all work and no play. Your scheduled shifts fluctuate each week, so you could never plan anything in advance. Being FT, you must have open availability and work every other weekend. So, say "bye-bye" to your family, friends, and social life. Also, they made it difficult for you to request days off. Going home at your scheduled time is viewed badly sometimes. If you worked until closing, you never knew what time you would leave and sometimes you would have to open the next day with less than 5 hours of sleep. All these cons resulted in a ridiculously high turnover rate and for me to move on to a better company and a "grown-up" career with my college degree. I would recommend looking elsewhere for employment.