- Pay is not competitive. At all. Upper level management is being severely underpaid. Mid-level managers are being severely underpaid. Store workers are being severely underpaid. Part time workers are being severely underpaid. You catch my drift. None of this applies if you live in the mid-west, which has a significantly lower cost of living than either of the coasts. Fastenal seems to think it's a good idea to generalize their pay range across the entire country, not factoring in the higher cost of living in places outside of Minnesota. We have also been riding the coattails of a previously "high" starting pay. $10 an hour for a part time position in 2007 was great when minimum wage was low. Now what is it? $11. In 8 years it's been bumped by $1 when the national minimum wage has went from $5.25 to $7.25 and is close to $10 in states like WA. Adapt, it's your only chance to stay competitive..
- Live in a large city and take public transportation to work? Don't worry about us covering or offering incentive programs for this, because we don't. Your commute is not taken into account at all, especially when you're transferred to a different store. Whether it's 10 minutes or 2 hours away, Fastenal does not care. You're on the hook for getting there and subject to write ups for being late at all.
- Executive level management loves to tell you what to do. They are very keen on flipping the script. Never is growth being down due to their decisions. They refer to anything negative happening as "self-inflicted". The current favorite among employees is a video posted entitled "A Self-Inflicted Pay Cut". If you love being blamed for everything under the sun with a company whose president and CEO can do no wrong, you will love Fastenal.
- Do you like vacation structures? Then don't work here. I'm not even close to joking when I say vacation is tracked by each store, individually, in an excel spreadsheet. If you quit and want to be paid out for your vacation, better hope you can prove validity of your excel sheet because vacation is not tracked or communicated corporately.
- No one knows what they're doing. There are no SOPs set in place for most things. If there are SOPs, they are buried in our antiquated intranet. Almost everything you do is learned by doing. Outlook? Learned by doing. Excel? Learned by doing. Word and Powerpoint? Learned by doing. Dealing with our intricate POS system where millions of customer's accounts and cash are handled? Learned by doing. Etc There is no adequate on-boarding process and this is especially rampant within some of our specialized groups like National Accounts - the folks responsible for multi-million dollar business groups. You are brought on and expected to understand what is going on by default. God forbid you need job training, because at Fastenal you won't get it. They have plenty of online classes, but ironically not a soul can explain to you what your job entails. Fastenal loves to be vague in order to expand your job duties well past what you would expect.
- Titles are used as a strategy for lower pay. "Sales Specialist" is essentially an "Account Manager" at any other company. "Account Manager" is a "Senior Account Manager" at any other company. "Business Sales Specialist" is a "Business Development Manager" at any other company. This is another tool used by the company to justify pay structure.
- Speaking of pay structure, there isn't one. Stores are paid off of an insane spreadsheet calculator. Some divisions are paid off of gross profit. Some are paid off of percentage. DMs are paid off of quarterly bonuses. God knows how the executive levels are paid. No consistency and some areas of the company can actually create their own payscale based on what they do for the company. It's insane and interesting at the same time.
- Last, but not least, you make no difference in the company. Don't get it twisted, this company IS NOT concerned with you or your well being. Your opinion does not matter and everybody knows it. This company is about the stock holders. Point blank, period. We will cut any cost in the world to make our stocks look good. This even includes cutting the amount of deliveries made to the stores. Isn't that a great way to support customers? Decreasing the amount of times a store gets product, meaning they have less on hand for customers. Sound backwards? Welcome to Fastenal. Do you enjoy hydration when you're working? We don't offer that. Water jugs were cut from the stores about 5 years ago to save "about a million dollars a year". Not even a tenth of a percent of our profits, mind you. Most of our stores don't even have hot water heaters. Get used to drinking out of the sink and sharing one bathroom with 5 guys (if your store is even that big). Sounds like a 3 billion dollar company to me.
