I started working for the Schwan food company in the middle of 2005 worked there for just over 10 years. Now my experience with the company was mostly positive, if only because for most of that time we had a really good sales manager who deflected the worst of most of the stuff coming down from corporate. However once that sales manager left certainly things got real bad real fast. I took that job because other than the time in the morning and in the night at the depot I was free to do my route the way I felt I needed to to succeed and the job was largely free of micromanagement. However, new corporate management and depot management in the last couple years, they had very different ideas about how to run the company and had a lot to do with telling route drivers how to do every iota of the job. As an experienced route sales representative for them I certainly blew off most of it because bottom line I didn't need to be told how to do my job. Problem was they decided tell us that we had to start running in the preset sequence without exception even if we, by our own experience knowing the lay of the land knew a far better way of running it. Anybody that knows anything about swans knows that once you're out on the route it is not a job where it lends itself to being micromanaged very well. However they expect you to adhere to the sequence as laid out in the Manifest without exception even if a road was flooded out or a bridge was never completed and a road was cut off, or if you knew that passing up people meant they would leave before you had a chance to get back. I always adhered to DOT policy but the company decided to supplant even those rules arbitrarily setting a late start time and an early end time, as such that if you are more than two counties away you could not reasonably start and finish the route in time, for the record said start time was not until 11 a.m. and cut off time was 8 p.m., what's working in Rural and small-town America does not play very well with many customers especially those who both farm and work public work, as many of those frequently didn't make it home until after 8 p.m. the only solution the company offered was to leave product in freezer bags, by and large that played out about as well as the cold reception the new delivery fee increase got.
My biggest beef with the company is less the increasing micromanagement although it did not help and more to do with the fact that the new corporate and local management threw their most dedicated employees under the bus when it suited their interests, frequently violating its own corporate disciplinary policy procedures on relatively minor issues, as well as coming down even more heavy-handed then the law would even require and even legitimately serious issues.
I know one fellow at another Depot he had put in almost as much time with the company as I did, he had a minor fender-bender in the middle of last year, with no injuries, and only modest property damage, and should not have been harshly disciplined, but the company decided to suspend him for 3 days without pay, later that year he was accused of saying something mildly critical of the company on his personal social media and rather than instruct him to take it down and leave it at that they terminated him. Another fellow like myself with 10 years of diligent service to the company customers adored him and he had a well-built up route and they throw him under the bus. Well I left shortly thereafter butt it sort of gives me morbid satisfaction knowing that a lot of his customers fell off after they let him go, and ultimately they certainly may have lost as much as 30 to 40% of the existing customers when they let him go, but his customers held him in such high esteem that he was the company to them. Many of my customers, at least those that stuck around with the new increase in the delivery fee for the most part roll with the changes when I left but even some of my customers dropped off when I left the company. Problem is the company thinks that the customers are their customers they don't understand the concept that a route person builds trust with the individuals, and they are THEIR customers, at least as far as the customer is concerned.
Schwan’s Home Service, Inc. Reviews
I started working for the Schwan food company in the middle of 2005 worked there for just over 10 years. Now my experience with the company was mostly positive, if only because for most of that time we had a really good sales manager who deflected the worst of most of the stuff coming down from corporate. However once that sales manager left certainly things got real bad real fast. I took that job because other than the time in the morning and in the night at the depot I was free to do my route the way I felt I needed to to succeed and the job was largely free of micromanagement. However, new corporate management and depot management in the last couple years, they had very different ideas about how to run the company and had a lot to do with telling route drivers how to do every iota of the job. As an experienced route sales representative for them I certainly blew off most of it because bottom line I didn't need to be told how to do my job. Problem was they decided tell us that we had to start running in the preset sequence without exception even if we, by our own experience knowing the lay of the land knew a far better way of running it. Anybody that knows anything about swans knows that once you're out on the route it is not a job where it lends itself to being micromanaged very well. However they expect you to adhere to the sequence as laid out in the Manifest without exception even if a road was flooded out or a bridge was never completed and a road was cut off, or if you knew that passing up people meant they would leave before you had a chance to get back. I always adhered to DOT policy but the company decided to supplant even those rules arbitrarily setting a late start time and an early end time, as such that if you are more than two counties away you could not reasonably start and finish the route in time, for the record said start time was not until 11 a.m. and cut off time was 8 p.m., what's working in Rural and small-town America does not play very well with many customers especially those who both farm and work public work, as many of those frequently didn't make it home until after 8 p.m. the only solution the company offered was to leave product in freezer bags, by and large that played out about as well as the cold reception the new delivery fee increase got.
My biggest beef with the company is less the increasing micromanagement although it did not help and more to do with the fact that the new corporate and local management threw their most dedicated employees under the bus when it suited their interests, frequently violating its own corporate disciplinary policy procedures on relatively minor issues, as well as coming down even more heavy-handed then the law would even require and even legitimately serious issues.
I know one fellow at another Depot he had put in almost as much time with the company as I did, he had a minor fender-bender in the middle of last year, with no injuries, and only modest property damage, and should not have been harshly disciplined, but the company decided to suspend him for 3 days without pay, later that year he was accused of saying something mildly critical of the company on his personal social media and rather than instruct him to take it down and leave it at that they terminated him. Another fellow like myself with 10 years of diligent service to the company customers adored him and he had a well-built up route and they throw him under the bus. Well I left shortly thereafter butt it sort of gives me morbid satisfaction knowing that a lot of his customers fell off after they let him go, and ultimately they certainly may have lost as much as 30 to 40% of the existing customers when they let him go, but his customers held him in such high esteem that he was the company to them. Many of my customers, at least those that stuck around with the new increase in the delivery fee for the most part roll with the changes when I left but even some of my customers dropped off when I left the company. Problem is the company thinks that the customers are their customers they don't understand the concept that a route person builds trust with the individuals, and they are THEIR customers, at least as far as the customer is concerned.