The cons at UniFirst are many. First and most important, on a national scale, UniFirst is 2nd among national uniform and facility service providers. Number one is Cintas and I won't mince words, Cintas dominates the market I was in as well as numerous other markets in the United States. If you take a job at Unifirst, please be aware that there is a CRAZY emphasis on setting appointments. In fact, before I left, they created this insane contest where your location earned a score based on how many appointments you set. The logic behind it is that if you set appointments, you can pitch this VIP Cost Analysis Program to audit the uniform program at a company and hope that Cintas has screwed up, angering the customer enough to switch to UniFirst. The problem is 2 fold. First, the industry standard for contracts in the uniform rental business is 5 years. So, if a company is in year 1-2-3-4....there is virtually no chance they move until their contract is up. If a company is having major issues with Cintas, UniFirst wants you to assist that customer by helping them write letters to Cintas and help them fix their problems in the hope that when the contract is up, they will switch to UniFirst. But, for a sales rep, that's a TON of work for a sale that may or may not happen in 2-3 years and will seem like an incredible waste of time. Here is my last issue, selling at UniFirst is like selling in the 1960's. A full 12 hours of your 40+ hour work week will be in the office on a phone block trying to set appointments. PLEASE be prepared to get a TON of rejection, hung up on, yelled at, or simply ignored. When you aren't on the phone, the expectation is that you go door to door selling to as many businesses you can to try to set an appointment. It's wildly inefficient.
