Pros
The Levy family who started and is running the company seems to care and be decent people, and of course you can get a paycheck. The particular branch manager I was going to work with was open, professional, had great soft skills, and seemed to really care (not my impression of the other area branch managers).
Cons
The business model relies on employees for all marketing so there is high pressure to produce using a business model that requires having branch offices in the small rental spaces in grocery stores and employees walking around the store doing cold-sales to get new customers. Their computer systems are completely disorganized and need to be consolidated, they operate on a low budget, and during the 2.5 week training class they made it public that they were closing many of the area branches within the next two months (Atlanta, GA area) because they were not creating enough revenue to keep them affordable (even without having a marketing budget and paying the cheap rental price of a small space in the front of a grocery store), including branches that people in my training class were designated to work in. The fact they hired people to work in branches they were about to close demonstrates the kind of unconsolidated thinking that is part of the culture. Just for the Atlanta, GA area they have one training class after another to try to keep positions filled because there is such a high burnout/turnover rate. Two people simply stopped showing up during the first three days of the training class (I verified this with the trainer.) and most of the rest of the class was lazy and barely participating, talking when the trainer left the room about how the job would require more work than they thought it took to work in a bank. The employee HR interface is dysfunctional. If you want to click the link to email HR, it loads an email window, but the "to" field is blank, so you can't send the email to the right person. You can't load your W-2 because the application is so buggy it can't generate a PDF. The atmosphere isn't professional, is sloppy, and everything is about opening new accounts with little employee development. Basically unless you're management or the local trainers or investigators, you have to carry the load of getting enough new accounts to try to keep your local branch solvent. It's a high-pressure environment with little reward. They expect everyone who is a Sales Associate to be both a skilled sales person AND a teller that never makes a mistake, even when you're new, because they can't afford to absorb even small errors. There is no opportunity for culture, peer, or management reviews because as a Sales Associate there is no interest in anything but you producing your sales quota. There is little provided for employee enrichment, although if you're a high producer you can advance to other positions, but for each successful person, there is a lot of carnage from people who were burnt out, discouraged, and left behind. During the 2.5 week training class the class was dialed into a company-wide conference call in which the President announced the coming branch closures, and as a result the people in my class hired to work in those branches could not get a hold of their branch managers, as if the managers checked out on their job, walking out and leaving, or checking out while they were at work just biding their time. It was so sad but another red flag. I left at the end of training after getting a clear picture that this is not a company to work for to develop a career there. I believe in giving a 2-week notice no matter what, but was told since I was still in training I could leave on good terms without notice. I was told by the trainer that only I and one other person in the class seemed to be motivated to do our best. That was also very disappointing, but I agreed with her, as I sat in that class, and looked around me at the attitudes most people in the class had.
