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Harbor Freight Tools

Engaged Employer

Harbor Freight Tools reviews

3.6

63% would recommend to a friend

(3,449 total reviews)
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Eric Smidt

67% approve of CEO

58% positive business outlook

Harbor Freight Tools has an employee rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 3,449 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Harbor Freight Tools employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
5.0
Jul 25, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Expectations are kept reasonable and attainable. If everyone puts forth 100% effort, you should see success and growth in all areas. Management team (at least at my location) is effective, and works well together despite frequently butting heads over details. The health benefits are pretty sweet, for a retail position, and won't break the bank either. Definitely opportunity for advancement if you make the extra effort; they're not just going to hand you promotions. Processes, for the most part, make sense and are able to be implemented easily and efficiently. Customer base is, for the most part, pleasant to deal with. Company seems to invest itself in its employees, certainly more so than any other company I've worked with. Overall, the atmosphere is pleasant and relaxed.

Cons

Free items are a headache and a half. Pricing system is time consuming and convoluted at current; I've been hearing rumors of an update in the works, and desperately hope it's true. Number/name collection can cause friction with customers, especially in case of returns: people don't want to give their numbers out anymore. Planograms are designed poorly on paper, even if the concept behind them is usually great. Most of that comes from skewed product proportions and sizes. As with any retail position, if your management team takes a less than desirable approach towards... well... management, then you're not going to have a good time. While my managers are great, I've heard horror stories about some of the other locations, where favoritism and commission rigging/theft run rampant. Happy to say I can't personally attest to those. Also as with any retail job, if you're going to make your location succeed, you're inevitably going to have to pick up others' slack. I can say that we have a couple of people at my location who have a terrible attitude and work ethic that we often have to pick up slack for, who are allowed to stay on because their add-on percentages are high. Also, on trucks, the state of the shipments are often deplorable. Heavy items stacked on top of light items, unstable-looking, packaging crushed and torn. Definitely a little questionable, but as long as you pay attention and follow protocol, you're usually fine.

3.0
Jul 19, 2014

A mildly irritating, and nearly adequate job.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Its a pretty laid back atmosphere, with a relaxed dress code. Some friendly managers or supervisors makes the job better. The fellow employees can be great and you can view a few of them as family after a while. Most of the customers are pretty good, you can actually stand around and have a conversation with them once in a while if you're on a roll and joking with them. As a sales-floor associate you generate a little over a week of paid time off a year, and 2-3 days of paid sick time a year. Low-end promotions are possible, as in it's not too hard to move up to a supervisor position, moving up to management seems near impossible. Training is quick, but not that efficient and ends up being a running joke between employees.

Cons

Scheduling is a nightmare. Every week you will have a completely different schedule, and so will everyone else except for whichever manager makes the schedule. Lots of favoritism. If one of your managers doesn't like you, and their closing with you, expect that you'll be cleaning the bathrooms. And it doesn't matter how long in advance you put in for time off, your not going to get it, and when you say you wont be in and you gave them plenty of notice, the managers treat you like the bad guy. But dont worry, your managers will change very few months. Very few last much longer than a year, or leave for somewhere else. Your pushed to sell warranties and coupon subscription plans. Whatever you sell, you get roughly 10% commission, but the only way to sell warranties is either getting lucky with a customer that wants one and will ask for it, throwing a lie at the customer and talk it up, or scan a coupon when their not looking and trick them into buying it. The supervisors and managers will tell you to use the coupon scanning method (cheating), but tell you to hide it. But if the district managers find evidence of the cheating, someones probably getting fired. You get yelled at if you don't meet the goals set for selling these things. I've heard the managers get some kind of bonus if the store sells a lot of these, so that's all they care about. The yearly coupon subscription (ITC's) are junk, and all the employees know it, but we still are required to sell these things, and most the customers who do buy it still don't even get the coupons that their paying for. Everyone always whines about the job, and there is a lot of people who will just stand around and do nothing. The companies name collection is a bit over the top. There a quota every week for how many new addresses and email address we have to collect as a store, and it's to the point, atleast at my store, that we pretty much bully them into giving us something or else their checkout process takes forever. The inventory system is a joke, and so is receiving shipments. Most of our freight guys are at court if they don't show up for work. I've been with my store since opening a little over a year ago, and sales on average has gone down, but people get about the same hours anyway. Base pay at my store is 9/hr. Asst Head Cashier 10/hr. Head Cashier about 11/hr. Assistant pricing coordinator 9.25/hr. Pricing Coordinator 9.50/hr.

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Harbor Freight Tools Response
11y
Thank you for your insightful feedback. We especially appreciate your pointing out the casual atmosphere and camraderie in the workplace. We hear that consistently and we're grateful that we can provide such a comfortable environment to our staff. That being said, we are concerned about your input regarding some of the procedures you shared and we urge you to reach out to your regional HR representative or anonymously call the HFT Outlet Hotline at 1-800-693-8377. Thank you, again.
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