Harbor Freight Tools reviews

High expectations low support. Huge disconnect from any leadership outside of store. Manager and DM dont give credit where it is due or recognize the high performers. No incentive to be beyond mediocre. Someone giving 110% and carrying the store gets about the same raise as someone who barely alive. Disproportionate work load between sales and logistics side of business. 5 people handle all the freight and the other 5 walk around and talk to customers all day to avoid doing any actual work. High pressure, high accuracy and attention to detail,antiquated tech and absurd one size fits all s.o.p for every store is very inefficient. Find a better way to get things done and accomplish goals= get reprimanded for being off process. S.o.p for pricing alone is like 30 pages long. No scanner locatable items like more established retailers use, stockroom is all manually scanned and printed 8x11 tote labels that need to constantly be re updated due to changes in on hands. Stockrooms are generally too small for the amount of product received. In the spring you will finally get those snow shovels your customers have been wanting all winter and now you have nowhere to put them. Many times after truck theres absolutely zero space left in the racking and you still have 20 cases of 70lb tool kits with no room/ cant go to high up in shelves. Must remove every box in some bays to make room. Handling 3x the product every truck because of poor store planning and lack of hours or vision from DM to make adjustments. Not like THEY have to crawl on their belly to reach a 70lb box on the floor thats 4 feet deep under 20 inch tall shelf, so "its an easy fix" in their eyes. Cutting hours and blaming tarrifs, ceo is bad with his personal finances and has a penchant for yachts. Distribution centers constantly sending wrong or damaged/missing product and constantly throwing store inventory off. Could be anything from a small box of car polish all the way up to a 3x8ft wooden crate containing a gantry crane you were or weren't supposed to get. Customer specific pre ordered tool boxes getting sent to a store 3 states away and not being able to easily remedy the situation at the store level yet its 100% your stores responsibility because someone else didnt do their job. Vague and poorly written planograms, get those done early and in 2 days they will have an update saying there was a mistake and you physically have to spend 2 hours not allocated to go back and fix. The pay seems decent but its alot of work. Physically demanding and mentally straining, constantly checking yourself what the next move is and being very intentional about every action and decision. Low staff numbers, sometimes you have a bunch of work to do but too much traffic and not enough staff. Cashier lines always 3 customers deep can barely take a sip of water between transactions. Trucks are not palletized but floor stacked, you have a forklift for only taking tool boxes out of the trailer, most stockrooms dont have pallet racking every thing is manually handled once its inside the building via wooden movers dollies that they sell, or a cheesy hydraulic table cart. No incentive for high performers anymore, they all discovered that hard work just means more hard work for them while someone else is leaning at the cash register or just standing around up front. Managers will overuse the ones who accomplish anything and drive them to work somewhere else. Vacation time is accrued quickly but good luck taking more than 3 days off in a row with such low staffing. Low staffing= bad work life balance. Your days off will look something like; close Tuesday 9p.m get Wednesday off,be back Thursday at 6 a.m. Company thinks work life balance is a home and work thing yet fails to realize sometimes balance AT work is important. One or two people doing 70% of the heavy work is absurd.

Moving up in the company is challenging and most of the management end up being sourced from outside.