Branch level employees like myself are the frontline of the company. We get to deal with the effects of extremely poor upper management which always results in a bad customer experience (yelling, swearing, making you feel like crap, threatening to call the corporate office etc.)
We get cars basically on happenstance - reservations mean absolutely nothing, which understandably makes no sense to the customer.
Many branches are severely understaffed, even ones that are busier have MAYBE 2 people working the entire 7am-6pm shift 5 days a week and every Saturday 9-12. When it’s busy, you don’t get a break, and when you do, it’s a half hour.
Upper management is useless when you need cars, and then when you get a bad survey (almost always something that’s out of your control) you are scolded by upper management for not “accommodating” the customer. WITH WHAT?
Horrible training. Online training can only do so much - it does depend on who the branch manager is, but on the whole, your training comes from being thrown in at the deep end (processing rentals/returns with little to no in-person training). If the BM is good enough to actually try and train you, there usually is no time in the day to do so since of the understaffing issue and how busy the branch is (and how impatient the customers are).
Your time-off/vacation days/etc. are minimal and are up to you to keep track of.
You are forced to maintain a certain sales quota (that is understandable) but is at the same time very hard to do considering the type of customers that go to each branch - gold members are no opportunity basically bc they just want to get in and out.
The reservation call line and the emergency roadside assistance are absolutely useless and unhelpful and incompetent - so we have to deal with the effects of that on a daily basis.
If someone is unable to come to work for whatever reason, it’s extremely difficult to get someone from another branch to help out so oftentimes you are left with one person to run the entire branch by themselves for sometimes the entire day - oh and many branches do not have detailers - they are forced to wash every single car themselves and also answer 3 phone lines.
There is a massive overturn of employees for all of these reasons - and more - so when there is a change in branch management, policies that are more lax, change. That causes huge amounts of confusion for our many regular renters (businessmen/women).
I could literally go on endlessly about how horrid this company is to work for, and I’m sure to rent from, obviously. It is the worst company I have ever worked for and just do yourself a favor and never ever work for Hertz. Your soul will be sucked out little by little every day until you have a mental and emotional breakdown that causes almost irreparable damage to your psyche. If you think I’m being dramatic, I am not. Just don’t do it.
