This horse is dying slowly - Anonymous employee Graybar Employee Review

2.0
4 Jul 2020
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Networking with suppliers, events like hunting and golfing trips

Cons

SALARY sucks! They start you out at $40k ($20/hr) and you make 1% commission AFTER you hit 80% of your yearly budget. Then when they think you're deserving and proven yourself they bump your salary down to $35k and you make 3% commission. They dont give you any raises throughout the year to reflect inflation. Competition beats us across the board of most criteria; customer service, logistics, competitive prices, etc. The only thing Graybar is good at is buying giant warehouses and dumping money into products they think will sell. But they fall behind on accuracy of reporting so you dont really know what you have stocked. A shipment might come into your warehouse and the team cant even get it recieved within 2 days to get that same material out the door. All in all, this horse is dying due to internal compensation issues, customer services issues, and not being able to outperform the competition.

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Graybar Response
5y
Thanks for leaving a review. It sounds like you may be describing our sales commission plan, but it actually has a tiered commission structure and goes higher with your gross margin production (it starts at 3%), and there is no cap. We are sorry you were not happy with your experience.

Explore other reviews about Graybar

5.0
11 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Strong department leadership in current role

Cons

Many senior team members with decades of stored brain knowledge that is hard to share

3.0
6 Apr 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Many opportunities to learn about distribution and management. Pto is three weeks per year plus holidays and over a s Week of sick time. If you work here longer, you can buy enough company shares to receive a sizeable dividend each year. You are allowed to buy about 5% of your salary in company shares per year and then receive usually 20% of that back per year. The profit sharing plan contributes 10% of your salary to your 401k account but you need to be vested to keep it all.

Cons

You will need a second job to live. Sales reps make way more and do half the work but they report to their managers much more. If you are a CSR, sales people feel entitled to treat you however they want and their manager will back them up. You are watched by coworkers and management like a high surveillance prison especially when you're new but they will leave you alone if you're good at your job after a year or so. Graybar brags about how much revenue and profit they make but middle and upper management suck it all up leaving scraps for the workers who made it for them.

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