This review is for DMH USA Inc. in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, which Freudenberg acquired last year.
Where do I even begin… The owners make it quite clear from the beginning that they do not care about you, nor your safety. That is shown in numerous ways, such as having no vacation time in the first year of employment (while the owners take 4+ weeks a year off), having to wait 90 days before being able to enroll in their insurance, having to wait a year+ to be able to contribute to your 401K, staying open with terrible road conditions during heavy snow (they value profit above all else), being open Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve (while of course the owners were all off), hearing them berate ex-employees every chance they get, not even saying good morning to you before starting to ask things of you, no sick pay (had to stay at work two different times after throwing up since the alternative would be leaving without pay), and they do not allow space heaters in the office but will happily let you freeze (my office shared a wall with outdoors and was probably never above 65 degrees). There is no work life balance. As mentioned, you have no PTO until you’ve been there for a year, it is 8 am-5 pm Monday-Friday with no flexibility (hour unpaid lunch with no option for a 30-minute one), and fully on-site, even though my position could have been done with a mix of remote and on-site work; the person in this position prior to me worked 3 days a week from home, but I was not offered this flexibility. The owners will also work remotely sometimes. One of the owners would make comments when I submitted a request for (unpaid) time off. They do not want you to have a life outside of work, and they make that known. They talk poorly about people who call off of work sick. They will keep you there past 5 pm once in a blue moon, but this is not time you are getting paid for, as they only have hourly employees, and do not pay overtime. They allow employees to work off of the clock, including in the warehouse – what if an employee were to get injured while not clocked in?
They often will make up rules on the fly and try to make you out to be in the wrong as a newer employee, even if you are not wrong. They also pick and choose who the rules apply to; the owners will park right in front of the building and in the visitor parking spot, but if you park in the visitor parking spot (even when the parking lot is completely full) you will be told you have to move your car. They also have many pointless rules so that, once again, you remember who you are working for. They make sure you know that you are under their control; I was 5 minutes late from traffic once and was told that if that continued happening without them being alerted, it would go on my “permanent record”. However, they pick and choose who those rules apply to; once, someone was an hour+ late, but because they are friends with the owners and have worked there for quite some time, it was not an issue. Another time, they ordered pizza for us; it arrived before lunchtime and I took a piece back to my office. This prompted one of the owners to have a sit-down with me and explain why I am not allowed to eat the food before being on my lunch break. This was another thing that almost made me cry, being someone who has struggled with food and my weight my whole life. Going off of that, a lot of their “gestures” seemed to be a double-edged sword; at our Christmas party, I saw one of the owners with what appeared to be bonus checks, but I never received one – that led me to believe that they picked and chose who the checks went to. One of the office employees has a personal relationship with the owners, which made them biased on certain things; the owners also showed favoritism towards them. They will always say “nobody wants to work nowadays” when they are struggling to fill an open position, when the reality is that people just don’t want to work for a sub-par company that does not care about them. They also have a super high turnover rate.
The only feedback delivered here is generally criticism portrayed in a negative light. They have a zero tolerance for mistakes, even when you are just starting out; when I had been there for about 4 months, I made a mistake which did not end up being a huge issue, but I still got berated to the point that I cried. Another time I made a small mistake and an owner made two comments about it, and I also heard them talking to somebody else about it. All-in-all the owners are just not very nice; one of them went out of their way to tell me that my hat did not match the rest of my outfit one day. They also talk down to you and make you feel stupid. They are sometimes rude when you ask questions. Sometimes the owners will forget asking you to do something and you will get berated for doing it. They pride themselves with customer service but are unkind to their employees. There is a lack of sense of professionalism; one of the owners once attempted to shout at me through a closed bathroom door while I was using the bathroom. There was a work function that I chose not to attend, as I was not super friendly with any of the other employees; the owner made at least 3 or 4 comments about me not coming.
A month or so in, I was asked to cover the phones while I was on my unpaid lunch break by the president. He did not let me say no. They will ask you work-related questions on your mandatory, unpaid lunch break if you are in the building, even if you are just heating up your lunch in the kitchen. They never gave any notice before mandatory meetings. They will have you do things largely outside of your job scope; I was hired for an office position, yet they would have me help in the warehouse on occasion. I did not get a 4-year business degree to work in a warehouse. There is also an odd communication flow; they will ask you to send emails for them, including request for quotes; it is an extra step, and feels like you are a mediator. The training process is haphazard. I took a week off for a family vacation once, and my work was not distributed to others while I was gone; I had an enormous mountain of work to catch up on when I got back. There is not a feel that others will help you out when needed, it is more every man for himself; for example, I bring the mail in daily when it comes – but if I am not there that day, or leave early, no one else will bother to bring the mail in. They use a software for their inventory that is largely outdated especially with how many items they have. When problems arise from this, you will be blamed because of it.
There is only one microwave for about 18 employees, which caused lines to use it during lunch break; while this was constantly complained about, solutions were presented, but never actually enacted by the owners. The owners bring their dog into work every day which is not generally a problem, except they brought her in once while she was sick and throwing up on the floor everywhere. I do not want to be around that in the workplace. They remained open without working plumbing for about two hours once; if we wanted to use the bathroom, we had to walk across the way to an auxiliary unit to use that bathroom (in the pouring rain) and were told to bring toilet paper with us. The cause of the backed-up plumbing was found to be paper towels in the plumbing; the president said that “next time this happens it is coming out of everyone’s paycheck”. Another time, one of the male bathrooms was closed for 3 days due to a leaking toilet, so 12 male employees had to share one bathroom; there are only about 4 female employees, but we were instructed not to use one of their two bathrooms during that time.
On one point on their website, they say that they offer things that they absolutely do not – work from home flexibility, a cafeteria at work (?), and events/picnics during the summer. Overall, I cannot recommend steering clear of this company enough!!
