The pay was way under average. For a job that takes 4-5 months just for the initial training, and where you keep learning new things every day, I should have a starting wage better then the starting wage for stocking shelves at Target. There should also be more career options to grow at a company like this, but after only hiring for more corporate positions that were not available to most employees and not receiving a raise for two years, I finally received a 36 cent raise an hour... (I got a 50 cent raise when I was 16 years old bussing tables at a restaurant) On top of this, we were on mandatory over time almost year around because the turn around rate was so high, and they couldn't keep good people working there. Mandatory OT would at least earn us 1.5x our hourly rate, but if we didn't do the mandatory OT, even if we had a legitimate reason for not being able to complete it such as being sick (or in my case freelance work some weeks), any of our bonuses we would have earned were stripped and taken away. I made more money doing freelance sports production work once or twice a week on the side than I did at KEH full time plus OT.
TL/DR - They pay is pretty terrible, and the raises they give out (when they get around to it) are laughable.
On top of the terrible pay, 90% of the people there (especially the management) is super political, leaning far left. People there would talk about socialist ideology all the time, so I started talking about how I'm very libertarian and pro Gadsden Flag/Don't Tread On Me/you do you and I do me, and I was very quickly ostracizes. The people I would eat lunch with and go out every Friday with stopped even acknowledging me because I dared not have their same opinion. KEH also came out with 5 "core values" for their employees that was supposed to promote inclusivity and acceptance for everyone, but it was clearly only for woke ideology. They had us do these mandatory inclusive training classes (basically borderline CRT for the workplace) that were supposed to talk about breaking stereotypes, then all the sessions we ever did just turned into a "lets roast Christians and stereotype them (even though we were supposed to be BREAKING stereotypes)." I am a moderate libertarian, and I was still ostracized because I was not far left. Lets also point out that jobs shouldn't be political in the first place, I come to work to earn my share of money and get crap done, not get preached at, at how I need to be woke.
TL/DR: Don't work here unless you are already a woke far leftist who believes in socialist ideology.
When I started at KEH, it actually felt like a family because the whole company only employed a little over 100 people, and everyone knew everyone. I even helped a couple people fix their cars in the parking lot. But as the company grew (and of course all companies want to and should grow), the focus went from quality to quantity. They stopped caring about their employees' input and started only listening to the mother company's board that bought out KEH just a short time before I started. Mind you, this board was full of middle age rich people that had never touched anything other than a phone camera their entire lives, so what were they supposed to know about a camera store? The most significant problem was that KEH did not reward those who made it possible to grow the company as much as it grew. More energy, time, and focus was demanded of us, but there was no reward on the other side of it. It was a real shame this all happened the way it did, because KEH really had great potential. I didn't come to KEH to work 45-50 hours a week, consistently show up early/on time, get promoted to senior tech (tier 3/4), become the most productive camera tech while I was there, AND be the lead for any videography/drone equipment that came through the doors, all to just be underpaid and given a boxed chick fil a meal once a month and be told "thank you." "Thank you" doesn't pay bills.
TL/DR KEH is now a quantity over quality place of work and they do not care about their non corporate employees.
