Mac-Gray Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Mac-Gray full-time for more than a year

Pros – - Low-stress work environment. A pleasant place to work with nice people.
- Some departments offer the ability to gain varied experience; a great foundation/stepping stone to other opportunities
- Flexible schedules and very generous paid time off opportunities. Perks like Summer Fridays.
- Industry leader in laundry constantly making improvements to its service offering

Cons – - Professional advancement is important to me, and was something I emphasized upon hire. As I excelled at my position and positions above me opened up, it was disheartening to see that in spite of the fact that I was told Mac-Gray hires from the inside, they absolutely prefer bringing in new hires from outside. It's discouraging and encourages high turnover
- In conjunction with the above, formal annual review process is in place, but seems to be just for show. A good review does not translate to higher monetary compensation (there is a "standard annual raise") or improved opportunities. Mac-Gray does not take employee development seriously.
- While some benefits (time off) are impressive, pay is very low and healthcare could use improvement.
- Has a very large, corporate feel to it. Innovation is not encouraged in departments other than R&D. The corporate structure has a very slow and bloated feel to it, minimizing adaptability and creativity.
- Company technology (computers/software) are slow and outdated, contributing to major inefficiency and frustration.
- Service department needs improvement for the rest of the company to function effectively.

Advice to Senior Management – - To avoid turnover it is so important to value your top employees and move them forward. I have seen promising hires leave much to the shock of management, and I can't understand their surprise. No one compensated the top employees for their hard work; their exit was inevitable. Please take annual reviews seriously and structure in monetary incentives that seriously reward hard work. Good hires are hard to come by; value them.
- Throw out all of your computers and buy new ones. The technology is painfully outdated.
- Human Resources needs improvement. Training is great but compensation, benefits, and a culture created by HR are sub-par.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Mac-Gray

Pros – They don't bother me and supply me with a vehicle at no cost to me. The benifits are also good

Cons – They don't supply me with the parts and knowledge needed to do my job properly.

Advice to Senior Management – Get real

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Mac-Gray

Pros – flexible work schedule, non stressful, good benefits, good work environment. very supportive of employees looking for a work- personal life balance. nice boss.

Cons – I got very little feedback regarding my performance. Very cliquish environment. I didn't get the impression that while I could continue at my job for as long as I wanted..but promotions or pay raises were very hard to come by.

Advice to Senior Management – yearly employee reviews that are discussed with the employee so that they can know what to improve on. discussion of an employee's career path so that they can know what to do to get ahead in the company.

Current Employee – been working at Mac-Gray

Pros – Its a job but don't expect too much from it.

Cons – Senior Management are clueless of the operation of the organization. Most are not from this industry.
There is a very serious cultural rift between sales and operations. Sales tend to be college educated, well paid and whine about everything. Operations are techs who seldom become management because there is no methodology to train them. Therefore operations tend to be blue collar, poorly paid, and the whipping boys for every problem. Sales takes great satisfaction throwing Operations "under the bus".
I never heard of an organization where the branch sales team is not responsible to branch managers.
The internal accounting software is not user friendly to the staff who are given P&L responsibility without any input. Sales overestimates new job revenue and operations then suffers from missed targets.

Advice to Senior Management – Create a training program for recruiting technicians.
Bring in a consulting team to review branch salaries; what they will find is sales is grossly over paid and operations grossly under paid which is evident in the high turn over.
Something is seriously wrong when senior staff who accompany an acquisition are gone within 24 months.
Something is seriously wrong when the customer base that accompanies an acquisition, and has been stable for years, starts to erode immediately after MacGray takes over.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Mac-Gray

Pros – The benefits are okay. They use PTO (personal time off) instead of vacation time, this is a major plus; offer tuition reimbursement after a year of employment, 401K with employer matching (there is a vested schedule and I think you get 100% matching after 6 years), and the Health Insurance is 80/20, although not the best insurance coverage. They are somewhat flexible with schedules, but I think it depends on the department and the person in charge.

Cons – Not really any room for advancement or professional growth. Most positions seems to be pretty much administrative, not much middle management. There is absolutely no communication in the corporate office, or between the corporate offices and the branch offices throughout the country. HR is pretty much non-existent, there are no kind of team building or corporate outings to, no real corporate culture, mostly each department does their own thing and doesn't know what the other departments do, not much acknowledgment of employees and the work they do (I don't even think the executives really know what their employees do), employees are not asked to be involved much or asked for their ideas. I don't see much job satisfaction, but some do. This is a good place to work if you don't like to be challenged, don't care about advancing your career and basically just want to go to work, do a mundane job and go home. I guess it is a good place to start to get some experience in an office and then move on to much better things. Many jobs do not translate to jobs outside of this company. Be warned, salaries start low and raises are a standard 3% with not much opportunity for much more, this company cares more about the bottom line and retaining good employees.

Advice to Senior Management – Change the way employees are treated. Not that they are treated badly, just not acknowledged, rewarded, involved much in the company (offer a way employees can let management know what is not working well and ideas on how it can be improved). There needs to be some kind of employee corporate outing and/or team building, show employees you appreciate them (and the lame Christmas parties do not count).

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend