If you are salary plus commission, you are also consider to be exempt from laws governing overtime.
They changed the compensation for Route Managers at the end of 2008 after the laws were changed regarding overtime and pay. If you work there prior to that, then Ecolab got away with not having to pay overtime for almost 6000 employees. They consider the Route managers as being outside sales people. Law exempts outside sales people for getting paid overtime. However, route managers really do not fall into the description of what an outside sales person does. If you sale over 50% of the time, contracts, services, products etc., and are not responsible also for the labor involved with the sales, then that is what constitutes being an outside sales person. However, route managers spend close to 75% of their time performing labor as a result of the sales and also regular job duties. These involve installations of any equipment, dishmachines, and chemical dispensers sold
along with maintaining all of the equipment in your route. On call 24 hours a day and rotating weekend coverage. You are also tasked with storing all of there equipment, parts, organizing and the whole nine yards on your own dime. If you do a good job in that very exhausting all time consuming position you better come to love it because you will not get promoted. Management will keep you down. If you voice your complaints regarding time off or needing help you will eventually find yourself with a job. Ecolab puts TM's on a pedestal in regards to pay and job function. RM's bring in more revenue for the company overall but are underpaid and most definitely overworked. Even if you do get time to take your supposedly vacation, it is nearly impossible to get coverage for the time off. Do not expect that your work will get do while you are gone. You have to work twice as hard and twice as many hours the week before and the week after you return from vacation. The worst part about the job is you never know what your income will be year to year of month to month. There is an invisible salary cap. If your income starts to grow and you begin to think that you are doing fine financially, just wait it will not be long before they manipulate your territory in order to keep your salary down. Any kind of loss that is expected in the normal course of operating a business regarding non paid invoices, lost accounts, corporate discounts to customers come out of the salary of the route manager. If you have any kind of concern regarding any aspect of your employment, you can only discuss with you immediate supervisor. You have to take the work of your supervisor on everything regarding your employment. You cannot depend on another department anywhere in your location or in corporate headquarters to listen to or address your issues. Ecolab is all about making management very prosperous while the underlings will be struggling paycheck to paycheck. Look at the CEO Doug Bakers salary whom rakes in over 8 million dollars a year, not to mention stock options and bonuses. I could keep writing but I have other things to get done. I hope this helps someone else in trying to decide between Ecolab and whomever your next employer would be.
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