Just don’t... used to be great until recent Corp initiatives - Senior Outside Sales Graybar Employee Review

2.0
6 Feb 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Amazing benefits, if you can stick it out for 30+ years, you won’t retire poor.

Cons

Don’t get tricked by the talk of upward mobility. There is a lot of room for that, but you will need to be willing to relocate every time you want to advance. The biggest flaw (for sales and support staff) is the new initiative for sales people to do more with less. I was down to 6 accounts and had less than half the staff I needed to support my customers. 12-15 hour days just to maintain current business. Upper management knows, but they don’t want to hire support staff because they would have to pay them an non exempt salary, while sales people and managers work as exempt, so work the exempt as dogs and don’t provide support was the name of the game. This is country wide, so just don’t work here. The support staff felt so over worked and over whelmed, 90% were looking for another job when I left. Again, just don’t consider this place. They only hire people fresh out of college. And the turn over rate is mind blowing. Our office was around 20 people. Since I started, over 40 people have came and gone, mostly lasting only a few months.... it’s horrendous. DONT WORK HERE IN ANY ASPECT. Not even to get your feet wet. Also, pay is horrible. They try to hide behind the benefits, but comp is paying almost double.

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Graybar Response
6y
Thank you for your feedback. We are happy that you took advantage of our amazing benefits but you bring up some issues in workload and compensation. We value our employee’s experience 100% and make sure workload is fair and manageable. We are sorry you felt this was not your experience. At Graybar, we do everything we can to ensure salaries are commensurate with experience. We use market data, in addition to a candidate’s unique skill set, experience and qualifications.

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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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