The company's idea of promoting someone usually comes at the expense of demoting someone else. It wasn't until after I was hired as the head of the warranty department that I found out I was the third person in the past six months hired for that position (one of my predecessors was demoted to a customer service representative). Furthermore, I found out my direct supervisor (a young, first-time manager) was formerly the secretary to the No. 2 person in the company and she switched jobs with her predecessor.
The company had office manager meetings at 7 a.m. once or twice per week, which seems entirely counterproductive and was more of a control mechanism. I understand technicians meeting once a week at that time to go over sales and service, but the office managers had their own separate meetings.
Other than that, the company is indicative of what you see in corporate America. They had new software installed that most of the people trained by the software provider struggled to use, but it was expected that someone just hired should have more mastery over it than they do. They set the position as a salary position as a way of bypassing overtime (after I was hired I was told they wanted me to work more than 40 hours per week regularly). They hired someone with management experience (I have more than a dozen years in various industries) but yet the first-time manager started questioning me because she thought I "acted too much like a manager" -- which led me to suspect that she was afraid she could see herself being demoted potentially like what happened to her predecessor.
Overall, it's a classic case of a company wanting overqualified people to work in positions that are not using their skill sets and the other trappings of that work environment (cronyism, unrealistic job expectations given the lack of resources, an anti-family holiday policy, poor medical insurance benefits, etc.). Go there only if you are interested in learning proprietary information and a thick culture setting that leads to no career development.
