Applier Beware, You're in for a Scare!
Pros
Paid training, occasional free lunch, lots of schwag. You can learn a lot of things about the residential service plumbing business as a newbie by working here. This is a way to get your foot in the door in the plumbing trade if you have no other avenue, since they will hire just about anyone. Some of the corporate people are also friendly and nice.
Cons
Culture of corruption. Very deceptive business practices tantamount to a modern day Frontier Town. Once you're in, you will be expected to purchase thousands of dollars worth of tools. If you do not know where to get these tools, they will sell you substandard equipment from a partner business. They will promise you everything will be good, but when the time comes they will hand you broken equipment. They will tell you how much you will be paid, but when you get your check it will be far less than that. They will lie to you, then when you discover the truth, they will say that they told you already. They rely on people becoming heavily invested with their own time and money, because with little experience in the plumbing trade you cannot go elsewhere. You're stuck, making bad pay and working long hours. Meanwhile, you are expected to do mountains of paperwork, make every customer 100% satisfied and attend unpaid meetings at the office several times per week. You are penalized for completing jobs quickly and efficiently. You are encouraged to make each job as big as possible. Ultimately, you are expected to begin overcharging customers as a way to alleviate the burdens imposed upon you. The company will never tell you this, for legal reasons. But the other technicians will tell you that ripping people off is only way to survive. Since the company makes 80% of whatever money you collect from customers, you make them rich while remaining relatively poor. Nobody who works for this company is happy, not even the veteran technicians. You are expected to rip people off while being completely depressed and remain 100% subservient to corporate demands, while giving them the vast majority of the fruits of your labor in exchange for condescending recommendations, scrutiny and a small amount of camaraderie. Essentially, they turn you into a loyal dog begging for scraps, psychologically and financially. If you do not conform to this, you will be fired unexpectedly by selective enforcement of the rules, as they have a log of internal transgressions kept on every technician, from being one minute late, to missing a piece of paperwork, to receiving complaints from customers--valid or not, it is irrelevant--there are dozens of reasons to fire each employee on file. You are escorted off property and told "good luck".