Electronic Merchant Systems Reviews

I am a current employee and I must say I am pretty terrified to write this review in fear of losing my job. But, there needs to be a light shed on some of the absolute ridiculous and unethical management practices that are plaguing this company. Management has pushed our team to write a review for Glassdoor, but I just could not bring myself to write a positive review for this company under the pressure of management. I broke down my thoughts below: An EMS employee (I am not allowed to share names or titles) would target individuals at EMS for various scams to generate additional income. All of this happened during the years I have worked at EMS and all under the knowledge of the our HR department. This person would target people for contractor scams, bulk purchasing scams (he came up to me saying I could make additional money purchasing bulk contractor supplies and he had a connection to sell them), musical instrument scams and I know he targeted individuals based on their interests and exploiting ways he could get them to pay him for those interests (ie - I love "x" - he would follow up and say he had a connection where he could get you a discount on "x"). Looking back on this all, I am kicking myself for ever giving him money, but since he was a high ranking official at our company, I never thought getting ripped off would be a possibility. After confronting him about getting my money back, he would brag about how "Tight" he was with HR. He would brag to me about how often he would give HR gifts (so many sources can confirm this) and how it would be "Impossible" for him to ever get fired. After finding out that these scams happened to a handful of other individuals around the company, I then went to HR to set the record straight. To my surprise, I was quickly dismissed and told that this is not a work issue. I guess he was right when he said he had "HR in his back pocket." I was deeply disturbed to find out that even after I went to HR about this scammer, this individual continued to scam individuals at our company. After additional confrontations with the scammer, he would raise his voice to me and brag that there was nothing I could do and he would find a way for me to get fired. I do believe the way he talked down to me was based on him knowing how much power he had, but HR has told me before that this is a "Male Dominated" culture. They sure do play into that. To the Chairman of EMS: Do you want to find out how many people were scammed? Do you want to find out how many people were hushed away? Send out an "All Employee" email and find out. I know you are only at the office a handful of times, due to your global Ferrari racing hobby, but I think you need to look under the covers on this issue. Insurance: Is horrible. If you have a family, you will be paying well over $1,000.00 a month for your insurance. Their insurance plan was not even an option for me and I had to opt to using ObamaCare. Vision and Dental provides minimal support and is extremely dated. Pay: Is well below what other employers are offering for similar positions. After making this account, I used Glassdoor's Salary calculator to find out my position was grossly underpaid. Raises are pretty standard (1 - 3%) and there has been some years that I have not been given a raise at all. These raises are not really based on performance, and are more of a blanketed raise for all employees. Opportunity to Advance: Not happening. Higher paid positions are usually hired in. There is minimal company advancement, unless you have an "in" with one of the department heads. Senior Management: Has been with the company for a LONG time. They are stuck in their ways and nothing has changed at our company during the time I have been there. There is no work culture. It's sad to hear how other employees talk about their jobs and the other people at EMS. There has also been a major push to try to capture our staff on "Fake" emails to teach us about cyber security. With minimal training, the CTO will send these emails out to individuals to try and trick them into clicking elements on there. They have gotten so rotten, that they will send you emails posing to come from other people at the company. If you do click on one of these emails, the CTO will send out an "all employee" email publicly shaming you to the entire company! When my name was on the list, I clicked on a fake linkedin email, I was disheartened to learn that my name was sent out to the entire company to shame me. I tried to confront the CTO and she talked down to me and told me I had to "Learn the Hard Way." Are you kidding me? With minimal training and a hands off approach, I have never been shamed like that in a business setting. IT takes a tough approach on the company. The internal systems we have to use on a daily basis are dated, there is no Pandora (or social media on your breaks) and they target individuals with these spam emails. After I confronted the CTO about public shaming my name, I was instantly sent another fake email to test me. Our computers are old, emails are often lost or deleted and I am confident that EMS will continue to struggle to connect with younger professionals with these practices. HR provides 0 training for new employees. With all the nuances with having to clock in and our occurrence system, management and their employees tend to "guess" on the various policies. You have to clock in every day. Yes. I thought I just had to do this because I was considered a lower level employee, but even management has to do the same. Who does this anymore? Where do we work, a fast food restaurant? There is no flexibility to work from home because our internal systems only work ... at work. Other "Higher" executives have this privilege to make their own schedules, leave when they want and even work away from the office for longer periods of time. When you start at EMS, you are given 0 vacation days. Yes. Zero. There is also a very dated "Occurrence" policy. If you get so many occurrences, you get fired. If you have a family, things do come up and this place is unforgiving. The Chairman and CEO are extremely disconnected from the lower level employees at EMS. They don't know anyone by name, and are rarely seen in our department. The entire company knows about the Chairman's Ferrari racing hobby (people cheer him on at work when he wins!!) and I laugh at this because we are paid so poorly. If you want to talk about a company that is so disconnected from their employees, EMS would be a great start. This is a male dominated culture, and it really shows. There are some amazing people that work here, but the majority of our culture here at EMS are people talking about how horrible this place is to work. We are in the process of moving downtown Cleveland and there is no talks to paying the employees like other Cleveland companies do. This company has a ton of potential if it was put in the hands of SOLID management that had a clear vision for the future and would not feed into the hands of corruption. I hope this review starts to shed that light on these problems.

If you are an honest, hard working individual, this is not the place for you. All these positive reviews from current employees are here because employees are told by management to give the company a positive review to keep their rating up and to bury negative reviews like the one I am about to give. While I was employed at EMS, I saw things that would never be allowed at a real company. There was an employee who sat at her desk all morning nodding off and falling asleep. Everyone in the department knew about it and it was mentioned to the department head, but nothing was ever done about it. Same employee spends most of the day on the personal phone calls and again, nothing is done about it. In fact, there are 2 people in that department that spend most of their day either on personal phone calls, sleeping or not at their desk at all, and nothing is done about it. Two perfect examples of poor management and favoritism. The so-called CIO is a joke. She has no clue about technology. She runs around all day flipping her hair and trying to act like she knows what she is doing, that is, when she's actually there. She spends half of the year out of state where she claims to "work remotely", which translates to "I check my emails on my iPhone". She has to be the only person I have ever come in contact with that cannot figure out how to connect with a VPN and she's supposedly an IT Professional! What a joke! She is able to continue her charade as an IT professional only because of the people in her department. Before meetings, she spends days finding out what is going on from her managers and other employees in the IT Department. If someone she was meeting with were to ask her a technical question that she wasn't expecting and therefore didn't prepare for, she wouldn't be able to answer it because she's clueless. She spends a lot of time on personal phone calls (seems to be a trend in her department) and when she gets a personal phone call, she must get up and slam her office door shut as a way to flex her power. She is very childish and even acts like a child at times. She was having issues with one of her personal online accounts and had an IT employee helping her. She had to keep switching between two different websites and each time she switched she had to sign in again. I personally witnessed her having a temper tantrum because she had to keep putting in her user name and password. Unbelievable! There were people that could not do all the basic functions of the job they were hired to do and when this was pointed out to the CIO, her response was "Everyone has their limitations." What??? How about you hire people that know what they are doing and have the skills and knowledge to do the job they are hired for? And why not offer some training or continuing education so that your employees can better themselves? Wait, the CIO herself has limitations. That explains a lot. The remote sales offices are a revolving door of people, from the General Managers to the Telemarketers. The turnover rate is unbelievable, but understandable because no one wants to work for a company that treats you like a second hand citizen or a company where you have to chase them to get paid. The so-called HR Department is anything but an HR Department. The Human Resources department is one of the most important departments in a company. EMS' HR Department is staffed with people who do not know the first thing about running an HR Department. They are unprofessional, unhelpful and lacking in the necessary, basic knowledge. If they had actual HR professionals working in the HR Department, they wouldn't have to worry so much about being sued. And if you have an issue with another employee or your supervisor, don't look to HR for help, even though the Employee Handbook states you should because your issues will fall on deaf ears and you will be terminated. They boast in help wanted ads that they have competitive pay, great benefits, paid time off, which couldn't be farther from the truth. It is true that after 90 days you accrue some vacation and personal time, but nothing to write home about. They have an occurrence system where you get points for being late or missing work and not having any vacation time to use and if you get 13 occurrences in a year, you are terminated. Every employee gets 5 personal days at the start of each calendar year, but, if you use one of those paid personal days that the company gives to you, you are given an occurrence. Yes, that is correct. You get dinged for using a personal day that they company gives you! So you already start off the year with 5 occurrences. Never have I heard of such an obscured and ridiculous policy. I have shared this information with friends and family and none of them can believe that a policy like that exists. Only at EMS where they set you up to fail! I could go on and on, but I think I've painted a pretty clear picture of the environment and culture at EMS. I would like to say one more thing, most of the people in my department were awesome and I really enjoyed working with them. It was unfortunate that were were at EMS and not at a real company that actually cared about their employees.