JELD-WEN Reviews

**Headline:** Worked My Way Up for Seven Years, Then Learned Politics Mattered More Than People I worked at JELD-WEN for seven years. I started as a temporary employee and eventually worked my way up to group manager, so my experience was not based on a brief stay, one bad week, or an outside opinion. I saw the company from multiple levels. I gave that place years of long days, hard work, and personal sacrifice. There were good people there, especially among the hourly employees. I worked with people who showed up, worked hard, and did the best they could under difficult conditions. I also had three amazing group leaders who worked extremely hard, tried their best, and helped hold things together when the departments were stretched thin. I am proud of them. I could not have accomplished anything without them. During my time as a manager, I managed Siteline Casement, Paint Line, and SDL simultaneously on third shift. I also managed or had responsibility for 2500 Casement, Classic Line, Multi Department, Hinge Door Line, Warranty, and briefly had experience managing Siteline Double-Hung on third shift. I was expected to cover a lot of ground, solve problems quickly, and keep departments moving even when the resources needed to succeed were not provided. The hours were brutal. I often worked 14-hour shifts during the week, with Saturdays usually being “only” 8 hours. Because I was salaried, I was paid for 40 hours regardless of how many hours I actually worked. The expectation was that salaried managers would simply absorb the extra time, no matter how much it took from their personal lives. The lack of support made those hours even worse. I constantly asked for more resources: more manpower, more materials, and equipment repairs. We dealt with constant material shortages, broken or unreliable equipment, and departments that were spread far too thin. I brought these concerns up repeatedly in the meetings I was required to attend multiple times each week. Those meetings rarely produced meaningful solutions. In many cases, they only added more time on top of already long shifts. Instead of support, those meetings often became another place for blame, criticism, and disparaging remarks. I was expected to manage the consequences of problems I did not create, while the basic resources needed to fix those problems were not provided. I was also required to manage three different departments at the same time. In practice, that was closer to the role of a coordinating group manager, but I was never given that title or the pay that should have come with it. I felt bad for the employees in those departments because they were stretched thin, often without realizing how often I was fighting behind the scenes for better working conditions. I repeatedly asked for more manpower, enough materials, better equipment, and working equipment. Those requests were ignored. One of the most difficult parts of my experience was the management culture. I originally worked on first shift, where I was one of the more well-liked managers because I genuinely cared about my employees and tried to advocate for them. Eventually, I moved to third shift partly to get away from another manager whose behavior made the work environment miserable. In my experience, that manager often took credit for other people’s accomplishments, shifted blame onto others when mistakes were her responsibility, and seemed to take satisfaction in firing people, including in situations where the reasons did not seem justified. After I moved to third shift, I noticed a clear change in how I was treated. When I was on first shift, I was respected by many people because I cared about my employees and tried to do the job the right way. Once I moved to third shift, it felt like anything that went wrong in the department suddenly became my fault. Rather than working together to solve problems, too many managers relied on blame, petty insults, and finger-pointing. There were exceptions, but in my experience, many group managers cared far more about protecting themselves than supporting employees or improving the company. There were also managers whose comments about employees were completely unacceptable. I heard managers make racist or racially charged remarks about not wanting to hire people who could not speak English, and I heard people in leadership make fun of employees’ names. That kind of behavior says a lot about a workplace. Many of the employees being talked about were hardworking people trying to support themselves and their families. They deserved basic respect, not mockery from people in positions of authority. I am college educated and earned two bachelor’s degrees. I do not say that to look down on anyone. Some of the smartest and hardest-working people I knew there were hourly employees without degrees. But it was frustrating to watch people in leadership positions speak down to others while showing very little actual leadership, poor communication, and a lack of basic professionalism. At times, even basic written communication from leadership was careless enough that common words like “there,” “their,” and “they’re,” or “to,” “too,” and “two” were confused. That may sound minor, but when the same people are making decisions that affect employees’ livelihoods, accountability should go both ways. Politics also mattered far too much. I have a family with young children, and when I went home, I spent time with them. I was not interested in playing golf with the production manager or becoming part of that social circle. That was not because I was antisocial. It was because I had a family and a life outside the building. But at JELD-WEN Rantoul, politics often seemed to win over performance, effort, and results. One incident summed up the culture for me. During shift changeover, a fellow group manager screamed and cursed at me in front of his entire department. It was humiliating, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable. Instead of addressing it seriously, the response from the production manager and coordinating group manager was to sweep it under the rug. Immediately after that incident, I was terminated by HR for allegedly missing three consecutive shifts without calling in. I dispute that completely. I missed only one day, and I have the emails and dates to support that. After seven years of working long hours, managing multiple departments, fighting for resources, and giving the company everything I had, my employment ended with termination paperwork that I believe misrepresented what actually happened. I also had serious concerns about conflicts of interest and workplace politics. I will just leave it at that. For those of you who worked at the JELD-WEN Rantoul location, you know exactly what I am talking about. What made the ending even more revealing was the silence. After seven years with the company, only the continuous improvement manager sent me a message thanking me for my contribution, outside of my group leads and employees in the departments I managed. Not one other member of leadership reached out. That told me a lot. To anyone considering working there, I would say this: there are good employees at JELD-WEN, and you may learn a lot. I did. But be prepared for long hours, constant pressure, limited support, resource shortages, broken equipment, workplace politics, and a management culture that often relies on blame instead of solutions. If you care about your employees, advocate for better conditions, or expect fairness and respect in return for hard work, this environment can wear you down quickly. A company can demand hard work. It can expect accountability. It can require people to perform under pressure. But it also has a responsibility to support employees, provide the tools needed to succeed, treat people fairly, and respect the time and effort they give. In my experience, JELD-WEN Rantoul failed badly in those areas.