Pampered Chef Reviews

Over worked employees, rude nasty mean supervisors and management, no raises, no training, stressful work environment. Pampered Chef has a training department that is there to get rid of you if you do not perform to their expectations. It is NOT a training department. Lots of great dedicated employees have been let go because the training department is set up as a firing department. Often you are told how not to do something and never given directions on how to do something. An example, don’t say this or don’t do that. How about giving positive constructive feedback. To boost morale in the call center the training department treats employees like preschool students. If you are the type of working that likes to be given balloons and plastic keys or have your name on a star hung on the wall, then this place is for you. The rewarding system they have makes those who don’t get a balloon at their desk feel excluded and shameful. It essentially comes down to a person’s opinion on whether your call was good or not. If for any reason the “training” team does not like you. They will purposely fail your calls or give you poor scores so you are fired. If you are a hard worker you won’t go as far in this company as someone who knows how to suck up to management. This speaks for any department. Throughout many departments work is heavy and employees are over worked. You will get very little to no training within a position. Nor will you receive much direction from Management. However, it is still expected of you to do your job even if no one gave you any training on how to do that job. Fasten your seatbelts it is a bumpy ride and if you can’t weather the storm they get rid of you. Lots of great employees with many skills and years have been let go because of poor management. One more thing, be cautious of the good reviews on this site. Management has required employees to go on and give good reviews.

Let me start by saying the positive reviews you see on here are mostly from independent consultants, NOT from actual Home Office employees. Do NOT let those reviews fool you into thinking this place is worth working at. The consultants are treated like Gods while the home office workers are treated like trash. This company is the most unorganized, dysfunctional, delusional, and downright unprofessional place I have ever worked at. The upper management act like a college clique, totally disconnected from the rest of the workers. They try to act like they are "involved" because they have an all glass office, well they are barely even in the office to begin with, even though the company does not allow for regular WFH. Apparently rules do not apply to upper management. But even beyond upper management, majority of the employees are very clique like, a few employees who have been there for decades seem to unofficially run things, and by run things I mean they can literally have say in your performance review causing you to get an unfair review, miss out on a bonus or raise. That is how clique-y this place is. That is the type of work place politics you will need to deal with. Employees are overworked, under paid, and totally unappreciated. If you don't know how to be rude, crass, and haven't been there for a long period of time, forget about getting far. It doesn't matter how hard you work, how many hours you put in, or how good you are at your job. They make a big deal about their "company values" during the hiring process and orientation, trust me, those values are just a recruiting gimmick, they are NOT adhered to in any way. If you are on the marketing team, expect to juggle upwards of 30+ projects at a time, that will all change about 20 times. You get no say in the projects you handle because that would be absurd of course, but the moment things don't perform well, then it will be you who is blamed. You will be expected to work on holidays and weekends some times, you will need to stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning sometimes, and you will NEVER be thanked much less compensated for it. Everything here revolves around keeping the consultants happy, which is fine, but its at the cost of home office workers. If you are a home office worker, to Pampered Chef, you truly mean NOTHING. During my time here, there was so much re-organization, and such high turnover. Upper management doesn't seem to understand that employees are DRASTICALLY unhappy. They are too focused on getting more consultants to join, than to care about employees. They try to feed you nonsense about how you are "changing lives," really you're just working for a glorified pyramid scheme. As for the office, looks nice from the outside, like I said, they got some trendy furniture. It's overrun by fruit flies, the heating/cooling system makes the loudest strangest noises while you are trying to work. They have open floor plan which is horrible, it gets so loud and noisy you can't even get work done, you're constantly trying to find quiet areas. There is no holiday party, no fun events to keep employees engaged or happy. They are so cheap, they have a mediocre on site gym that they CHARGE for. No thanks. They built a basketball court in the warehouse, and guess what, they CHARGE for that too. They literally nickel and dime their own employees. The benefits package here is the worst I have ever had, I was paying a ridiculous amount for HMO coverage, not even PPO because that is so expensive here. The Chicago office is a joke, it's a shared workspace all the way on Michigan Ave. so if you take the train, enjoy the 11 block walk you have to do. The Addison location is nowhere near anything fun or great. Lunch time is a choice of some crappy fattening fast food place. Oh and the worst thing of all....THERE IS NO FREE COFFEE IN THE OFFICE. They literally sell k-cups for $1 each. If that doesn't show you how cheap this company is, I don't know what will.