Let's be honest. You have multi-unit management experience, you are thinking you want to work for a massive company with growth potential and $75,000 the first year plus a guaranteed $16,000 bonus doesn't sound too bad, right? Wrong. The District Manager position is more like a store manager position anywhere else. You are managing $10 an hour employees and it's 16-25 of them. Most store managers have more direct reports.
For this compensation, you are expected to be on call essentially 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Every morning you need to be up and calling each one of your properties to ensure that each of your $10 an hour "managers" has shown up for work in a timely manner. If they haven't, you need to notify your Vice President boss and find a way to cover that shift or go to the store and open it yourself. A report comes out daily and goes to everyone from the CEO to the District Manager about what property didn't open on time.
If a gate goes down at 9:30 pm and someone is stuck behind, guess who goes? The District Manager. Customer needs in on an emergency after office hours? District Manager. Lock gets stuck on a weekend and it's urgent? Again, District Manager. Someone wants to finally pay their bill before an auction at 6 am? District Manager.
During the summers, it's a mandatory 6 day work week, no compensation or additional time off during the week and no option as to which days those will be. You're expected in the field from 8 am to 6 pm and to still find time to accomplish all your own work of doing mindless reports, reviewing numbers that expectations change daily on and managing your team of under-motivated, poorly paid, high school educated employees. The good news?
There is no personal growth in this company. The leadership is continuously changing and turnover has become so bad it's now part of the bonus metric. Any District Manager worth his weight can find a better job - the ones that tend to stay have come from companies that are sub-par and aren't able to move forward and advance with another company. Public Storage is where they die. District Managers are only hired from the outside and are never promoted from within - great succession planning right?
District Managers are expected to be professional but be on the same comfort level with their hourly managers. Dress code is business casual and is expected even when you are repairing a rolling door, changing a hasp or cutting a lock in 100 plus temperatures or sub-zero ones. There is no quality of life outside this job. If you don't eat, live and breathe Public Storage, you won't make it.
It's about basic greed and corporate manipulation. There is no ethical room to even help anyone. it's a bitter end for anyone who can't pay as an auction is conducted regardless of situation. Your job is to say no, I don't care that you have cancer, don't care that you're getting divorced, don't care that you're dying or that you lost your mother - can't pay today, too bad - it's sold. Public Storage likes to say "We're a compassionate company" but frankly, we aren't. We are a cut throat, money hungry organization that simply is out to make a buck. We raise your rent - pay or get out. There is no flexibility.
My bottom line is that I took this position with another offer on the table. I made the wrong decision. I'm looking now as I'm miserable here and it's a limited market. I've been with 2 big box retailers as a District Manager and never been this micromanaged or abused.
