My beef is with the Culligan store in Hanover, Ontario, Canada and hence with Culligan International. It is a corporate store, meaning that it is directly connected to Culligan International through Culligan Canada. Culligan International is promoting a new sales development process under which I was hired several months ago. A week short of the probationary period I was let go ( every story has two sides). Had there been a reason given that a made sense given the conditions I was hired under it would not have rankled so. At no time after the first few weeks were the conditions of that training program addressed or discussed in a meaningful way. In fact, questions about the information in that program only seemed to generate increasing hostility. It was a question about how to deal with the rapidly approaching 90 day corporate HR questionnaire on my participation in the corporate sales development program that seemed to generate the dismissal. It was clear to me that the pointed non-response to the question was a message.

My guess, based on attending a recent Culligan kick-off event, is that Culligan is into an aggressive, top-down corporate renewal program and hasn’t figured out yet how to get or enforce the corporate alignment necessary to make it work down to the field level. There certainly doesn’t appear to be any support yet at the corporate level for anyone caught in this new machinery. If you are thinking of employment with this corporation in a sales capacity, I would seriously suggest getting corporate training commitments in writing before committing to employment. It all looks good on paper but they don’t seem to have figured out how to walk their talk yet. If you have ever tried to sprint up a sand dune you will appreciate what it is like trying to work within this new process that doesn’t seem to have been thought through.

Beware corporate citizens who don’t have their ducks in a row. They can seriously waste your time and damage your reputation.

Huronsailor