Working at Kindercare — Reviews by Employees

My experience at Kindercare has been way to long and way to annoying.. The company doesn know what the left hand is doing from the right.. The center directors are always on a sunday morning stroll and believe that they are the reasons the center is awesome.. The DM is a total idiot and probably should just shoot herself in the foot with all the bad choices she has made. The company doesn care about the children or staff.. I wish parents could only see what goes on behind closed doors!!!

I work for this company and most of what I have read is true. KC only cares about the money. I am in management and they give me so much paper work to do I dont have time to really see how the center is doing. I would love to spend more time with the teachers, helping them to care for the children. They need training, an understanding of what needs to take place in the classroom. I end up working all day in front of the computer doing one form after another. I love the children and want them to have a safe and healthy place to stay, and I love talking with the parents and making them feel good about leaving their children at our center. Wish it could be different and better.

Wow... I thought I was crazy because I thought that only our center was like this...
First of all, I would just like to say that I was happy to have a job because our economy sucks right now, so don't get me wrong before reading this.
I worked for KinderCare for almost 2 years. Everything you read about is exactly true. There's a lot of favortism. The only way you get something is if you are in the "circle of friends" that has been created. This includes the center director, assistant director and 2 or 3 other teachers. If you are in this circle of friends, you can show up late, or not at all, call off every Monday, and go home because "you just don't feel like working". We called Corporate dozens of times because of everything that was going on. They didn't care. They must have told the CD what was said because all of the sudden, those of us who called were ignored and given dirty looks for WEEKS. Makes it very uncomfortable to work!
Our kitchen was DIRTY! When licensing or the health department would come in, everyone would scramble to make it look like we were following health codes.
The pay was horrible. I left a company that payed me extremely well to come work for KinderCare because I wanted the experience. I took a pay cut when I came here. I was told we were getting raises about 2 times ... but where are the raises?
Okay now let's talk about ratio. What a joke. Shifting kids took place every hour in the afternoon. There wasn't any proper staffing because we couldn't afford to give out the hours. I was frequently left over ratio. This made me very frusterated and tense.
Kids get sick, parents should understand that when coming to a daycare the children do get sick easily. However, the CD and AD wouldn't tell parents when a outbreak was happening. RSV went around in the baby rooms and about 5 babies were in the hospital but NOTHING was said about it.
When I finally left KC, I gave my 2 weeks notice and did everything properly with a letter of resignation... but I was treated like shit for my last 2 weeks. My center director and assistant director both acted like I wasn't even there. They didn't speak to me, they gave me nasty looks and comments under their breath. I cried a lot during my last 2 weeks simply because I did not want to go to work and deal with that.
Honestly, it was like being back in high school all over again.
I could sit here and go on and on and on about the drama, the health code violations and how greedy they are about money.
I loved my job when I first started here because I adore kids.... however, I quickly learned that they basically lie to you about how "great" it in to work there.
In a way, I am glad I got to see things from the inside... because guess what? Now I know that I will never send my kids to KinderCare. No... it will be an in home daycare for my kids! I have seen and experienced too much at KC to even THINK about sending my kids there.
Overall, I was happy to have a job to pay my bills.... but I am even happier now that I am away from the drama and the crap I dealt with on a daily basis. Beware if you just got hired for KinderCare. And parents, make sure the center is clean... I am sure there are great KinderCares out there! Just beware :)

love it !!!

I work in a center where the Director has favorites and people are promoted who definitely do not deserve it. An empolyee is consistently late 15 to 30 minutes everyday and was promoted to management because of her friendship with director. She is still always late but what can anyone do. The teachers are fine just gossipy but it is all women. Management is good except for director who swears and threatens the staff. All she cares about is kissing DM's butt. We teachers try hard but there is never any money for new things and our center is outdated. We are a mismatched building with lots of hand me downs from other centers. We did not receive raises last year and this year doesn't look too good. Most stress comes from corporate office who don't seem to give a crap about employees!

I've worked for Kindercare for almost 4 years now. I will not say that I love nor hate my job. It is a job, there are both negatives and positives to point out.

Negatives:

- Pay rates/raises. I honestly do not believe we get paid enough, especially now that the company is trying to cut corners to save money in "hard times." We got our cleaning company cut to 3 days a week instead of 5, so now we are expected to do our cleaning (not a huge deal, take out our trash, vacuum and mop the floors) 2 days a week. This is without a pay increase. How can a company give their employees more on their plate and not give them a raise?

- Hours. Yes, we go through tough times where hours get slashed, but my CD is knowledgeable of who has the benefits and makes sure you won't go under 30hrs.

- NAEYC. I hate NAEYC, and I hate working in a NAEYC accredited school. Their standards and expectations are beyond ridiculous, it's obvious these people who come up with this crap have never worked in a preschool classroom before!

- Disrepectful parents. I can't even count the number of times I have been stuck at work past closing due to parents who just don't care enough to pick their kids up on time. The best part is that I work in an upper class center, we don't have the lowlives who don't care about their kids. The worst part is that they show up 5, 10, 30 minutes past closing and still want to stand around and chat with you. No thanks, I would really love to eat my dinner sometime tonight! You know they all get to just get up and go when their shift ends, why can't we do the same?

- Snow closing policies. Is it really beneficial to open up the center when there is 2 feet of snow on the ground and you were expecting 2-3 kids tops to show up? I literally sat in my center with my CD and another teacher all morning waiting for the higher ups to tell us we could close - and they were all on a business trip in Las Vegas!!

Positives:

+ Coworkers. I absolutely love my coworkers (this includes all management in my center). I feel really bad for those people on here that aren't friendly with their fellow teachers. We are a tight knit group, always looking for an excuse to go out to dinner and enjoy each others company. We aren't a bunch of uneducated young immature people who don't know what they're doing - our families love us.

+ Growth. This is both a positive and a negative because the only time you can really grow in this company is when someone leaves and you can get the promotion.

+ Job Security. You won't get fired unless you suck at your job, period.

+ Benefits. Can't really complain because at least I have them!

Like I said, there are positives and negatives. I do not think my particular center is horrible, we are probably one of the nicest in our district, but I will say that KLC is a pretty crappy company to work for, their policies really make you want to scratch your head at times, but I stick around because I love my kids and my coworkers, and you can't really beat having nights and weekends off. ;)

This company is so horrible to work for I woudln't even tell my worst enemy to work for KC

I do not think all Kindercares are the same I work at the Plymouth Canton Kindercare and I love my job. Of course there are changes that always scare people but my Director cares about the children and the staff. You can go to her with problems and she is always there for you. Supplies are never an issue and her and Andrea both will help out whereever is needed. It is sad to hear all the bad things that are happening. Yes I could use more money and yes I would like cheaper health insurance but I have insurance and I have a paycheck and I am lucky I do not work for some of the other KIndercares that I have read about. Sorry guys I will keep Jennifer she cares about the children and the Families.

Well, i have been working for this company for four years. My experience working for this company has been great! We recently got a new director and so far we have made many changes to the center. a lot of our families are very happy about the changes and of course there are a few families that are not happy about it. I recently got promoted to be the program specialist and will be teaching three enrichment programs Spanish Adventures, Phonics Adventures and Music Adventures. There is growth in this company, you just have show them what you can do and they will make sure that you growth. if you decide to get you CDA, they are willing to pay for your classes and you cant get your books reimbursed.

The Director is a bad person