College Works Painting is an American house painting company that offers business management internships for college students. College Works Painting's parent company is National Services Group.<hr>
Because College Works Painting provides college students with business experience by having the student establish and run a house painting business, interns and customers of College Works Painting have mixed experiences with the process: both intern and customer satisfaction is tightly linked to the quality of the work performed by the painters recruited by the intern. Each intern takes part in both intensive classroom and in the field training. Depending on one's perspective, it is either good or bad (according to the student or consumer, respectively) that the internship gives real world work experience by providing students with the opportunity to succeed as well as to fail--both in the quality of the paint job as well as in the quality of the customer service provided.

The company advertises a 97% customer satisfaction rate in its client manual and uses this as a main selling point. This statistic may be questionable, however, because many employees share stories of dissatisfied customers. Some problems may include overspray from the paint sprayers (paint on doors, windows, walkways, etc.) and inability of branch managers to start or finish paint jobs at the contracted time. Customers may question the ethics of the company after they are through with their experience. As of August 5th, 2005, the third result on Google for “College Works Painting” is a disappointed customer’s experience[40], with a link to an ex branch manager who also feels as though he was exploited by the company[41].

The ethics of the company can come under question from employees. Branch managers are told that the average summer intern earns about $10,000. This statistic may be skewed, however; it may be the average for the minority of branch managers that make it through the program. The average may be far lower because the company experiences a high dropout rate for branch managers. Some states have experienced dropout rates of about 75%. Most who drop out actually lose money, mainly due to money spent on gas. Branch managers may quit for many reasons, but some of the most common reasons can include questioning the ethics of the company, inability to prevent painters from quitting without notice, the extremely high level of stress, the unlikelihood of profits, and loss of a social life. Painters also tend to question the ethics. The main problem for painters is that the company pays them not an hourly wage, but a predetermined amount of money for each paint job. This amount of money is determined by the branch manager’s estimation of how long the job will take to complete multiplied by the hourly wage for each estimated hour. Branch managers may underestimate how long jobs will take; this makes selling the job easier because a lower price is offered to the customer. As a result, painters can end up earning minimum wage for jobs.

In the past, the company has faced several potential lawsuits concerning labor laws. Many painters feel as though they should be paid more money when they become aware that their paint jobs have been underbudgeted; instead of earning the typical nine dollars per esimated painting hour, they often end up earning minimum wage because jobs take much longer to complete than estimated. Branch managers have threatened to sue as well. Many feel they they should be compensated and paid at least minimum wage for all the hours they have put in; many branch managers' final profits come out to less than minimum wage for the number of hours they have worked.




References
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National Services Group Official Site

College Works Painting Official Site<p>

A Dissatisfied Customer

Another Dissatisfied Customer

An ex Branch Manager's Thoughts