I know employment is a precious thing and I am lucky to even have a job in these trying times (not going in to politics here). In the last six months my employer seems to be doing their best to get rid of me.
First all of my work has been moved to metric based reporting, which means all of my work is tracked according to numbers someone in corporate has set so I can only replace a certain number of devices or I will be put on corrective action. So as a customer if I am close to meeting my cutoff will I replace your device if I can’t fix it or will I blame it on physical damage or some other non warranty issue.
Second they took over a dollar away from my base pay to put me on commission for customer satisfaction. Now as a customer you might say that sounds like a good idea right, but that metric is in direct conflict with the previous one since you the customer in order to be satisfied want a new device to replace your one that isn’t working right and probably wouldn’t be satisfied with less.
Third I have just found out today that technicians will no longer be able to work forty hours a week someone has done a headcount study and deemed us over so solution is every one takes a two hour a week hit. If one technician left the district tomorrow this would still be in place until the next headcount report in six months.
This has me livid. This all feels like a concerted effort to get rid of all of us that have been with the company a long time. Times being what they are the company can hire any one off the street at $5.00 less than me not have to give up 230 hours of PTO and tell them they have the opportunity for a commission and they will snap it up. I am going to start looking for work elsewhere Apple and Rackspace come to mind. I have given this company ten years of my life I have stuck through the times when we were rated last in the industry I have put my life into my work because I could focus on that and not have to worry about my gender issues but now?Even though my family knows nothing about my gender issue I still have to support them I am the only income in my household with a spouse a kid and a sick mother in law. I think the time has come to walk away from this company and find other employment it is scary though I am in my forties and having to go pound the pavement is not something I am looking forward to. So I will sit and look for other opportunities until one comes up I will take what they will be dishing it’s a paycheck no matter how reduced and its insurance coverage for the family no matter how bad.
Any thoughts would be appreciated I don’t know if I am being paranoid or not. Once again I am turning to my BCTS family for venting my troubles I am sorry for this. I really do love you all.
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Comments
Do they advertise their warranty?
If they do and have it actually on some sort of internal quota, that is constructive fraud; ie. business practices that have the same effect on customers as fraud. It's actionable under some federal and most state laws, depending on circumstances. They better hope no really pissed off customers find a lawyer who wants to start a class action suit.
The other shit is probably legal, depending on work contracts, but here's the really juicy part: some sleazoid is being paid millions of dollars as a consultant for thinking these things up.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
It's an extended warranty plan.
That is advertised. The problem is they don't tell me to not exchange customers devices but a majority of those devices I have no parts for like iPhones or the new HTC device. Yet I am still being tracked on how many I repair versus exchange so that metric and the customer satisfaction one are in direct conflict. And yes some dip***t that has never been in a retail environment except to complain got paid a mint to make the math work. I wanna find him and kick him in the ba***. Other thing Texas is a right to work state so by all means please leave so we can hire the next guy.
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Funny how different companies try to "reduce costs"
One of the companies I worked for used direct opposite approach: if it in warranty and there is problem not solvable by phone support - replace blasted thing with new device. If it is out of warranty - offer refurbished device with huge discount. Then broken devices got sent to special factory that produced refurbished devices for out of warranty replacements. This way they made most of the qualified repair engineers redundant.
Other strange thing is - technician qualified enough to repair iPhone is quite an expensive employee. I don't believe that there are many waiting at your company's door to fill in your position for lower salary.
(My first thought when I've seen that there is some problem with going to metric based system was "what could be the problem with using meters and grams?")
:-)
Anyway, I hope you'll find nice satisfying work with good salary. Actually, you can try to look at it as an opportunity to grow and increase your income. When I was laid off (and it happened twice so far) I doubled my salary each time and with much more interesting projects.
Time to bitch about RL and day(ugh)job. Ignore if you want.
Hope things work out for you.
May Your Light Forever Shine
keep your options open
Put out feelers to other companies, find out what's out there for someone with your skill set. But dont leave this job until you know you've got another lined up if at all possible. A stressful job is better than none.
Munch munch slurp
epp (ladylike burp) darn cola.
So does this mean you don't wanna read any more stores from us? *sniffle* I'm not crying its just some dust in my eyes.
Huggles
Jobs.
before 2000, I could quit a job, with malace, at 9:00 AM and before quiting time have another one that paid more. However, as I got into my mid 50's they started pulling more crap on me and one day, I just said to hell with it. At the time, I was taking 3200 mg of Motrin and quite a lot of vicoden to just keep working. I knew it was killing me, and for what? The Doctor had been ragging on me for a long time, telling me that before 65 I would be in a wheel chair, and I knew he was right.
Well, after restrictions placed on me by the Doctor, it did not take long to Off me.
Not long after that, I got outed, and when I returned to the Doctor for a follow up, he said he had expected me to do what I did.
I just don't know where the jobs are right now? Have you thought of going out on your own?
Gwendolyn
Some obvious...
Some obvious thoughts... (Sometimes seeing the obvious when you're up close is difficult... Been there, had to have it rubbed in my face.)
1) Brush up your resume. Don't hesitate to toot your horn there. Don't be modest!!! Nobody will shout your praises as well as you should be able to. Also, look to make it distinctive. The average resume reader looks for a hand full of things - skimming. So - your intro is key - as is your list of skills. They look VERY QUICKLY, so if your resume isn't an easy read and/or easy to find stuff, you could have the skills they are looking for and they'd miss it. Make sure there are NO typos / grammatical errors in the resume.
2) Ask some friends / colleagues / customers who know the quality of your work whether they would be willing to be references, if you decide to "test the waters" looking for another position. Depending on how close you are, you can say you ARE looking or just that having been where you are for ten years, it's probably time to look around just to make sure where you are is the right place. (If the later gets back to your employer, it sounds more like you're not seriously looking - just curious.)
3) Don't just post your resume to monster.com - send it to targeted places - hopefully via someone you know in the organization. Networking is STILL the most effective way to land a new position.
4) Whatever you do, don't QUIT your current job, until you've signed on to start the new one!
See - all obvious, right?
Best wishes (from someone who's not seen a raise in five years)
Annette
All good advice
My only other point would be to add, it's easier to get another job if you're already in employment, so don't storm out over a matter of principle--they'll replace you for a cheaper monkey with fewer peanuts.
If you want to know how much you'll be missed, fill a bucket with water. Roll up your sleeve and place arm in water. Withdraw arm. The hole left indicates how much you'll be missed. Been there done that got the frown lines and grey hairs.
Good luck.
Angharad
Angharad
Jenn's plan to take over the world, or at least find a new job.
Step 1. Win lottery, pee on district mangers desk, laugh all the way to the credit union (I hate banks).
Step 2. In case of no lottery win. Update resume (haven't needed one in ten years).
Step 3. Line up references, I have plenty internal and external. I have always been the guy (girl) to call when something needs doing, understanding, or covering.
Step 4. Quietly start moving resume around I have contacts at some of those companies I mentioned above but I will not limit my search to just those.
Step 5. Wait for a better opportunity to show itself (being positive) leave current company without burning any bridges, you never know right.
Step 6. Enjoy a new and if not happy hopefully less stressful work environment. I know if it was fun it wouldn't be called work.
Step 7. Continue playing that lottery you never know it happened in one of Karin Bishop's stories.
Sounds like a good plan right? Thanks ladies and Stan for the support and caring thoughts and advice. I will keep my BCTS family posted as events happen.
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
play it careful
If word gets back to your current employer that your job hunting they may find a stupid reason to dismiss you without severance pay.
Don't let them do this to you, find another job soon
When companies start cutting your hours back it is usually so they can later drop things from the employment package. Happened at the company I worked at, they dropped our hours down and then we find that technically we are no-longer considered full-time employees that received all benefits. They did not drop the news on us until enough time went by that they could say we no-longer meet the requirements to be considered full-time, very sneaky. During this time technical work was being slowly moved to Puerto Rico and Mexico which was why they did not need us working as many hours. They were sending the easier work outside the county while they trained the new techs up. While this was going on they raised the required completed repairs per tech, those that could not keep up were given warnings before then being let go. Little we could do as it was also a right to work state.