My job sucks as it is. Management pretends to care but nobody will take responsibility for anything. That's just how it works, it's “nobody's fault” and as a result nobody is held accountable. I personally hate cell phone companies, so I go out of my way to fight for the customer, no matter what. I do a very good job and everyone knows it.
I'm not going to mention the company by name, and you probably wouldn't find it by looking in my profile. However, this is the biggest company I've worked for and one of the biggest in Canada, so it's likely that a lot of you will find similarities with places you've worked, or even recognize the company if you've worked for it as well.
I started this job in January 2020. It seemed so great because instead of being on my feet all day I would be able to sit at a desk. I applied because I thought I would be selling phones and phone plans, but during my phone interview I learned it was a call center gig. I decided that if I was hired, I'd give it a shot, because until that point I had only worked in kitchens and my most recent work experience ended with my boss literally changing the amount of hours I worked. I hoped that as a much larger company, they would have to do better for their workers, provide benefits, etc. Why not give it a shot?
Before that job, I made $11 CAD per hour for about 4 years before learning I deserved more. If you don't ask, why would they willingly pay you more, right? Even though I was financially screwed by people that pretended to care about me (fuck you Aaron), I was never depressed nor anxious, I was actually quite fulfilled with my life. I made music in my off time and worked hard at my jobs.
But when I started my current job, everything started going downhill. At first I thought it was normal, because I never did very well with phone conversations or confrontation. I'd be terrified answering phones, and when I went home I'd be out of my mind with adrenaline. It took me about a year to realize this was unsustainable and I was starting to lose my sense of contentment and a problem with my heart started getting too bad to ignore.
That's when I went on a health leave. They paid me 2/3 of my salary to go to the doctor and figure out why my heart would have hundreds of beats a day that were 5-10x harder than normal, and out of rhythm. The pressure the company put on me to quickly get this sorted out made it much worse, and by the time I had to go back to work, nothing was solved, I just had a form that said exactly what was wrong. The company didn't care that I was still suffering from the condition, they only cared about getting me back to work.
It got worse and worse, and less than 6 months later I went back on the health leave. This time, I was diagnosed with severe depression and an anxiety disorder. The doctor recommended to the company that instead of answering phones, they should switch me over to messaging support. The company ignored this, and put me back into the same role. I applied several times to switch to messaging, and even got as far as making a deal with my supervisor: exceed every expectation and metric for 4 straight months, and I'll get on a messaging based team.
Ignoring my mental and physical health, I achieved this. I worked as hard as I could to absolutely crush every target I had. I thought, “ok, this is going to be a nightmare and I might spend my nights tossing and turning thinking about how terrible I feel being screamed at by morons who don't understand what I'm doing for them, but I'll get through it and have a job that's easier for me to manage.”
Nope. 4 months later I get transferred to a different team in the same department, with a different supervisor. New supervisor says they'll see what they can do, over and over again every time I ask. Nothing ever happens. They're too overwhelmed with their job to even take a vacation without getting very far behind.
This is when I found a job listing DIRECTLY INTO THE MESSAGING ROLE, HIRING FROM OUTSIDE THE COMPANY. That was the last straw.
Employees are leaving left and right. Nobody is doing their job properly, redirecting customers from one place to another, ignoring the actual problems people have in favor of short term solutions and meeting call handle time metrics. It's more important to the company that we take a call every ten minutes than actually fix issues people have. The wait time to speak to an agent gets out of control every single day almost all day, for months straight.
Out of my hiring class just 2 years ago, maybe 20 people, I am one of the 3 people left. When I started, closing shifts meant that we'd have 15 people taking calls from 8pm until close at 10pm. Now, there are usually 4. Sometimes 2. The company outsources many calls to several countries around the world, and those outsourced employees are paid PER CALL, instead of hourly. You can imagine the issues that come from that, especially when every employee has the ability to transfer calls. People will lie and say they can't fix a problem, and send the call to someone else. People will blindly send calls somewhere, only to have the customer wait an hour on hold to get through to someone who literally can't fix their problem or even see their account, and have to be transferred again.
Nobody takes responsibility for issues they are presented with, the supervisors can't possibly listen to all recorded calls to see just how frequently this happens. Our company provided work computers are so slow that it takes me an hour of my personal time before work to turn the damn thing on and log in and start taking calls, and if you're not taking calls the minute you're scheduled to start, you're considered late. If your computer needs to install a security update, you're asked to “please install on your lunch break” – they know they can't force us to do this, it's illegal in my province to ask an employee to do any job related task during an unpaid lunch break (and if the employee does, you have to pay them for the whole lunch break) – so they say please.
There is one more giant issue that completely destroys the original vision of the company, happening next year, but if I say it you'll know what company I work for. The CEO gave themself a bonus of millions of dollars last year, but told employees we wouldn't be getting cost of living wage increases because of “pandemic uncertainty.” Uh, kinda sounds like you should spring for more than just cost of living, due to pandemic uncertainty?
Anyway, now that you know WHY, here's what I'm doing and why it feels so sweet.
Right now I'm on my third health leave in 2 years. I started medications for depression and the anxiety issues back in March, and they worked well, but I made the mistake of going off them too soon, and ended up feeling worse, and having full blown anxiety attacks. My doctor is so busy that I've been off work since November 1st and haven't yet gotten in to see him so I can get the prescriptions set up again. In this time period I've been to the hospital twice, and they could only give me a few anti anxiety pills.
Last week I was presented with the opportunity to go to university.
As soon as I see my doctor, I submit a form signed by him, and my work tells me when I have to return to work. They will pay me 2/3 of my salary while I get this sorted out. If the absence is not approved, I will have to pay this back. If it is (and it will be, it's been approved every time) then they'll give me a return to work date.
That return to work date is when I'll tell them I'm not coming back. Have fun paying me until then, assholes.
Update: I wrote this a few months ago. Today is the day I quit, after being paid to be off for 4 months. It felt so damn good.
TL;DR: job that doesn't accommodate for mental health issues past what is legally required has their own system gamed.