This is long, but I’m at a kid’s volleyball tournament and I have a lot of time.
For the last six years, I’ve worked for a very large, worldwide, multi-divisional chemical company in their sales division. About 95% of my day is spent servicing our dispensing equipment and dishwashers at customer sites (if you’ve ever worked in a restaurant or hotel, you’re probably familiar with the company).
From 2016-2020, I was mainly focused on sales (minor service) and mostly paid on commission. In 2018 and 2019, I made about $80k each year – despite losing corporate customers worth 50k in 2019 (decision made at the corporate level – all my customers under those umbrellas loved me). About 15% of my budget. I was able to find those extra sales to break even.
Pandemic hits, and they give us pay protection for the first six months or so. Income definitely fell, but when you depend on restaurants to be busy, and they’re not open at all, that can be expected.
September of 2020, EVERY field rep in the US HAD to be on a several hours long teleconference with only about two hours notice. We were told that two divisions (doing the same thing) were being combined in an “exciting opportunity to grow.” The roles were being split into service (territory representative – TR) and sales. Sales would be further divided into new sales and existing sales (I’m simplifying a bit).
Lots of details, but to make the main points:
-EVERYBODY would have to apply for and interview for new positions
-TR role (which I wound up getting) would be paid hourly, with pay based on what you made in 2019
-Service and sales would be “equal” in terms of hierarchy
-There would be attrition in the “mid to high single digits”
Here’s how things actually happened:
-Pay – I don’t remember what the hourly pay initially was, but Based on 2019, it SHOULD have been $38.46/hr (80,000/2080 hours for the year). My offer was in the low 20s/hr because they based the work week on 48 hours which would come out to 52 with overtime. If you do the math, that only comes to the mid-40s for the year. The difference would be made up in selling 300% of my monthly budget! The company quickly realized they screwed up royally and hourly pay was increased twice in the first few months to where I’m making $26.63 an hour. I have to work 52 hours a week to make the 80k that I was. If I take a sick day, it winds up costing me about $200.
-Attrition. Right off the bat, probably about 25% off the field wasn’t hired back. Probably another 10%refused to take the jobs that were offered. There were several with 15+ years of experience that were offered under $20/hr. My district has been understaffed since the beginning, which makes more work for everyone. We we fully staffed for, literally, two weeks, and one guy just quit last week (he was pretty bad at the job though). This means that I’m on call (weekends and nights) that much more often. Which means missing out on family things or even just getting things done around the house. My wife is NOT a fan of this.
-“Hierarchy” after being told that the sales and service sides were equal, our yearly “pat the upper management on the backs meeting” revealed this to not be the case. I brought that up immediately, and was told “this has always been the case.” It wasn’t, and I had my manager pull up the initial presentation rolling this all out that proved otherwise. He tried to argue, saying that “you had to interview for the sales jobs.”
Well, [manager], we had to interview for the service jobs too.
“Oh, yeah…”
I feel like any chance for advancement is gone after that
The final nail, was when our area manager (i really feel like this is Initech with all the layers of management), said, “I know because of Covid, all of you guys had to work more hours…”
No, you twat, it’s because of the stupid ass decisions this company made to save a buck coming back to bite us all in the ass.
The bright spot at the end of the (admittedly long) story is that I’m negotiating with a new company, and I’m looking to start soon. With a company that based its pay on a 40 hour fucking week!
I feel bad that me leaving will make things worse for the guys that I work with. They’re awesome, and the one thing I’m going to miss. Otherwise, I’m REALLY looking forward to an exit interview, and laying it all out there.
If you can picture Homer driving off in a golf cart and literally burning a bridge, that’s what I aspire to.