hi, all. long time lurker here, and some friends have encouraged me to post here after i expressed some frustrations with my job and i think i've worked up the courage for it. so tl;dr, i work in a call center for a company that's in the financial industry. for the customer service job that i have, having special licensing isn't necessary for me or my coworkers unless you want to go into more advanced territory, but our higher-ups still insisted that we take tests like the SIE and Series 6 to “expand” our careers and basically make the company look good by saying we're licensed. for someone that doesn't come from a financial background, these tests are extremely difficult, not to mention convoluted, stressful, and take months of studying. on top of having full-time jobs, we've been encouraged to take 800+ practice questions, 70+ hours of study time, and told we have to study on the weekends and in our free time even though they won't pay us for it. if you don't pass, you're basically told you didn't study enough and they guilt trip you about it. i've spent months being stressed over it, have taken it three times and come close to passing, but since test is different each time, you never really know what questions specifically to hone in on, and i've read and noted around 600 pages of material at this point. so clearly, people are trying, and it's just difficult.
i was recently talking to one of my coworkers, who also didn't pass the test again, and she disclosed to me that a lead told her recently that it was “easier when they could just fire us for not passing” when maybe half of us, if even that, even pass it in the first place, and a good portion of people who do pass come from a financial background so they're already familiar with the material. i can count more people that have failed it than people that have passed it. i was also told by my higher-ups that i wasn't allowed to go visit my family on the weekends because i had to study, and other coworkers have mentioned something similar with being told what they can/can't do in their free time, and they also just think the poor test results are indication that people aren't taking it “seriously enough”. along with the insane amount of pressure and how much we've been overworked, i'm extremely frustrated and downright appalled at a lead thinking it's even remotely appropriate to talk about how much easier it was to just fire their employees for not passing a test that's not even necessary for what we do. along with a good amount of my coworkers, i feel extremely burned out, exploited, and i'm close to quitting because of how poorly i feel like i've been treated here, and i'm also considering filing an anonymous complaint for the comment my coworker received, along with our leads trying to police our free time. i'd also love to just get some feedback from people here, especially if anyone has ever been in a similar scenario. what else would you recommend?
thanks for reading! on three, say “i hate capitalism!”