Hi all, long time lurker. Consider this a petty gripe with some additional bites of dystopian corporate absurdity.
I’m a bottom-tier sales rep with a fancy title for one of the major cellular companies that prides itself on being community and social justice facing. I have one foot out the door and the other foot is one missed paycheck from an empty fridge, so we’re temporarily stuck until I find something else.
Recently, corporate made a huge deal internally about how this has been the most lucrative year ever, and gave all sales reps a dollar raise to their base pay before commission and threw everyone 2 free stocks that won’t actually be vested for two years. (In 2025 I’ll be able to buy an air fryer!) In our quarterly all-staff meeting, corporate naturally made a point to tell us how much money-shuffling it took to pull that off. Because, you know, they love us. I could tell you exactly where that money came from due to a well-timed policy change, but if I say anything more specific than “the customers,” I may be saying too much.
Last week, Employee Appreciation Day rolled around. Corporate made a big announcement that they’d actually be celebrating Employee Appreciation Week because of how much they love us and all the money we made them. Naively, I got excited. What could it be? A new work shirt? Branded water bottles? Maybe even a cool hat?
Nope. One day of that week, our district manager bought the corporate stores in our area (less than a third of total storefronts) cookies or cupcakes. Didn’t deliver them personally, didn’t even tell us they were coming. A Doordash driver just showed up and said here you go. Nothing else happened all week.
A few other absurdities that my coworkers and I have to laugh at so we won’t cry:
Corporate recently instated a No Sitting rule for our region. Not when customers are in the store. We already aren’t allowed to do that. Just no sitting, even if the store is empty, because (quote) “it looks lazy when a customer comes in and you’re sitting.”
No retail employees have set schedules besides store managers. Our schedules are made by a computer, which calculates the busiest shifts and assigns them to the highest sellers. I have to ask for the day off two weeks in advance for any type of appointment, family dinner, etc. I basically had to cry disability to get the first two hours of every other Tuesday off to go to therapy, and even then, I still had to submit for the time. My assistant manager and I were discussing this system, and they said that there is actual management literature that says retail employee schedules should never be manually made more regular, to “keep in line with their values of flexibility and adaptability.”
Our store is in an area with a very high homeless population. During a visit, our regional manager openly made fun of a homeless man having a drug episode outside of our storefront.
Corporate maintains that all customers be met with empathy and compassion. Even the ones that scream in your face and/or treat you like a NPC that’s only as good as what you can do for them.
My father was in full-blown delirium tremens last summer and I was forced to arrange his care. When it started affecting my sales, I was offered “ten free counseling sessions” which every employee qualifies for from hire date. The counseling? Not from a therapist, but an online for-profit life coach.
Every customer gets a text survey after a visit. Anything below a 9 out of 10 is considered a bad review.
We’ve had record snowstorms this winter and not once have stores closed due to road conditions, despite requests. One such day, my coworkers and I got to sit around watching the roads get worse and worse in order to serve ONE CUSTOMER all day, who bought a fifteen dollar phone charger.
In short, they don’t care about us, never have. This absurdity is so baked into the infrastructure of this company that I genuinely don’t think it’s fixable.
Please be nice to the phone people. We’re just as upset as you.