I work for 16 an hour in Canada from home (which is the only good thing about this iob). It is incredibly stressful as fuck. I am on the phones all day with homeowners, contractors and building departments. We are a 3rd party and my department that is incredibly short staffed, gets shit on so hard. I'm getting screamed at by homeowners, and contractors are so insanely difficult to deal with it's actually insane how some of them are in business.
Like I said, we've been short staffed. I started 9 months ago and the department had 8-9 people answering the phones for a whole province. Now there is 3. There's one girl, Jane, who hasn't had to pick up or make a single phone call since December due to “temporary deafness”, I don't know. She's just randomly deaf, and is getting paid the exact same as me for the exact same job, except she has been chilling sending emails and texts instead, and not having to be on the phones one single time since December. Granted, I guess she does have doctors notes. But this has been going on since December, and because she doesn't have to make phone calls, at anytime she needs to call a homeowner or contractor or ANYONE, she gets one of us to do it for her. So many times in the chat “can someone call this for me? Urgent” meanwhile I'm getting screamed at by someone on the phone already. It's massively frustrating. Another girl, Susan, was caught stealing people's easy jobs and kpis, and was known to not answering any phone calls when they're ringing, and we collectively as a group get in trouble for phones not being answered (mind you, my iob doesn't just end when I hang up the phone. I have to call contactors and building departments too etc) she got a light tap on the wrist for this, Because of that, and being short staffed, me and my only other reliable friend, Joe, have been the only ones answering the phones. And it's busy. Two people answering phone calls for an entire state. The phone rings non stop, and we have someone who doesn't have to pick up phones, and another who just… Doesn't.
We have two supervisors who just got promoted to the title, but I guess because they now have “supervisor responsibilities”, they don't have to answer the phone as much, if at all. So again, that has just left Joe and I doing twice as much work. Plus this isn't an easy job! I am constantly stuck, and needing help because new, random problems pop up every single day that I've never seen. The process of my job is so convoluted that two people have quit on the first week of training.
Also, other departments shit on ours because they think we don't do our jobs or answer the phone which couldn't be further from the truth.
So because of this, Joe and I are rightfully pretty miserable and grumpy. I had a meeting with just my boss, and she said she wants to give me a raise but doesn't like how “unhappy and miserable” I am, and feels like she'd be rewarding “bad behaviour” (keep in mind, I have NEVER once in my life complained about being miserable out in the open. Ever. Anytime I talk in our work chat, I'm easy going and jovial and send memes and shit. So I have never displayed any sort of inappropriate mood. Where as Susan and Jane constantly talk about their headaches and “I'll try to truck through the day guys” as if they're a hero for doing their iobs.) however she tells me I'm an A star employee and a hard worker so she wants to give it to me so I asked her how she knows I'm so miserable if I don't ever talk and she says she “just knows me by now” and that we're going to try a “30 day period” of positivity before I get my raise.
So, Joe has his one on one with boss today, but also VP woman joined for no reason, and it was basically to shit on him all throughout the meeting. Talking about him complaining about having to help Jane, and why he doesn't want to help her to which he responds because he's overwhelmed and busy which didn't seem good enough for them. They asked him a million questions about him being unhappy here and a bunch of nonsense about their core values, and about the drama surrounding this department?? Which is crazy, because all Jane does is complain to me about work, and about the VP, to which I mistakenly reciprocated back because it's nice to have that outlet, but now Joe suspects someone we've complained to snitched, and to not complain about work to anyone anymore because you can't trust anyone. He was also so blindsided by this meeting he didn't have any answers to the questions they asked, so they actually have a follow up meeting on Friday for him. He called me right away to say the exact same thing will happen to me because the VP mentioned how she “needs to talk to someone else about this” aka ME.
I am… So angry. Not once have I received any sort of recognition for how hard I have worked (I guess except that time I was called an… A star worker or whatever) and the slack I've picked up, and I know if I say that they'll gas light me and say I'm wrong. I have no idea what to do. I'm so mad. But I can't quit, because I'll be fucked.