It’s just all too much..
I work for a fairly large tech repair company. I started out six years ago in a locally owned business. After a year, we transitioned to a large company and my boss started opening up franchise locations left and right. I moved around the South of the US and have run four stores.
Last year we were sold to corporate. All was amazing for the first few months but then we started to notice a decline in support and an incline in “requirements” for daily tasks with quota after quota being thrown at us to hit each day. It immediately became too much. Instead of just focusing on customer satisfaction and repairs, we were then required to sell insurance, sell x amount of accessories, attach cleaning prices to everyone’s stuff, get x amount of repair types each day (which is literally impossible as you can’t control what comes in to the store for repair) etc. etc.
We all clearly failed to do so, so what did they do? They purged the company of thousands of people this year. We all lost a lot of good people, a lot of friends, all because they overloaded us and we couldn’t handle it.
Today it finally broke me.
My store is severely understaffed, overworked and underpaid. Yesterday, an older woman and her husband dropped off a phone for repair and were told we’d call them for pickup. We got slammed, as usual, with only 1-2 people being in the store at all times. This has been a trend for months now since the purge of our company.
She was never called. She came in, she was livid. Rightfully. I apologized and she told me, “We waited in the area all day and never heard anything. Because of that, we never got to go to my grandson’s third birthday party.”
My heart, dude. My heart just collapsed. I have a four year old son. I love him to death. I can’t stand being away from him all day. If I was to miss any major event of his, I’d be devastated. To learn that this older couple who may not be around much longer in their grandchild’s life (they were very aged looking) made me feel like absolute shit, especially when comparing to my own feelings towards my son and his life.
She stated that they called the store 10 times last night and 6 more times this morning. Both days have been pure hell, with only one person working the front and back of the store (answering phones, fixing devices, checking people in and out all at the same time) for the first three hours and the last two hours of the day. There’s only a five hour window where two of us work together.
I explained everything to her, told her about the mass firing that took place, about how hard all of this is even for someone who’s six years and four stores in, all that stuff. She then apologized to me for being upset and told me her company just fired thousands of people a few days ago and now they’re struggling to work and that she understands. I gave her her phone, we both continued to apologize and she wished me a Merry Christmas and left.
I walked to the back, still by myself, and sat on the ground profusely crying into my knees.
This business I work for has allowed all of this to take place. They’re hurting us and the customers. Because of them killing staffing, we can’t be proficient. We can’t hit all these quotas and do the base of the job. Because of this, this woman and he husband couldn’t leave town to see their grandson. What if this is the last birthday one of them got to experience with him?
I hate all of this so much. Reform needs to take place immediately. We’re all falling apart. I can’t take all this anymore. It’s too much. It’s all just too much.