I am not happy. After 5 years on the tools, I took an office role 5 years ago to help create the ‘Customer Services’ department we sorely needed. For my sins I’ve been blessed with the title of ‘Customer Support Engineer’. I am not insulted, for I recognise my own proud history in customer services as a defining chapter of my life (which spurred me onto get my degree, and a technical job in the first place) – but as one of only a few damned employees with the lights still on, I am frustrated that this title is being used to anchor me to a salary that is, to put it frankly – beneath me. I am a project manager, a product specialist, an emotional support pillow for all in need and in truth, nervous wreck owing to the amount of caffeine I require every day to still function. In payment, my empathy, patience, and humanity have all been eroded. In work, I'm a shining fucking beacon of technical expertise and excellence, at home and in all that matters, I am a shell of my former self.
As one of only a couple of employees willing to try and solve problems, I effectively juggle 3 jobs, each with its own hat – The first I wear when dealing with things that other people don’t want to handle – like learning and documenting how to solve problems caused by lack of managerial or operational foresight (there's alot of this recently, you'll see why soon). The second hat I wear is when I'm wiping the arse for more senior technical staff, because god forbid I give them a job to do that requires them to figure out the solution (I worry they wouldn’t be able to complete a dot-to-dot without detailed instructions). The third hat has bells on, and those bells jingle every time the phone rings or an email is sent in – for this hat is for helping customers, in all shapes and sizes, grateful and otherwise, solve their issues for a fee (that was conveniently never explained to them before they signed up for their decade long contracts). I don’t count the cleaners hat I wore for a while, or the fire marshall or first aider hats I keep on the shelf, looking pretty, doing nothing.
Like many industries, we have quiet periods, and busy periods. In this year’s quiet period, one of our team left (for his own mental health) and another was ‘let go’ (due to his physical health). A 25% loss in manpower. Years prior also saw more staff lost and not replaced. In exchange, we got an apprentice. (Yes, if you read that as ‘even more responsibility’, you read that right!). In this year’s busy periods, we told customers (that would normally like to be seen right away) that there’s over a month’s delay, and it was this customer service hobbit left without resource to spare for any kind of support for them – doing what I could remotely where possible.
For all of the lunch breaks I’ve worked through, and holidays split into half-days so as to not leave the company without cover (in reality, I want to spare my co-workers and customers extra suffering), I was blessed a 5% raise in January this year – my first raise in years (when inflation since my last raise when they offered me off the tools, was 20%). You might be thinking “you should ask for more money!” or “you should go to your manager”, “you should ask for more staff!”. I should… but there’s no more money for little old me. And my manager is the one other person in the building more capable, and more overwhelmed than me. And staff – that’s a sore point.
So recently, not too recently, but this side of the pandemic, our little company began the process of becoming part of a big company – and becoming a part of the big company involved making half of the products we provide HARDER to support. Then we were told, as staff started leaving, that we were buying companies, and they would roll into ours, we would find new staff from the shredded carcasses of the prey we devoured – but when pushed, I found these were not quick kills, but slow, torturous deaths. I would likely not see any reprieve for years.
So what can I do? I am ‘overpaid for my position’ apparently, so when they last trollied out this gem I replied that this means I need to look for another job because I need more money – the reaction I received confirmed that no-one expects me to ever leave. In truth I have had a couple of interviews with more money on the table, but hope faded when both opportunities had more red flags than a soviet military parade – so I backed out. I've been told that I'm supposed to wait for the inevitable influx of new customers we acquire, and hope to gain some semblance of authority over the zombies we take over to leverage what would likely turn out to be a single digit percentage salary increase. I cannot just leap as I have a family, but I genuinely cannot fathom any other response other than announcing my exit to solve this issue. I don't want to do it, I can't do it. I'm stuck.