Hey everybody! Hope everyone is doing well!
I work from home for a major corporation in the auto-glass industry. I won't say their name, mostly because I'm scared that if I say their name three times they will appear in my bathroom mirror and kill me. And there will be no one around to “repair or replace” me.
At some point early last year I decided to seek out a work from home position. Like most people I thought it would be something convenient and easy for me to do because transportation has always been an issue, and I grew tired of biking five miles to work in -30 degree weather.
I've always considered myself a hard worker and I feel like I've spent the bulk of my 20 year working career busting my ass and sacrificing my body with very little to show for it. And that includes my time spent in the military. So I finally decided I wanted something more relaxing.
Cut to March and I get this decent (but still shitty) paying job working from home. And I am not kidding when I say this, but this job has been the most stressful and strictful regimented job I have ever had. And that INCLUDES the Navy.
They monitor and track absolutely EVERYTHING. The computer you are using and everything you do with it. When you take a break, when you log off the phones, the things you say, the things you don't say. You have all these stats that you have to meet, and god forbid you don't hit the metric. And I seriously wouldn't doubt it if they are remotely turning on my laptop's webcam and watching me. Along with turning on my headset's microphone and listening to me.
But the main issue I have been having is not my stats, because I am always meeting and even exceeding them. The issue is what they call “unauthorized time” or “UT”, which essentially means any breaks taken outside of scheduled breaks. Most people would call these smoke breaks, or bathroom breaks, or drink breaks, and stuff like that. Things that, aside from smoking, every human being on the planet Earth generally requires.
When you work in a call-center environment, which is essentially what my job is, most companies have what they call “adherance” which is the time you are logged into the phones and available to take a call. And most of these types of jobs have adherance anywhere between 75-90 percent adherance. Meaning the other 10-25 percent is time allowed to use the bathroom and etc.
Well the company I work for has a ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT adherance expectation. This essentially means that if you have to use the bathroom and you don't have a scheduled break for another two hours, well….I guess have a piss bottle ready. This is absolutely INSANE to me.
I generally have a adherance anywhere between 95 and 97 percent, which means that I am either taking calls or available to take calls at the very least 95 percent of the time. And I've been continually “coached” on this with threats up to termination.
I have had pretty severe anxiety for the most of my life, so I explained to them that aside from me being a human being who might need to use the bathroom on occassion, I also need to step away and decompress from time to time. So I might take 3 or 4 difficult 15 minute calls and then take a short two or three minute breather. And the calls that we take — the customers do not make it easy. Either they are extremely pissed off or we can't hear them because they are driving 100mph down the freeway. So these calls are incredible mind-melting.
I've tried to make improvements on the breaks that they've deemed excessive, but nothing ever seems to be good enough. It's just a constant bombardment of negative feedback with no appreciation whatsoever, and I don't care who you are, but nobody can withstand that for a length of time.
I'm sure I'm leaving out some things, but I'm written so much already. I'd love to hear this sub's thoughts.
TLDR: The company I work for should be cast in the new Candyman sequel.