Apologies in advance for this being a place for me to vent, but here's my situation:
I was hired to work as a home assistance specialist, when I was hired the job was WFM (which was a huge draw for me) but as you can expect it quickly became hybrid and then 3 days in office.
I came from a previous employer that had me working as a SPOC and had an assigned pipeline.
Expectations were that we were hired to handle our clients, treat them well and take care of our assigned cases.
This newer (about a year since I started) job treats the department as a SPOC. No one has assigned accounts or pipelines, we just have to take inbound calls and call out on lists we're sent.
For me, this has become a much bigger pain point than I expected.
For example, at my old job my adherence was not micromanaged. I could place myself into an outbound calling status, review an account and call out for a client. They didn't care how long the call took as long as they were taken care of. I've been known for my excellent client service and professionalism.
At this new job, if you go “out of adherence”- i.e are not in inbound constantly- you have to submit a form to request approval to make that change. Every second of every day is micromanaged.
Since I have previous experience, I often get asked questions about accounts from other newer hires. I got in trouble for this because “that's the support persons job, or for management. You just need to take calls”.
All of this to say, because of my commitment to customer service, client satisfaction, and going above and beyond – my adherence and productivity has suffered. (Interestingly enough, my HR approved accomodations break also shows out of adherence but who knows why that is). I ended up getting put on a verbal warning. While this may not sound that bad, but I'm usually one of the most respected and celebrated teammates in my previous jobs – so much so that I've never been on a coaching or warning before.
I felt something kind of break inside me. It's hard to explain but I could almost feel my passion die.
I wanted to promote, I had a manager that was not my direct report that I was interested in shadowing and developing with, and I enjoyed sharing best practices with colleagues. After realizing that all of the skills I brought to the team that I prided myself on the most (world class customer service, follow through and ownership of issue resolution) were not valued at all – my ambition, passion, and desire to promote just died. It was almost an overnight thing.
I will now, for the first time in my life commence with quiet quitting – or working to rule.
I will try to improve my stats and take more calls, boost my numbers as much as possible.
But anything outside of this, doing extra projects, having new hires shadow me, potentially promoting, will all be met with the same response. “Thank you for thinking of me, right now I'm focusing very hard on my productivity goals and ____ may cause a distraction for me. I would prefer if you asked another teammate.”
I will continue doing this until I can find another job.
You wanted a robot and you got him.
The craziest thing about this to me, is that I really loved my work. I took pride in it and had genuine fun doing what I did. Now when I consider staying, even with a different company, I feel disgusted. This experience has not only turned me off to the company I work for – but the entire line of work I once loved.