I work for a food delivery service in Louisiana that recently went through a name change. I do dispatch, which is basically overseeing orders being assigned to drivers and deciding on compensation and general logistics.
Originally, our job was simple. We oversaw order assignment, while calls to anyone went through our support staff, since they were hired specifically for customer service. We only texted drivers to check on them, everything else was sent to support and they would call then get back to us with an answer. Easy, right? Full time with benefits, seems like a great job, especially after working retail during the pandemic.
Well things start to crack. Around august last year, things started to change. It was really alarming since the change in scheduling that they hyped up to “better fit the needs of the business” ended up with a lot of people's hours being below full time. Thankfully management righted the hours, but then other things changed. Suddenly we were watching more markets, shifting to making calls to drivers ourselves, then reaching out to restaurants, then more markets per person, and then more changes in how the shifts were scheduled. We went through two separate wfh bouts due to mishandling of COVID protocol in the office, exposing way more people bc of policies that stated wfh was to be avoided at all costs (to the point where my attempt for ADA accommodations bc of sever anxiety / panic attacks caused by environmental factors at work were rejected bc “we just can't do wfh, but hey here's an extra 15 min break in case you need to recover from one of those crazy panic attacks of yours).
Then suddenly the company seemed to be making a turn for the better. A big manager was fired for bigoted behavior, the same one restricting wfh and putting policies into place that just didn't work for a delivery service. We were told about new policies that meant a little more out the wallet of the company, but was definitely helping with acceptance of orders. And we were even opening new markets, even if not a lot of us agreed with the cities chosen (areas with very high cost of living, so way more compensation expected by drivers and more money out of our pockets). We were about to celebrate the rebranding after nearly a year of hyping it up.
And then I wake up at 5:00 am, about to get ready for work in office at 7 in the morning, and I see an email from ASAP. And it's to my personal email, which they never do (not since getting my company email). And then I see that it's two emails. The first is a furlough notice, stating that due to lower profits last quarter that they were notifying us we were being furloughed until JANUARY. And the second email stated that I would be able to keep up benefits for 90 days, but only if I kept sending them checks every 2 weeks to pay for it. As I'm currently not getting paid anything, due to being furloughed which, coincidentally, also lasts beyond the 90 days afforded me to keep my benefits.
I panicked almost instantly, woke up my fiance crying about how I didn't know if it was real or if I should still try going into work. Only to find out that they had cut access to my work email and slack access. I have no savings left after just moving into a rental house with my fiance, and I've had no luck applying to new places of work even before this happened (applied quite a few places since I was growing more and more unhappy here) but now I'm just lost and angry.
I just can't believe that this is happening. I've continued to work and do my full fucking job even as more and more people started to not give a shit bc of all the changes, and I'm still one of the people furloughed? Are you fucking kidding me?
Not to mention the stress this is putting on the remaining dispatchers. I'm lucky enough to have communication with some of my coworkers outside of work, one of whom is not furloughed, and he sent a pick of our market assignments for the day, and all dispatchers working today are assigned minimum 16 markets a piece. some were watching 20 markets. When I started, you were watching max 4/5 markets. Then it turned into 6, then 7 then suddenly some days you could be watching 9 or even more if your block partner didn't show up. It's just all so fucked.