This is a story about corporate demons,
corruption, and greed. This is a story about my job at Teleperformance
USA.
First of all, the company I work for is stingy. I've worked for the company for almost
4 years now, and am only making $7.50 per
hour, and I have yet to receive a bonus for more than $50. I've
never taken a vacation, and I'm almost never late to work. I worked until
9:00 PM last year on New Years Eve (I'm still pretty bitter about that).
I almost never call in sick, and I have over 36 "Perfect Attendance"
sheets to prove it. I not only don't get bonuses, but I don't even get
paid for all the hours I work. I never receive accurate pay
checks.
I wouldn't even bother mentioning this, if it only happened
once or twice, or even five times. But consistently, I find one or two,
sometimes as much as five or six hours missing from my pay checks. Raises
are never awarded in a timely manner, usually given 4-5 months after
they're due, if they're given at all. This discrepency is not isolated to
just me, as a short consensus has proven that the majority of the
employees spoken with have experienced the same problems, if not worse.
The company seems to cut corners every chance they get. They're such
tight asses that they probably wouldn't shit if they
didn't have to, so they wouldn't get hungry and eat again. All the
facilities are disgusting. If you ever have the misfortune of visiting
Teleperformance, you'll find these features pretty standard throughout all
the facilities: gum meaded into the carpets, pencil/pen marks on all the
sound barriers, holes drilled into the equipment, greasy wax covered head
sets.. diseased keyboards caked with repulsive hair, putrid food
particles, moth & fly larvae, and to top it all off, the whole mess is
enveloped in an unholy stench so foul & offensive as to elicit nausea.
How we stay in business: We lie. Everything we do is
a sham. We call customers of credit cards and offer them worthless
programs and services for an annual fee (usually around $50).
We used to be a fair and honest agency, until people stopped caring about
client call standards and decency. Now, all we do is harass people at all
hours of the night, and the only reason they buy anything from us is
because they think we'll stop bothering them once they do. WRONG.
If a telemarketer calls you, don't buy anything
unless it sounds legitimate. Ask a lot of questions. See if they
put you on hold (if they do, it means they don't know what the hell
they're doing, and they shouldn't be calling you in the first place).
Don't be rude to telemarketers. If you are rude, they won't disposition
the calls correctly, and you'll get bothered again. If you don't want to
be called by telemarketers any more, ask them to put you on their "DO NOT
CALL" list, and be polite about it so they'll do it right the first time.
The company is just one big law suit waiting to happen. Sexual harassment
is so common place, that a new standard is almost needed to describe it.
All the upper management people care about are numbers. They never call
to say you're doing a good job. Only to bitch at you for messing up on
something that they should have taken the initiative to do in the first
place. The entire work area is centered around negativity. Right when
you walk in, you'll be greeted with strict warnings on signs posted
everywhere.
Every time we have a client monitoring session, a huge front is put up to
make it look like we adhere to their call standards, and go back to our
corrupt ways as soon as they leave. In reality, we
do anything it takes to close a sale. Don't be
fooled by telemarketers. If you don't want to listen to them drone
on about a program you don't care about, immediately tell them to put you
on their do not call list. Even this is no guarantee that you won't be
called. Many times, the lists we use are shared with many other
telemarketing facilities running different campaigns, and our computers
are about as unreliable as they get, often not recording crucial call
information and disposition codes correctly.
Bottom line is, I hate Teleperformance USA, and after this job, I will
never work at another telemarketing facility like it ever again.
When I die, and if I go to hell, there's
going to be a huge sign at the entrance that says "Welcome to
Teleperformance USA."
Q: So if you hate your job so much, why do you still work there?
A: I'm going to school and I have a lot of expenses. While I really have no excuse for putting up with this bullshit for as long as I have, It's hard to find a good transition between jobs with so many bills. Actually, I did give my two weeks notice a long time ago (almost two years ago), but my long time friend and manager convinced me to stay.
Q: Would you rather gargle a bucket of diarreah than work at Teleperformance for another year?
A: Yes.
Q: What's the worst thing about your job?
A: The shitty pay, and the idiots I have to work with.
Q: So what do you do at work now?
A: I'm a computer operator. With my promotion, I got more responsibilites for the same amount of pay. Incentives? None. I was allowed to get on the internet from work a while ago, but all computer operators got orders not to get on the internet anymore from the big cheese (regardless of the fact that we used our own accounts that we paid for to get on, and that most of the time spent on the internet was to look up help files for 4gl and sql since the company's too damn cheap to buy us any books).
Q: So when are you going to quit?
A: Pretty damn soon. I'm tired of being treated like an idiot by supervisors that have worked with the company for a fraction of the time I have.
Q: What's the overtime policy like at your work?
A: I'm forced to put in mandatory overtime, none of which gets paid for time-and-a-half, unless it's for the duration of a week. For example, I could work a 26 hour shift (and it has happened before), but none of the hours would be considered overtime unless I had more than 40 hours for that week already. If I work more than 5 hours of overtime for the pay period, I have to approve it by the CEO or President of the company. I also have to take mandatory half-hour lunch breaks on Saturdays as to not accrue any overtime for the pay period.
Q: Surely there must be something you like about your work?
A: No, really, I hate everything.
Q: I bet you feel like an ass for allowing yourself to get raped all those years by that shitty company, right?
A: Go to hell.