Reply #17: Tech Support

[TlalocW]

This was less than a year ago when I was out of work looking for another computer programming job after I was laid off. It was tech support for Sprint cell phones.

Here's what made it so bad.

1. Training was a joke. We were supposed to be there by 7:00 a.m., but things never got "going" until 9:00 a.m., and the trainer constantly had to stop to ask other trainers questions or to get the equipment to work.
2. The building is right across from Oral Roberts University (in fact, the buildings used to be owned and may still be owned (all or in part) by ORU. So we had a lot of religious nutjobs working there (including my manager, who was an ass).
3. Sprint tech support is supposed to make offers of different services available to the people calling in to tech support while we help them. It's their way of getting around the do not call list. We were supposed to have a 74% offer rate. They kept insisting it wasn't selling but informing, but no one believed them.
4. I was promised a different shift - in writing - than what I was given (up until 2:00 a.m. every night), and I was basically told tough luck. I know that tech support does this all the time, but it really burns me.

So because they didn't feel any need to keep their promises to me, I didn't feel the need to make offers to the people calling in, and when I sat down with my manager (who had been the one to tell me tough luck) during our bi-weekly look at your stats, I told him that if the company wasn't going to have the integrity to keep its promises to me then I didn't see any reason for me to sell. He told me that I needed to reconsider my position, and I said, I'll reconsider it as soon as the company proves it has ethics and keeps its signed promises. He said that it happens to everyone, even him. I said I don't give a damn because now it's happening to me. He sent me away and told me to consider it again.

Next day I went in, handed him a copy of the sheet that had my shift that was signed by me and the company, gave him my badge, and resigned. I honestly hated going into work - dealing with rude people on the phone, the relatively few but incredibly annoying stupid co-workers, the religious nutjobs, and it was making me a mean person.

Eventually, I found another programming job, Thank God.

TlalocW