The worst companies to work for are high-pressured outbound telemarketing and market research firms, as well as inbound call centers; and I've worked for them on and off for the last 25 years.
They constantly put excessive and unnecessary pressure on you to meet pratically impossible sales and completed survey quotas; to keep your production and dialing rates, to keep your alk time low, and to get these people on and off the phone as quickly as possible.
I remember working for a fundraising firm in downtown Philadelphia from April of '96 to November of '97. Their clients were colleges, universities, cultural organizations, public television stations, Catholic secondary schools, and so forth. In my personal opinion, the Philadelphia Zoo was their biggest clients, and provided us with work from May to October.
They were constantly calling you into the office for every little bit thing that goes wrong, and believe me, I was no exception. They did not want you to take "NO" for an answer the first time, They wanted you answer the objections and negotiate these pledges. Just two months before I left there, they sent me home because my pledge rate was too low. Over a year earlier, they wrote me up and suspended me for the same reason.
One night, we started fundraising campaign for a ballet company out in Arizona. The client heard a call that she wasn't happy with, and the manager (this company had three managers that monitored each campaign's progress) chewed us out and used the "F" word. After he left, I was in tears and I let the other managers know about it.
The straw that finally broke the camels back came when one of the managers called both me and the other fundraisers on the WNET (Channel 13 in New York) into the office. They were on the verge of losing the contract because the production rates were too low. Well anyway, he told us that we needed to perform. Even when I went back to my desk to make some more calls, I still got the same results. These people have already been oversolicited. At the end of the night, I had told my manager that I was putting in applications and resumes in other places and that I had to do what I had to do. He then said that he had to do what he had to do, and the next day, I applied for what was to be my next job. More on that later.
This fundraising job was the equivalent of high-pressured telemarketing. They were in business to please their clients and make money at the same time. Even though they helped out n non-profits, they were a profit-making company. As much as I hated it, I put up with it because I needed the money to pay my rent and other living expenses. I just couldn't up and quit because if I did, I couldn't get unemployment. Most of the time, I feared speaking out because I was afraid that I was going to lose my job. But there were times that they told me "then this isn't for you." When I did leave the firm to go to my next job, I sent them a statement letting them know how I felt. I just was not the right person for that job.
Well anyway, my next job was as a call center operator for a cellular phone contractor. People were calling us wanted the number of either a pizza place, a private home, and so forth. This place was very disorganized and unprofessionally run. If you ever needed a supervisor, you would call out, "SUPERVISOR!". When the call volume got heavy they wanted everybody on the phones, and they wanted those calls processed fast. I was able to get some of the numbers quickly, but other's just simply took time. I was let go from there in April of '98 because I wasn't processing the calls fast enough. But anyway, I went there out of desperation because I wanted to get out of that fundraising harrasathon.
I also worked at a market research firm from October of '94 to August of '95. where they constantly put pressure on you to get completed surveys. I even asked why there were so focused on getting completes and they said that's how they made their money; they were paid for every completed survey. I then quit because I not only couldn't take the pressure, but it was too far of commute from my home at that time in downtown Philadelphia.
And how about his doozy? I worked at another market research firm in the Northeast section of Philadelphia from March to July of '99. I call this the "house of horror in the Northeast" (the section of Philadelphia that is). I hated this place. I didn't like the people there, this one supervisor would also yell out "Come on guys" if you were dialing the phone and talking to your neighbor. They even wanted you to call back refusals because they didn't want the sample to go to waste. I even told the other supervisor that this was harrassment, and the she said "well then this isn't for you." I finally found a one-year contract position as a file clerk with the Social Security office in Philadelphia, a much better position, and finally got out of that hellhouse! I too sent them a statement and said that they were facing harassment charges if they didn't change their policy about calling back refusals.
In June of 2001, I went to another telemarketing outfit in downtown Philadelphia that sold Internet websites to businesses all over the country. When I found out that they were paying miminum wage (it was about $5.15 an hour), I told them that I needed at least $8.00 an hour. Thank God that it was a smart move, because I later found out that this company was a scam opeation. They were selling, in my personal opinion, useless and worthless Websites, and charging these companies $29.95 a month; charges that they (the companies) never authorized. They were constantly pressuring these people to get "sales". In fact, when I was in the office when I applied, I believe that one of their policies was that you had to get a certain amount of "sales" within five days of being hired or else you were out the door. There was even a write-up about this place in one of the local papers.
Well anyway, this company shut down four years ago, and about a year ago or so, the owner of this firm was indicted. I am so glad that I didn't work for this company. I am a law-abiding Catholic Christian and I wasn't about to scam anybody. In fact, I never even knew that this place was a scam.
I now refuse to work in any high-pressured call centers. I certainly don't need this aggravation anymore!