I’m starting (quite the understatement) to get really mad at work. Things I was promised upon hire are turning out to not be true. I am feeling generally screwed over the longer I am here with Target. I work in the Client Support Center which supports all Target stores, all Target corporate offices, and all distribution centers. I’m not a true Target employee though. I’m a contractor.
This means no difference in my job duties as I’ve got the same responsibilities as any other Target employee in the CSC. In fact some of them I have more because I’ve been trained in several skills since starting here in January. Anyways, upon hiring, I was told that Target typically hires their contractors on somewhere between 6 months and 1 year after they start. I’m at 9 months now and still no news of getting hired on directly. My coworker Josh was given an interview, but not the job. In fact out of the half dozen they were considering, no one was hired! The reason Josh was given was he wasn’t skilled enough. Now Josh isn’t dumb. He may not know everything about computers, but I would say he’s almost as knowledgable on the support side of things as I am. I definately know more programming, but I digress. To my knowledge, I think 2-3 people were hired from being a contractor since I’ve started.
A couple weeks ago I went to request 2 days off in October for my friends wedding. I figure no big deal because we are allowed 80 hours of unpaid time off per year. I’ve used 2 days and a couple hours so far this year. My request was denied because they decided we can’t take any time in October off. “Peak season” starts in October apparently. That’s bull. Six weeks is ample time for them to schedule around me being off regardless what time of the year it is. It took two emails to get a response. My first email when I initially found out was ignored. The response I received was “Currently there isn’t any available time in Oct for Vacation. I need to get approval from the managers to allow any more people off. We are waiting to see if the schedule looks any better before granting more people off but doesn’t look good.” I am willing to bet a Target employee could take the time off if they needed.
This brings me to another point. Daily, we are bombarded with calls. This is not normal call volume. From what I’ve heard this is way more than normal. We’ve got a little homebrew app someone wrote here and it displays the number of calls expected for each half hour period along side the number we actually recieved. Daily, the number of expect calls is less than the actual amount taken. You’d think Target would make up for this by hiring more people. They do have “service levels” to maintain after all. It seems like this has completely gone out the window as of late. I see training classes ever couple of weeks, but the contractor area has mostly been vacated. I’m sure this is due to people being fed up with getting shit on and finding other, better jobs.
Yet another example of Target’s inability to handle these issues is the cancellation of our huddle/status meetings. These were short sessions set up to occur bi-weekly in order for us to meet with our teams and one on one with our manager to discuss issues, trends, and other things. In addition, our callback time, the time we use to follow up with people on unresolved issues, was cut in half. Yet we’re still expected to hold the same standard of “client satisfaction.” All they seem to care about recently is getting calls answered.
Today, I came in to find that everyone’s LAN/Windows Logon password was reset. As you can probably guess, this caused a massive influx of calls. They called all hands on deck, which means even managers take to the phones. Things somewhat have calmed down during the day. What irritates me is Target’s “sorry” to the employees is pizza. Yes, they order up 10-12 pizzas and put them in the break room saying this is “free lunch.” While the gesture doesn’t go without some notice, I fail to see how buying me pizza on the average of once a week is going to make me any happier with the company or make me want to work any harder. It might make be fatter, but it sure doesn’t motivate me at all.
I realize this is nothing more than a useless rant, but I feel some kind of satisfaction airing my desires. I have been seriously looking for other work since the beginning of the summer. It sounds like I may have an opportunity to jump ship and head to Medtronic. I know a couple people there already and they make 50% than I do here. It’s still a call center job, but at least I wouldn’t be so strapped financially. Every time I talk to someone about a programming job or a network admin job, I get told I need 2-3 years of experience before I can consider those jobs. Which brings me to the title of this post. Frustration.
I’ve thought about this a bit and I think the only job situation I will truely ever be happy with is self employment. Freelancing. Even my own business. People say that it’s sometimes tough to balance the financial part of it having periods where you don’t get any work. I don’t know how I’d handle it, but I’m sure I could manage it eventually. The biggest advantage would be time management.
Last week my roommate Laura brought home a couple of large pictures of a dog. The thought of getting another dog in our not so spacious townhouse was not the brightest idea. Especially since we aren’t really supposed to have 2 dogs. I see other people with more than 2 dogs around our place all the time. So I can’t imagine it’s that serious of a rule.
