Overall, The Worst and Most Degrading Experience Ever for a 9-Year Employee! - Customer Assistance Representative Assistance Services Group Employee Review

••1•• Inefficient operating procedures for the Roadside Assistance department. This results in agents having to spend much more time—more than what is generally needed—to assist customers in getting back on the road or off the road from a dangerous location to a safe location. Furthermore, this type of inefficiency blatantly goes against the department motto: "Helping people safely and comfortably on their way, with minimal delay."! ••2•• Complaints from employees are not properly resolved and/or not considered at all. Starting in the last 7 months of my tenure with the company, I was forced to file a complaint with the Human Resources department. It was both constructive, professional, meant to educate and not threatening in any way. The complaint was to address 2 of 3 major atrocities that the company had committed against me—all of which occurred in the last 14 months of my 9-year tenure. After a TWO-MONTH agonizing wait for a fair and decent resolution, their response turned out to be anything but! Instead of being offered such a resolution, all I ended up being given was even more grief when HR "hinted" that I needed to learn to accept what had previously happened or simply "take a hike". They even suggested that I make use of the Employee Assistance Program. But a program like that is something designed specifically for employees (especially younger and newer ones) with personal problems of their own who bring these problems to work with them every day and allow these problems to negatively impact their peers, the department and/or the entire company. Therefore (and because what previously happened to me was absolutely no fault of my own) HR's response only added insult to injury, making me feel depressed, demoralized and so personally degraded—both mentally and emotionally—that it only resulted in job performance issues AFTER THE FACT. ••3•• More than 50% of all upper management seems highly-incompetent and is rather inconsiderate. Without mentioning any names nor a single identifiable role, that group also includes some of the team leaders on the production floor. This has resulted in many good employees, especially those who are hard-working and mature (including top performers), being made to feel highly demoralized and degraded—both mentally and emotionally. That often leads to various anxiety and stress-related issues such as panic attacks and, in some cases, physical health problems where these employees would need to call in sick more often than before. All that eventually gets to the point where they end up being forced to resign. In other cases, these same employees—many of them tenured (having worked the same job for 5 consecutive years or more)—end up getting terminated due to performance-related issues brought on as a result of management egregiousness and NOT their own personal issues. In my case, starting within the last 5 months of my tenure—and not long after having endured the first 2 atrocities—a 3rd egregious act was committed against me. Just when I thought things could not get any worse, my already-stressful situation was made unbearable when a set of hard-earned privileges was abruptly taken away from me—all without any justifiable reason. That ordeal eventually reached the point where I began to feel both highly belittled and humiliated. This was due to the fact that some of my own peers began to notice that I was not performing other tasks for the department (as I had been doing for the last 3 years) and began asking questions as to why that was. In fact, these privileges were taken away over nothing more than a minor issue that I had in not accurately following a part of some newly-implemented protocol. As a result, a verbal warning was issued, which happened to be my FIRST-EVER warning of any kind in SEVEN YEARS! However, the warning itself was not the problem. The real problem was that, despite me having corrected the issue very quickly and demonstrating that improvement, that same issue was treated as if it were a major performance issue, resulting in the "hammer being dropped" on me. In that regard, I was made to focus harder on my current job without these hard-earned set of privileges. That ordeal lasted 1 month at first as no one believed that I would be able to improve right away. But worse yet, after 1 straight month of answering phone calls and WITHOUT FURTHER INCIDENT, none of these privileges were ever given back to me—not one! Instead, the hammer was dropped on me again—this time, with a demand to see that I maintain consistency in closely following this new protocol—even though I had already demonstrated and maintained such consistency during the past month! And in relation to all this, there was even an important administrative project that I was asked to take part in about 2 months before the ordeal began. It was a project that I was pre-selected for because of my current skill set plus years of prior experience in an administrative role. But even that project was quickly taken away from me as quickly as it began and immediately given to someone else, thereby depriving me a chance to further develop my skills, leadership and overall experience! That I consider being the 3rd atrocity committed against me as it only drove my performance levels down to an all-time low, resulting in all the Progressive Discipline-related warnings that ultimately ended in termination of my employment. Overall, this case is clearly an example of management who most-definitely does not believe in 2nd chances—treating even a minor protocol issue as a major performance issue despite my long tenure with the company! ••4•• Company shows little-to-no goodwill to its own employees. In response to the complaint I filed to address the issues I just described, absolutely nobody—not even Human Resources—did anything positive to resolve the egregiousness committed against me in the previous months. All I received was a simple apology and that was all. However that was not good enough as I was already offered an apology after the 1st atrocity—one which I already accepted (barely). Therefore a simple apology is technically NOT a resolution in cases like that. Instead, everything was essentially "brushed under the rug" as if nothing ever happened! The end result was that I ended up feeling as though I was simply "thrown under the bus" as no one ever bothered to simply make up for the mistakes committed against me. ••5•• Internal job opportunities are too hard to secure and the selection process is too strict. The first 2 of 3 atrocities committed against me were both the result of not being able to secure an internal job opportunity that I had previously applied to numerous times over a 5-year period. What I had been applying to was a certain job role that I felt I was most-qualified for due to my current skill set along with my newly-acquired skills plus 3 years of prior experience in a similar role. Furthermore, it was a role that I have been interviewed for about 9 or 10 times during that same period—all without success. Although I normally do not take offence to not being chosen for such a role, these 2 cases were different in such a way that they involved grave managerial mishaps and also favouritism (both which are too lengthy to describe in detail). But in short, the company seems to have started to focus on giving the "better" jobs to younger people who are less-tenured and less experienced. At the same time, the more-tenured, older people are being kept in the same spot that many would be trying to get away from in order to move on to a better role. That gives a strong negative impression that there is much less of an opportunity to grow within the company. ••In Conclusion•• With all that said, my suggestion at this time to all who seek employment with this company is to ONLY apply if (a) you are looking only for short-term employment, (b) you are looking only for part-time employment and (c) you do not expect to grow with this company.