Nope, the above isn't a cryptic reference to my experience wallowing in the low spark of domineering elders, self-righteous piblishers, and heavy handed overseers. It is however an accurate statement regarding my 7-month stay at an Internet company here in Arizona that sold ink cartridges over the web. It was my first full-time job after I graduated from college with my Bachelor's degree last year, and in my mind it was one of the most poorly run companies in the world. I started in December 2001, a few months out of college. I responded to an ad and I was set up with an interview the following day. Their business was located in the back room of an Insurance office and my first impression of the company was that it was a very busy environment. I was informed that they needed to resolve some business issues with their company, primarily in their shipping department. I agreed to help their company as well as offer on-call tech support if any tech issues came up. I was asked to come in the next day. On my first day of work I was informed that my manager and assistant manager fired all of the company's staff the day before except for their web designer and computer technician (both lived out of state). They felt that I could do the job of all the staff that they fired. I was a little concerned at first but was too busy to think about it when I started working. My job at first involved packaging all of the orders, printing out labels through ort UPS on-line world ship system, and giving the tracking numbers to my manager to enter into the back end of our Internet store. The reason why this was done was so we had proof that the orders went out. All we had to do was refer to the tracking number and trace it through ups. That day I was later informed that instead of using a shipper that stopped by and picked up all the packages himself, I would personally have to hand-deliver all of the packages at the end of the day to UPS' main office down the street. Even though it was an inconvenience, my truck was big enough to take all the orders, I would be getting some exercise in the process, and hey, I was getting paid $500.00 a week. No big deal. Later I found out that our company did not keep in stock many of the products that they advertised on their web site. Orders sat for several months because our manager didn't obtain those products through our distributor. They would simply wait for the customer to complain to their credit card company before they gave thought to ordering the product from elsewhere. Still, I managed to resolve enough issues with their business for our manager to move us to a better location. He picked a group of suites located in the heart of Scottsdale's clubbing district, which were, to say the least, not very cheap. During the company move I was informed that I would be under obligation to move the entire inventory myself, as well as all of their computers, and some of their furniture. At the new office, I built their network from scratch, and resolved any compatibility issues when I upgraded all of their systems. I informed my manager that because we upgraded all of their systems that he would have to invest in some security software for the company, especially considering the fact that he wanted to turn this business into a multi-million dollar one. He never did this, and this usually resulted in at least one of our computer systems crashing every week. During my stay at the company I got my brother (recently laid off) and my friend jobs there.
Even though our manager gave us all raises some things made me suspicious. He informed us that that he had to take some of the company's money and invest it in his brother's on-line gambling business in California. In the meantime, the funds that we needed in order to purchase our inventory went to his brothers gambling business. In one month we had as much as 500 orders that were on backorder. Every week we would be contacted by private investigators, lawyers, attorney generals, customers that never received refunds, and businesses that never got paid or received bounced checks. Customers called up, informing us that our manager told them to "go F***K themselves." Our manager would continually berate and harass his assistant manager. One day he threw a cup of hot coffee all over her office. My manager also loved to give us lame excuses such as "in order for our customers to be refunded we have to charge them twice on another merchant account". Because of that most of my job centered around providing responses to credit card disputes, most of which centered around fraud, customers getting charged multiple times, and customer's never getting refunded. Some of the disputes involved customers who never heard of our company. One credit card dispute involved a customer who was overcharged $2,000. A simple search on the Internet reveals just how bad the customer service really was. Here are some comments from some of our valued customers:
I returned the defective cartridges more than a month ago and am still waiting for a credit.
I emailed [the company] and they said to return the cartridge and they would refund my money. This was in November, 2001.
I was billed the $60.95 cents in late November.However, on January 3rd they once again billed my AMEX account $60.95.
double billed - late delivery - unable to contact company via phone or e-mail
One day, our manager invited his brother to run his on-line gambling business at our company. He camped out in our front office, would walk around barefoot, and leave his trash all over the place (at which point my brother and I were assigned as clean-up crew). We later found out he had a warrant for his arrest for failing to make a court appearance, which resulted in two police officers showing up in one day. I also found out that it was illegal to run an on-line gaming business in Arizona. I suspected he was doing drugs. My manager also loved to tell us how he would only hire "babes" before he hired me for the job, but later on felt the need to hire professionals. The last straw was when I received 5 bounced checks in a row. Our web designer received a bounced check and took off all of the files on our web server. He threatened her with legal action in order to get the sites up. My friend left the company with 3 bounced checks at which my manager promptly replaced her with another person to handle customer service. He did reimburse me for the 5 bounced checks but continued to not pay us for all of my checks afterwards. The last week of my stay at the company was the strangest. My manager assigned me to take care of customer refunds but limited them to $200 a day (there were 10's of thousands of dollars in refunds that needed to be taken care of). I was also assigned to handle incoming e-mails as well, which wasn't too bad, although most if the inquiries were from customers who needed their orders filled and we didn't have the inventory. My manager also blamed me for the decrease in new and return business despite the fact that he double-charged customers, never got our company the inventory we needed, and overcharged customers. My last day at the company was yesterday. At which, he told me that he wanted to put a "stop on my hours" so he could "pay me up". He blamed me for the credit card disputes and bemoaned the fact that I was sending resumes out during company time (could you blame me) and my lack of commitment to the job (could you blame me). He now thinks this business can be run with only two people.....you got it, there are only 2 people working there now.
Anyway, thank you for letting me rant about the worst job I ever had. Right now I'm unemployed and going in for interviews. I'm actually thinking about going into school again to get my technical certification. If my manager doesn't pay me up soon then I'm taking him to court. I know his address and home phone number. I'm actually thinking of sending out a mass e-mail to all of the customers he has screwed with his contact info.
Anyway the purpose of this e-mail was mostly therapeutic. Please feel free to post your own job experiences...