Burn Rate

Heading back to my cubicle after filling my 52oz mug full of ice water, I ran into a coworker in the hall.

"Let me ask you something," I said. "I'm in my cube all the time so I don't see much of what's going out on the floor. I look out there and see a lot of empty seats. What happened to that troop of people they hired mid-July?"

He told me half of them had quit because they finally learned that there was no chance of promotions, salary increases or benefits. Most of those that had been hired in the group before that had also left. This is, of course, just the thing I had warned management about over a year ago when they were talking about changing the training regimen. "Hire people on the cheap and don't properly train them and they will jump ship at the first opportunity." They dropped me as trainer, went ahead with their scheme and got exactly what they paid for. So, they've hired yet another batch of people that I see training out on the floor. I wonder how long it is before they realize they've been duped and punch out.


There was an application update that went bad for the financial services group so our morning was filled with people calling. We spent half an hour opening tickets for groups of people before there was a master ticket chosen. We then spent another hour telling callers that it was a known issue that support working on before support came back saying they had resolved the issue and users need to re-login.

About an hour after that we received an email from the team rolling out the update saying that they were going to be rolling out said update and there could be some calls. This was several hours after the update had already rolled out and failed.

Come on, people, do you think you could tell us this BEFORE it happens?


And finally, the official directive is that for the Tuesday and Wednesday after Labor Day everyone is to start an hour earlier, meaning I will need to start at 6:30. And I'll have to work until my normal time so I'll be getting two hours of overtime that week (in addition to Holiday pay). Now, we always have an increased call volume the day after holiday weekends because people can't seem to remember their passwords after three days off but the calls never start to pick up until about 8:00. Why the hell do they want me in at 6:30? Well, it's because they are short staffed because the new hires are quitting. That, or they are desperate to come up with a solution other than actually hiring the appropriate number of people, training them properly and scheduling them at the times they would be needed.