Good experience, but zero care for their employees whatsoever
Pros
One hour lunch, lots of opportunity for overtime if you need hours. Fairly good experience in customer service. Good inbetween job for people in school because I and other students were able to be part time while I was taking classes and full time in the summer.
Cons
No company meetings, ever. No reviews. The only time you get talked to is if you're doing something wrong. Hardly any raises and you're never told you're getting one. Multiple people including myself were promised a raise after 3 months. I did not get one until working there for over a year. Others who still work there have yet to receive one. Customer service reps were first required to be there by 8am, then 7:55, then seated by 7:55- or risk being sent home. Yes, that's right, management would send you home with no pay and make your coworkers suffer being short-staffed for the day if you came in at 7:58 just to make a statement, even if it's a single mom who just dropped off her children off at school and commuted to get there. Management is ridiculous. They have favorites who are allowed to sit on their phones and order food or call their friends while workers are not allowed to have cell phones out or eat at their desks. They will eat pizza, Chipotle, and Thai in front of you while you slave away on the phones that ring nonstop unable to even eat some fruit. They feed you lies to tell the customers no matter how heartless they sound. They don't care about you or the customers at all. No benefits for fulltime employees, and their reasoning is that they have to have 50 employees. No PTO, most holidays are not recognized. Saturdays are mandatory, so basically a 6 day week is normal. The Saturday shift is 4 hours and there's no break, when CA labor law says there should be a 10 min break for every 3.5 hours worked. Daily you get one 15 min break. No OT for working more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. That's why they're not worried about you coming in early or staying late- they're not paying you extra for it! Your paycheck gets capped off at 80 hours then whatever extra is OT. It's so unfair. You do a LOT every day. Not only do the phones ring nonstop with customers wanting to place orders or check on the status of their orders, you have other responsibilities to do while taking the calls. There are reps who have fake supervisor names they adopt to take calls from angry customers who want to speak to a supervisor. If an item is backordered or something goes wrong with their order you have to clean up the mess. It's pet meds not clothes, so customers are very sensitive and uppity. I was cussed out a few times by furious customers. The job doesn't pay very much yet is very taxing on you mentally. No chatting to your coworkers. If you talk too much you'll get moved seats, like a school. It often felt childish, getting punished for talking inbetween calls. You risk getting sent home or even told to not come back to work for several days, like a suspension. You are told that the company has "eyes and ears everywhere" (actual quote). No break room, so if you don't drive you take your break standing or sitting outside on the curb. Only 1 stall bathroom for 30-35 employees. If you want time off, you have to request it 2 weeks in advance and more than 2 people can't have the same day off- even if they do different duties and don't affect each other! Website you have to work with every day is an absolute mess. The reason there are so many phone calls is because for the entire time the company has been in existence, the account page says 'coming soon.' Customers are frustrated that after all this time they cannot log in and must call to place orders if they don't want to enter in all their information again. Also, ordering is bait-and-switch. There is nothing on the website that calculates additional shipping required due to weight so the company sends personally written emails to customers after their orders are placed stating that it will cost more to ship. Customers are understandably upset but you can't do anything about it. There are so many bugs and issues with the website that are never fixed. Facility itself is small, cramped, hot in the summer and freezing in the winter. 75% of the staff works on makeshift desks set up in a shipping and receiving garage. A few workers get to sit in an air-conditioned office, but most get moved to the back for talking too much. I would say the biggest con of all is how management views its employees. They don't seem to care about retention at all- they make it very clear that you are replaceable and if you don't like their rules you can walk out the door. They only care about filling the positions.
