I ended up working for Chargemaster after they bought out the company I was employed by. At the time of the sale my (then) manager sat me down and explained that they were the firm purchasing us and that, despite my major misgivings, I should remain in my role and give them a chance - Naively I agreed. Having been in the industry for several years I had had a number of dealings with Chargemaster and had found them to be an appalling and childish company to deal with. In my entire life only three people have ever shouted at me; my mother, and two senior managers at Chargemaster. They remain to this day the only people to of ever slammed the phone down on me either inside or outside of the working environment.
On the first day I met with them they told me they were going to stay at arms length and not get involved in the business at all. Within 6 months they were involved on a day to day basis and it became abundantly clear that I could not trust a single word that they said. Chargemaster operates on a level of micro management that I have never come across before, with every single document prepared for clients needing to be signed off by either a department head or the MD himself. No purchase orders are allowed to be placed without the MD's permission and no payments made without his sign off. These policies were soon extended to my work and I was told on an almost daily basis that any communication with the client I managed needed to go through Chargemaster. This, and the aggressive nature of their tone towards me, led me to suffer severely from stress and I would often be unable to sleep at night, dreading what emails I would be receiving the following day - I say 'day', emails belittling my work and openly questioning my work ethic would begin at around 7am and often not stop until 9pm.
All unfortunately paled into insignificance compared to the other strains they put me under over my time with them. Insistence that I complete extremely long days away from home without a hotel,meant completion of several 14-18 hour days in a row became the norm, as did unpaid weekend working. Several times I had to sleep in my car as I was 300 miles from home and they had refused to pay for a hotel. When they did agree to cover expenses, they seemed to make the procedure as purposefully difficult and arduous as possible with approved expense claims often lying unpaid for over a month. I was regularly between £500-1000 in the hole to them and, with my credit card maxed out, often had to go through the humiliation of borrowing money from my wife in order to complete business trips. Fortunately however, I worked from home, some 500 miles from the office so I was spared the worst of it but many ex-colleagues have told me horror stories.
Eventually Chargemaster began stripping the staff of resources and benefits - refusal to pay overtime or even sick pay - and then used the (inevitable) falling standards as a reason to make blanket redundancies. During these redundancies staff were promised a 'loyalty' bonus if they stayed until the last day, which they did. Staff had to then chase Chargemaster for payment of the bonus for nearly a week. To the best of my knowledge some of these payments are still outstanding as are correct payments for owed holiday. The final indignity though, was Chargemaster's refusal to pay for the collection of a sanitary bin in the female toilets, leaving it overflowing and smell permeating the office.
Upon handing my notice in their attitude to me got even worse - Something I scarcely thought possible - but by this point I was more than happy to have my line manager refuse to speak to, or even look at me. In fact those six weeks of my handover period (cut down from three months) were some of the best days I had since they took over. On one of the last days I worked I was told by my successor that there was a list, an actual, physical list, of staff Chargemaster had wanted to get rid of since the day that they took over and that my name had been near the top for quite some time.
