My last post was about a company I did sales for. This was one of the worst companies I have ever worked for. Actually, it ranked second. That’s pretty impressive considering the amount of crappy companies I’ve worked for.
I was a mature, attractive, organized woman who was considering taking a sales position at a packaging company. I had an extensive background in marketing and event management. They were practically drooling. They promised I’d be making good money. They extolled the virtues of selling packaging material – after all, every company out there needs packaging material… right?
Well, that would be great, if there weren’t a few local competitors who had good reputations in the industry, unlike this one. I can say that, because I heard that time after time, office after office, building after building – that I walked into. This was from my current clients, as well as prospective clients. I can say that, because I can prove that with ex-employee after ex-employee who I am still friends with. And half of those friends were sales people, and half were the underpaid, overworked and poorly treated office workers.
On average you were busting your ass to sell boxes and/or shrink film. The first catch-22 was that you absolutely had to drastically undercut the competition to get the customers to even consider switching back to us- since they’d been screwed over so many times in the past. My employer did not lower their prices for the reps; the reps were selling things for next to no commission. So my sales look good, but my cheque is almost nothing.
When I first started, I was put on three months salary. This meant that I got commission only if the commissions were higher than the salary (which wasn’t hard to do, since the salary was so paltry). My second or third month there, I sold two pallet wrappers to the same company. These are large machines that are worth a fair amount of money (12-15k each). Originally I’d asked my manager to come in with me since I was new and didn’t know the equipment thoroughly. During the first meeting with the client, I could tell the client (who also is a friend of mine to this day on Facebook) was getting very irritated with my boss. After we left, my client called me and explained carefully that my boss was not welcome in or near this man’s warehouse. If he showed his face there, my client would personally escort him out of the warehouse. And he wouldn’t use the stairs. So I made those sales myself. Working against a bad corporate reputation and the fact the client hated my boss. Entirely. On. My. Own.
Pallet Wrapper
My employer actually had the nerve to keep my commission. There was no explanation. I just wasn’t paid. Yep. That’s right.
Then, after my three months, I sold another machine. Yes, that makes three. All the other reps were going crazy. I asked the senior rep if it was impressive to sell three machines. He said yes. I asked how many he’d sold. He said one. He’d been there ten years.
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Speaking of that fantastic amount of money I was told I would be making… that was total bullshit. I worked my ass off, and was going broke. It was a catch-22 situation. See, my employer did not pay for gas. Other companies do. But not this one. So, all the gas (over 350$/month for someone who was actually running her ass off) was coming out of my pocket. Of course I heard over and over again how great it would be once I could claim them off my taxes. And don’t forget about the oil changes and maintenance. Well, I can dream of that tax return all freakin’ year, but that’s not helping me put food on the table today. All the sales reps (most of whom had done sales previously – unlike me) complained bitterly about not having gas cards. And this was going into late 2007, and the price of gas was steadily climbing.
I made more “cold calls” than any single rep, ever, in the company. That’s EVER. Per month. That accounts for a good portion of my gas bill.
I mentored new sales reps. I showed a new rep the ropes. He’d gone on drive-alongs with two other reps before driving around with me. He told me point blank that I was the only one who really showed him what to do, and how to be organized. Me. Who’d never done sales before.
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Up until this time, almost a year of employment with them, I had never had any real dealings with the owner. Really. Never even talked to the guy. THEN, one day, a client of mine came in for something. My client seemed to know a lot of people in the office… and then the owner spotted the client. The owner got really upset, found out he was my client, and came stomping up to me – demanding to know why this guy was in the building. I explained that he was here to see a couple of items before purchasing. The owner – obviously angry about SOMETHING – said “Well, I’m throwing his ass out of the building, he’s not welcome here!” Considering the facts that (a) I didn’t have enough money to to EAT this month… and (b) this is MY client… I very politely said to the owner “Excuse me, but that is my client, please do not offend him.”
Apparently this didn’t fly with the owner.
Afterwards, I found out from my boss that said client used to work at for my employer, and got into a fist-fight with another employee. That employee still worked at with me at the time, and actually was quite happy to see my client – even hugging him and having a laugh with him. So… what exactly was the problem here?
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After all this, I was going broke, and I needed a few hundred bucks to repair my car (so I could continue to work… hello?) but my next payday was too far away to make it. That’s how broke I was. I couldn’t afford to fix my car. I asked for an advance. My immediate boss, and his boss, both felt it would be fine. I’d been there almost a year and never asked for anything, or gave anyone trouble. They kicked it upstairs.
A few days later, I asked my boss about the status of the cheque. He checked, and said I would have a cheque the next day by mid-afternoon. He was very explicit.
TWO DAYS LATER I was back in the office to pick up an order for a client, and my cheque STILL wasn’t in my mailbox. I left, delivered my clients order, and came back to the office on my way home. Still no cheque. The next day, late in the morning I sent an email to the woman who runs the cheques asking if my cheque was ready. This is the actual email:
From: ME
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2007 11:42 AM
To: HER
Subject: Cheque
Hi (name),
Do you know if that cheque is ready??
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Then I went into a meeting. I had my laptop with me. Near the end of the meeting, I checked my email. This is the email I received from the OWNER. Italicized writings in blue are my comments.
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From: Asshat
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 12:12 PM
To: ME
Cc: My boss’s boss; HER yes, he CC’d both my boss’s boss, as well as the “woman” I’d sent the innocuous email to before.
Subject: Cheque Sharon M
Sharon, You signed a document that stated you had read the Corporate Policy Manual. In it there is a portion covering ADVANCES. The capitalization of ADVANCES is his BTW. 1) Who reads the whole thing? 2) It was huge. 3) We weren’t given a hard copy, only a PDF version that you couldn’t save onto your computer, nor could you copy and paste it – so you had to read it at the office. I was a sales rep. Sitting in the office for hours was not paying the bills.
(Company) is not a financial institute and as such does not do interim financing. It does not expect it’s employees to have that expectation.
Our semi-monthly payments for payroll, are the 15th and the last day of the month.
Expenses are paid on a weekly basis on the Wednesday cheque run. No rep ever put expense receipts in. This was for management. We weren’t allowed to spend money unless it was out of our pockets.
Your recent request has cost (Company) a significant amount of frustration & extra or unnecessary costs ,when you consider all the people or deviations to our normal programs, involved. Did you want to offer to reimburse us with a processing fee? Oh, bite me, really. If you paid me enough to live on, I wouldn’t have had to ask for an advance. Do you think it was easy for me to ask for this? Honestly, do you think I did this for shits & giggles?
Your inability to manage income does not invoke a responsibility for all of us to resolve your personal issues or crisis. Ok, so lets get down to personal insults, and blatant rudeness? Ah yes. Very professional and mature.
You have the unique opportunity to affect increases in your income by working harder/smarter and selling more to a multitude of customers. I could, if I didn’t have to work for little or no commission because of your mismanagement of employees. Had your previous sales reps been remotely happy, you wouldn’t have had the turnover that necessitated me to “prove” how desperate I was to get peoples business.
May I suggest that this would be more productive than coming back /forth from the office , messaging and coming upstairs just to see the status of a cheque. I did not “come back and forth”, “message” OR go upstairs. I waited patiently 1.5 days past when I was told it would be ready – and then sent one email. That’s it. At no time (not when I originally asked for an advance, nor any time after) did anyone say there was any problem. I was told when to expect it. So why wouldn’t I check in when I hadn’t received it?
There are businesses offering these services if you cannot solve these issues in the future. Again, personal attack. Hmm. What’s the problem here, really?
A repeat of this type of demand by yourself will not be resolved by (Company). Well, why was it resolved in the first place? Why wasn’t I told it was against policy and too much effort and cost to the company when I first asked for an advance? Why was I told “sure, no problem”? Where was all this coming from?
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Well, I think we KNOW where this all came from. I, a woman, had the nerve to stand up to the owner, a man… the BOSS man… regarding him NOT running my client out of the building… and therefore taking food literally out of my mouth! Let me ask you, if I have the “unique” opportunity to affect increases in my income… how shall I do that if you continually and LITERALLY run my clients off? Please… answer me that. That’s an answer I’d love to hear.
Suffice it to say that I didn’t work there much more than a month past this point.
After I left, my boss sent me the following email:
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Sorry to bother you but I just wanted to touch base about some tape that was picked up over at (client name). Steve said he gave it to you, but there is no paperwork here or any tape. Would you still have it somewhere? If you could help me shed some light on this I would appreciate it.
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Yeah… NOT.
