For 6 miserable months I worked at Telatron. It was easily the worst job I've ever had. First off, Telatron requires all customer service reps to work 6 days a week, but they don't tell you about the 6-day schedule until you've accepted the job and shown up for training. Even working 6 days, it's nearly impossible to get a full 40 hours. The dress code is draconian. Women are required to wear skirts or dress pants and pantyhose are required for both. Knee-high nylons were not allowed, although I wore them every day. I dare one of the supervisors or witchy HR girls to check if I'm wearing pantyhose! Although I think Diana in HR probably would check if given a chance. I can understand having a dress code, because even with the code, some of the trash they hire come to work dressed like ho's anyway. But come on, pantyhose with dress slacks? If a rep needed to use the restroom, that time was docked from their daily 15 minutes of break time. The women's restroom is not up to code. The stalls are so tiny that my knees would be pressing against the door as I sat down, and I'm average height, 5' 5'. One of my coworkers had some bladder issues, so she needed the restroom more often than most. This poor girl never got to eat lunch because her 15 minutes of daily breaktime were all used for restroom breaks. Sure, Telatron provides their own little cafe for meals, and the prices are quite low. So is the selection of food. Now keep in mind that employees have a total of 15 minutes of breaktime daily and bathroom breaks are deducted from that 15 minutes also. Once we signed out of the computer, the clock was ticking and we had to leave the building and walk across the parking lot to get to the cafe, then stand in line for the food, and sometimes wait for the cooks to prepare more food. That might leave 5 minutes to wolf down a few bites before we had to get back to our seats and punch back into the computer before our 15 minutes was up. If anyone was late getting back to their desk, time was deducted from their paycheck. Shortly before I started working there, Telahell got auditted, but nothing out of line was found. That's because the third shift employees had been told earlier to clean out a bunch of trash. Well, that 'trash' was the paperwork that would have proven Telahell's illegal practices. When the auditors asked where those records were, they were told that they had been destroyed in a flood. A flood? Oh really? Telahell sits on sloping high ground, nowhere near a stream. If that place would ever flood, half of Erie would be looking to get on the Ark. Some of the supervisors are decent people, Bridget in particular. But then there's Amy Smith. This woman truly has a sadistic streak. She says whatever nasty things she wants to people she dislikes and makes them feel badly about themselves in front of others. If any of the reps filed their nails in Amy's presence, Amy would scream at them to stop. We'd be sitting there for 6 hours with nothing to occupy our time except 3-4 phonecalls per hour, and Amy wouldn't even let us file a hangnail. No paper or pens allowed at the desks, no cellphones allowed in the building, we couldn't surf online between calls, not being paid for the sales we made, forced to work 6 days a week with the option of working 7, holidays were optional but there was no holiday pay for those who chose to not work. Those who worked holidays still got straight pay, there was no incentive like time and a half for working a holiday. On Fridays there would be a cheerleading session that we were required to attend. If we didn't appear to be enthusiastic about it, we were yelled at or ridiculed openly. When people decided they'd taken enough from Telahell and it was time to move on, they had to be very careful about how they quit. I know of two employees who never received their final paycheck after quitting. When I quit, I told Diane in HR that I was taking a vacation week and asked that my paycheck for the previous week be mailed to me. Then I never went back. They called three times to ask if I was coming back to work - duh - and then a couple months later they called again to ask if I wanted to come work for them again. Now what kind of company would want to rehire someone who walked out on them? Mr Covato was not even supposed to be on the property because of his criminal record. Yet he was there several times a week. The Covatos got an award from the state of PA because they hired so many people. But they hired so many people simply because of the high turnover rate at their facility. What a joke. If you're looking for a job in Erie, stay away from Telatron. No matter how badly you need a job, this is not a healthy place to work. They will destroy your self esteem and you will not be paid fairly.

Let me first Start my saying that we, i have always enjoyed educating Credit card holders, that is why I do work and we all need to put food on the table, and pay our bills. We have all known for a long time about Mr & Mrs, Covattos Fruad so put away your whistle. It is public knowledge. Whistle blower if you saled CPP's to accounts that were not approved that is fraud. ALL companies do dumb things.employees are lead to do them out of what they think are loyalty.
Many times Mrs.Covatto has shown her caring side, her mom in her self. Her morals and decency are there on a personal level. TRUE STORY!
The cold snow storm in the call center is horrible & is hateful to many of the employees, if you ask they will describe *** as snotty. They will not go to HR because he laughs at the employees and tells them go ahead. I have seen him put the reps photo on his pc and post and alter them and share ugly things with other supervisors about employees
Truth is HR will back up your supervisors 100 % .Mis can look at all the history that even your leaders are responsible leaving they do dumb as well.
The employee relationship in YOUR call center will have to improve between your supervisors and reps.
DO THESE supervisors not understand when they get called away from their desk every one can see what is left on the screen. What would a new employee do Run out the door and not look back. Current employees have had enough.
A RAINBOW is colorful, our is cloudy, it shares way too much, with the blizzard. This cloudy rainbow allowed a rep to be discharged after watching and knowing that they pulled a famous person credit card accts up on the system.
I know this to be true this supervisor remarked " she should of used CRC", it might not of showed the history, maybe this is how the superv is still employed after he giggled the evening away with her. She was fired.
The whole system that is in place. has No place at all in any work place. They advertise Flex work schedule, train you for weeks, Andrea then calls you in to HR and tells you sorry you can not have that schedule . The client has to have this.
YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO WATER BUT YOU CAN'T MAKE THEM DRINK. NEW EMPLOYEES ARE NOT GOING TO STAY AFTER YOU HAVE BAITED THEM WITH FLEX SCHEDULE. YOU HAVE ONCE AGAIN CUT YOUR NOSE OFF TO SPITE YOUR FACE.!
Save face, this is another reason why you can not retain new employees they leave during training, lunch brakes, or find out that they can not have what they need in a schedule.
Change your sneaky, bad, or out dated habits then just maybe you will able retain employees, both new and current.
Look at your past history if anything you should learn from it. No employee new or current wants to sit in a training class for weeks then have to hear sorry this is your schedule! Change your sign outside, change you newspaper ads.
Most New employee need to know what their schedule is going forward. They have schedules to plan, children, doctor appointments,
when i trained on b****** program. I was told the same I was very angry about my schedule
You are, or have been employing a generation of baby boomers that are caring for elderly parents, children with chronic illness that in most cases are living in our homes.
We can not afford health care for them, and as growing teens they can not afford it.
No one is able to trust HR. We do not feel as they are there for our benefit.
LOOK at what you did with our health care, it was sad Bruce and his family. No one ever gave us an upfront a face to face meeting as a group to explain what happened. Why we had no health insurance Telatron continued to deduct payments from our checks. Some families were hospitalized when that hit home.
Then notified us on the brink of the 59th day required by law. GEE i can not even guess why felt the need to have to talk to each other to piece together " gossip: about everything.
MY GOD we all don't own a business, a magic wand in PIP land to hurt people when ever we want to. We can only walk away, I think you can see by that fact the one whole building is completely empty and the is following that pattern.
WE need change at Telatron.. Mr & Mrs Covatto YOU need change make it happen at Telatron ...
I was impressed by another call center way in which they allowed their employee to manage their time. They always have full seats happy employees. They do not have to email and ask for and wait for a response from someone to approve a request.
I can not tell you how many of my requests were lost, not answered with an appropriate response, thus making me send it back over and over again.
When we earn Vacation time, that is a reward for coming to work, but you feel the need to set limits on when and how we use the time. Not before April, one day a month after the first week. One can not use two weeks together.Everyone in your production centers talk to each other it happen that happens.
Truth be told there are ". THERE ARE NO BENEFITS IN the BENEFITS "the way you structure the pay, USA. When we have drop in hours, you have structured a system to drop our pay. When my mother died so did my pay rate, and my pay check. Yes bervement pay at a much lesser then my normal rate. Go back to focus groups run them your self not, allow Christine Simon to come with you I feel as though she does care about us. Pip score how can you degrade an employee that way. You should want to create a positive mental attitude, PMA for us, as employees.
Stop using the word benefit when the end product is of no benefit.
If I had not made any remarks to other superv. Then feel blessed going forward it has been giggles.
Have a Blessed Day! ♥
Pay it Forward! ♥
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