Pros
Good medical, dental and vision benefits at a below average price. Tuition assistance of $8k per year. Ample vacation time, sick days, medical and personal leave.
Cons
A lot of changes in the last few years in directory assistance. We must meet a strict 23 second average customer serving time, this does not allow us to provide good customer service to elderly, confused, etc customers. We must be plugged in and taking calls all day, no exceptions for phone calls from doctors offices, mechanics, day care or other Mon-Fri daytime routine calls. If we do decide to unplug to take an important call it is held against our daily "adherence" to being plugged in, which allows approx 7 minutes per full day worked for restroom visits, blowing your nose, sneezing etc. If we do not meet the 23 second average call time or we are observed helping an elderly customer or not meeting our 7 minute daily adherence we are rated Does Not Meet job requirements. No matter what a great operator you are, upbeat, friendly, patient, if you don't meet those numbers your job is in jeopardy and you will be placed on a Performance Improvement Plan, which starts with a warning, then a short suspension, then a long suspension, then termination. We are basically expected to be robots with no feeling, emotion or compassion, but we must keep a friendly voice quality all the while, it often comes off as sarcastic. We are also not allowed to have job aids at our positions, so although we must use verbatim statements to hundreds of customer requests that change frequently, we have to memorize them, which is impossible. Also, there has been a huge budget crunch in last 3 years or so, we have limited office supplies, often no paper or ink to print our own paychecks, which we are required to receive digitally. Time offline spent with direct manager limited to 15 minutes per month.