Seasonal - Tax season is January 4th - April 15th (except when it lands on a weekend or holiday, or has been extended by the IRS)
Office leaders not allowed overtime - that's right. Receptionists are allowed up to 10 hours of overtime per week, tax pros unlimited (during the above mentioned dates) Multi-unit leaders are salary (the ones I've spoken to have actually earned less in this position than the office leaders (ATL) that they manage) Associate Team Leaders (ATL) are glorified receptionists that get the added duty of doing daily huddles, coaching in the moment, being the liaison between tax pros and DGM's & MTL's, ordering office supplies, fielding bad client reviews ensuring that the office stays clean and aren't allowed to work more than 40 hours per week (this includes offices that don't have additional receptionists, not even they are allowed overtime)
Commissions/Bonus are non-existent for most tax pros/ATLs - Must always have a free tax pro for walk-ins and commissions are earned by having a higher production value. If someone is needed nearly every day for this purpose only, they are not being productive according to the company, usually first year tax pros are used for this purpose, but (we were told anyways) this past year Texas was unable to offer the income tax course virtually or in person, so we have no first years to fill the dead space needed or to help with the front desk (first years can clock in under tax pro or receptionist, with receptionist hours not counting against their productive hours, which they aren't allowed to earn commissions so why does it matter what they are clocked under?) And say you have a tax pro who refuses to work without a receptionist and this tax pro does as many returns as the others in the office combined (or more, is often the case), well your ATL gets stuck working that person's schedule and if your office isn't allowed a receptionist? Well too bad, even on days/(mostly)evenings the office has near constant phone callers asking questions the receptionist can answer, we have to studiously ignore the constant ringing phone when a client is in front of us, make people who come in during these appointments wait to be greeted and checked in and then get in trouble when clients complain about lack of phone answering or someone behind the front desk.
Out-side leadership hires have zero hands on training - if they've never worked in a tax office before, they don't know how to do their job. I don't care if you were the DGM of ACE Hardware or some sporting goods store you do not have the full training required for your position and your tax pros are going to resent that fact, even if they adore you otherwise. (I have worked as a tax pro and an ATL and I can tell you from personal experience, I was not trained properly for that role, and if I wasn't the type of person I am, my office would not have been open the entire season because of it)
Being asked the same 2 questions by every. single. caller and walkin. to add on to this, the client that calls every single day AND comes in every single day to ask why "WE" haven't issued their refund yet - they make fake appointments with fake names to waste your time (and lose clients i might add) because they have zero comprehension skills or probably shouldn't be handling things like tax returns or refunds. - and unless they are being threatening or s******* harassing you, there isn't really much you can do.
Inconsistency with policy being followed district by district/region/corporate - training has some girl with bright purple hair as an employee, but we aren't allowed to have unnaturally colored hair according to our DGM, also, small nose piercings are fine, but not small labrets (can't even wear a retainer), dress code is the biggest with inconsistency (we can't wear capris or sandals, corporate gets to wear T-Shirts, Jeans and Gym shoes on fridays/other special days, no one else gets to apparently, etc) not being allowed to use tools that others in the district with same qualifications are allowed to (WFA) - there is no easy way to report this happening and if you ask HR what the policy is they give you the policy word for word then say "but your DGM can say differently" .....then WHY is it policy?
The clocking system is the wort system I have ever had to use. It takes 5 minutes to wait for windows to load, update, open the web page before you have to type 3 different things in to clock in - and then I can lose my job if I forget to approve my time card every other week.
How slow the network is and how many times I have to log in to every single program I open and how I'm not supposed to apologize for the program messing up even when it messes up, supposed to act like I don't know what I'm doing I guess.