PODS reviews

They claim seasonal staff have a shot at regular employment with excellent performance, but it never happens. It apparently never happens every year and regular employees are told to "not tell" the new seasonal employees "how things run here". We were also told not to tell any Florida call center reps that they were changing our schedules (Dallas call-center) to a regular 9 to 5 with weekends off and a 1 hour lunch...and keeping Florida reps on a rotational schedule with varying times, only 30 minutes of lunch, and working most weekends. This is beyond shifty. They said the decision was made because Dallas employees needed something special since we were so far from Headquarters. LIES. They did it because business was slowing down, they didn't need as many people on the phones, and they were planning to fire EVERYONE who was a seasonal employee in Dallas. Coincidentally, in that same meeting we were told that PODS still needed more call-center agents after season and encouraged us to keep improving out quality scores so that we can be invited to a permanent and regular position. A few weeks later they let go of everyone! The highest performing seasonal salesperson was also let go...and not given any offer of a permanent position. The reason they gave for firing all seasonal staff was of course...the season's over and business is too slow to justify all the staff. Then please tell me why they earlier said they needed more agents. Certainly they have projections of how many staff are needed, call volume, etc. from the following year. I just wish they hadn't led people on to believe that there was a regular position waiting for them if they performed well. I've been a seasonal employee with two other companies and I always knew my hire date AND end of hire date beforehand. It's not that hard. Keeping employees hanging by a rope is uncomfortable, especially in a bad economy where we might not get another job for a few months. So many Americans are unemployed and many more UNDERemployed, and PODS is just a slap in the face to people who are hopeful in getting a stable job.

1) Performance goals that are nonsensical, outdated, and seemingly designed to weed out seasonal sales and customer services agents, but more so the sales agents, once the "busy season" is over. 2) Supervisors have absolutely no leadership skills and seem to only be there to enforce trivial rules. They are annoyed when you have a question and generally are not concerned with good customer service. 3) Amazingly strict dress-code for a call-center (excluding the supervisors because they seem to be able to wear whatever they want). 4) Amazingly strict attendance policy that does not allow you to visit a doctor or tend to a sick child without disciplinary action and a "write-up" (even when you plan ahead and get a doctor's note). 5) Trainers do not give enough information about the job. You're told PODS agents do not follow a phone script, but find later that you must verbatim use scripted lines in order to pass amazingly strict phone quality score. There's no consistency in grading quality scores. The script consists of talking customers to death. 6) Work environment was garbage until they finally renovated, which makes me feel sorry for all the people before me. 7) No latitude for independent judgement, including contacting customers back with important information, sending customers documents or e-mail (generally good customer communication). You MUST stay chained to your desk and only receive incoming calls, and don't think about getting up to pee...or the supervisors will question why you're up. You must stay seated and raise your hand when you need something...sound familiar...grade school?