The schedule is not consistent. If you are hired on as what is called an "intermittent" employee, there will be weeks where they will work you to death, and then weeks where you don't work at all. Basically you call out on government surveys ALL day long, and of course people HATE the government right now, so you get yelled at quite a bit. That really isn't so bad except that management rules with an iron fist. People get written up on a regular basis for LITTLE things. Your kids are sick and you dropped them at the sitter and your cell phone rings, if you look at it even to just press "end" it's a write-up. You go to the doctor and the note isn't written EXACTLY right saying that they need to excuse you from work...it's a write-up. You get stuck in traffic and your cell phone is dead, you walk in 15 min late without calling...it's a write up...even if you do call....the supervisor has the right to write you up and they will ALWAYS take the side of the supervisor, so fighting it does next to no good. After so many write-ups you get fired. You know how they fire people? They walk you out in front of everyone.
In addition, you will come into work one week and be scheduled 37.5 hours for the current week and the next week, but then only 5 hours for the two following weeks. They will say that there are no hours, but then while you have no hours, they will hire new people. The new people take the hours...you know...the ones they didn't have to offer you.
Not only that, but originally they offered no health insurance. After YEARS of fighting with the union, the union got them to hire a certain amount of people on as part-time and maybe two full-time. Those people got paid holidays, paid time off, and insurance. It seems like a dream being as most people are still intermittent employees meaning they get NONE of that. The people were chosen given a random time span over the previous year. If you worked a certain amount of hours during a SPECIFIC three month time span, and your date of entry was before that of tons of other people, you got offered the opportunity to be part-time. What they found out later was that they got screwed over in a completely different way. Part-time employees can only work up to about 25 or 30 hours per week. They get preference when it comes to scheduling, but interestingly enough they are the people being fired left and right. Also, when there's very little work, they give them next to no hours, like pretty much every body else. The problem is though, they have health insurance! It gets taken out of their check. The cost is INSANE and when there's not a lot of work, some of them get paid $50 or $60 after taxes and health insurance (mind you we get paid BI-weekly). Can you live on $50 or $60 a week? Think about living on that every two weeks.
You get roped into the job because it seems great. You will get a government job, making well above minimum wage. The fact is that there are many people who quit and take jobs that pay less by the hour because they know they will make more money and have a consistent schedule.
The supervisors are miserable, because management is full of people who don't know what they are doing and have no people skills. I've personally watched several people break down and cry, but they are so scared of management that there's nothing but whispered conversations and desperate pleas for help finding other jobs.
Supervisors even brag ON THE FLOOR about how many people they have written up. Managers get complaints about them and nothing is done.
When something is brought to the manager's attention, it's swept under the rug. You don't see supervisors walked out of there with security, and if you ask when the last time a manager was suspended, I'm sure they'll have to sort through files so old they're on floppy disks.
If you get this job, don't think it's going to suddenly be the answer to all your problems. don't by any means believe that you will be able to support your family. And certainly don't believe that you will be able to get in this job and then find another. Most of the people that work in the phone center are in financial distress. Please don't confuse this with "difficulty", this is distress. People are on the phones on their breaks (remember any other time you get written up) trying not to lose their homes and vehicles. Try explaining to your mortgage, electric, water, and car companies that you have no clue as to how much you are going to get paid because you don't know the hours you will be scheduled. At the end of every month people are begging these companies to work with them. don't think you will be able to just up and leave either. When people apply to other jobs, the potential employer usually calls back and says that no one would verify your employment.
As with pretty much any job, if you ask a question, you will get a different answer depending on which supervisor you ask. Not a big deal in most jobs...but we are supposed to be collecting government statistics, so when one supervisor tells you that health insurance that someone purchased through a company that they own is considered employer-sponsored health insurance, and another tells you it is considered self-insured that's an issue because we collect the statistics for government agencies. So when you hear the stats that say "x amount of companies offer health insurance to their employees", take that with a GIANT grain of salt, because supervisors can't get on the same page. And guess what, management doesn't really care. They don't even know how to code things, they don't sit in on training, and know basically nothing about the inner workings of the surveys.
The training is also a joke. When you hire on, you will immediately be trained on ONE survey. Mostly likely it will be ACS because that's the money maker. Well, the survey doesn't go on all month long, so they will run out of cases at the end of the month. You could get called at home (if you are lucky) and they will tell you not to come in because they are low on work. The only way to potentially get more hours is to basically try to get trained on other surveys. They say that it's based on EOd date which is basically just seniority, they say that they go down a list, but the fact of the matter is that many of the surveys specifically request that people who have worked the survey before be trained on the survey. This means that you get passed up.
Let me also address the issue of slack work. If they run out of work, you could end up driving into work only to find out that they've slacked you. This happens REGULARLY. They claim that they will try to call you, but that the supervisors are overwhelmed, but the truth is, the supervisors know the night before, because they will go around and ask people if they want to go home early because work is low. They don't make a real effort to call people to tell them not to come in. You will drive all the way in for them to tell you to go home. They law apparently states that they have to let you work 2 hours if that happens. So, say you hire in at $14 an hour. It's the third week of the month, and a Monday. You drive into work, and they tell you that you've been slacked. Not only that, but they tell you not to come in again for the rest of the month because there's not enough work. You get to work your two hours grossing you $28. That's it. And guess when you get THAT pay check? The first of the NEXT month. So at the beginning of next month, bills come due, and you've only grossed $28, and some of that was spent in gas getting you to and from work because the supervisor couldn't be bothered to give you a call.
Notice with all of this, I have said barely anything about the actual job. The job is the job. You do the same thing every day, it's pretty mindless. It's like telemarketing. You call people, ask them to give out personal information over the phone (some surveys are mandatory), and you get screamed at by people who hate the government, you get excuses from old ladies, and you get wise cracks from every 30 something year old guy who thinks he's the first one to say "give me YOUR home phone number and I'll call you at home and ask you a bunch of questions." Really the job is not a bother. If you can put up with the management, you can put up with the people on the phone. Unfortunately, the morale is SO bad, that the interviewers are already on edge.
My advice? If you can find a better job, do it QUICKLY. Anyone at the Census Bureau will tell you that the phone center is the worst job there, and former employees will tell you what a relief it was when they got out and got treated "like a human being".
