Cons
There were several reasons I chose to leave this position—some were long-standing issues that never seemed to improve, while others emerged more recently. Altogether, they contributed to an unhealthy and unsustainable work environment.
I believe this position was misclassified as exempt from overtime. Although the NYS Department of Labor agreed with the company, the role did not involve independent decision-making or professional discretion—every interaction with customers was scripted and guided by management.
Because the role was “exempt,” employees were routinely expected to work well beyond 40 hours per week with no additional compensation. In January, we were told to work “at least one extra hour” daily, but in reality, the expectation was closer to three or four additional unpaid hours each evening. We were also required to work two Saturdays during that month. While those hours could later be used as “comp time,” the workload remained excessive and unfair.
Additionally, despite company policy listing several paid holidays (such as Christmas Eve, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and January 2nd), our department was frequently required to work on those days. We were told we could “choose another day off,” but this contradicted the stated company benefit and further demonstrated inconsistent practices.
A recurring issue throughout my employment—from my first days as a temporary employee in 2019—was the complete lack of internal communication. Critical information was often outdated, inaccurate, or simply unavailable. For example, the Help documentation in the system contained obsolete information that could not be corrected because no one had the appropriate permissions.
The rollout of new features, such as ZayZoon, was frequently launched to customers without any prior notice to the Customer Service team. This left us unable to answer questions and made the company appear disorganized. Similarly, there were several incidents where management relayed inaccurate updates—such as when we were incorrectly told that an email bug had been resolved. When customers followed up, it quickly became clear the issue still existed, further damaging credibility.
A more recent development was the fact that the work was not evenly divided amongst the staff. They were giving me more cases than I could handle. I could close 30 or 35 cases a day, a combination of actually being on the phones and taking the call and/or taking voicemail messages, and also being assigned the electronic support tickets that were assigned. However, they were assigning me like 50+ cases a day. And the e support tickets were not evenly distributed. I was given the lion’s share of the tickets that came in while other people were given less than half the amount that were assigned to me. When I said something to Zilfa the answer was give that I did not know what projects the other employees were responsible for behind the scenes. She assured me that the work was evenly dispersed. However, it was clear that the imbalance persisted, leaving me overextended and frustrated. Other employees were given 25 cases or less a day.
Last but not least, another demoralizing experience was being interviewed for a position on the Programming Team and then receiving no communication for nine months, only to be told that the promotion would not happen due to “headcount restrictions.” This felt especially discouraging considering how other employees were successfully transitioned into new roles during that same period. This was a few years ago, around the same time that Penny Cavaris was moved from the Customer Service Department to the Onboarding team. It took a long time for the company to actually move her, she was a 50% / 50% employee going back and forth for a very long time until finally she was put into the other department. Instead of doing that for me, I was promised a position off of the phones and then it was not communicated to me anything differently until nine months later, when it was explained to me that the company could not do anything with the head count and they did not have the requisition to be able to move me into another department. To me it felt like a big middle finger, nine months later.
For all of these reasons—the unpaid overtime, poor communication, unequal workload distribution, and unfulfilled professional commitments—I reached a point where continuing in this role was no longer acceptable. I could not spend another day, hour, or minute in an environment that so consistently undervalued and overworked its employees.