I was with AT&T for 17 years. They brought a new 21 year old manager in, and every other month she put me on a step of discipline for "behaviors". First it was for not demoing digital life to EVERY SINGLE CUSTOMER, then they quit caring about digital life, then I wasn't demoing directv to EVERY SINGLE customer. Well, I'm sorry, not only is that not practical, it's not possible. No one else was being written up for not demoing to EVERY SINGLE customer. My numbers have been better than ever, and have always been in the top three of my store. And finally put me on a final written, and called asset protection to file an investigation on me for not looking at a customers drivers license, whom I knew quite well, and had been working with for many years. Final written then COBC. Needless to say I'm not with the company anymore, no severance, no nothing, no recourse.....union said " yeah, we can try to fight it, but it won't do any good".
21 replies (most recent on top)
Everyone always wants to throw age into the pile. Seems like you are discriminating against the 21 year old seeing you mention he/she age multiple times. This business has change and you just admitted that you weren't consistent. I'm confused as to why it's the 21 year olds fault? If you weren't demoing and or following the plan move on to something else. At the end of the day that's your job and you admitted to NOT doing your job very well.
17 years as a sales rep in retail? That's a tween job, hey they did you a favor. Please focus and build a career. And before you say that im a millennial, I'm not.
What these 21 year old managers do not realize is that, they too will be over 40 one day and will also be discriminated simply because they earn more money or have a pension or their medical costs corporations more than a 21 year old. I mean really? That 21 year old will be on their mommy and daddy's insurance until they are 26. No wonder AT&T is hiring fresh out of high school managers. TO the OP. .sorry for your loss. I too, had 19 years... a consolidation and targeted our entire group to relocate.
you were targeted because of your pay. comes from the top and many naive and fresh outta college RSMs are there just to clean house and get rid of anyone who knows how much pay you used to get. RSMs get "guidance" from their DOS and ARSM about how to make a better store but are completely in the dark that older employees are on a spreadsheet somewhere of pension liabilities. Info has already been digested for the VPGM/DOS to give to ARSMs. get your underperformers and C players outta there. Yes, some needed to move on but they want them all to move on. in a meeting they will say, "what about this person? Seems like he's been there a long time?" RSMs think they are doing the company's bidding fairly to make a better company but they are just pawns to get rid of the expensive/older employees
I have been with the company for almost 18 years. Believe it or not there are also managers who are being held accountable for their teams not selling or performing Demos. If you are not doing what has been asked of you; we have to move forward. Not demoing or not selling Entertainment services brings negative attention therefore requiring management to complete more observations. As far as getting rid of people who are "seasoned employees" because of money is just not true. What I have seen in my career is most of those RSCs simply stop doing their job/haven't adapted to the change within the company. As managers we can't give our ARSM or DOS the excuses that are used on a daily basis. We are sales people working for an Entertainment company---you complete demos with everyone until you close a sale then start all over again each and every day. It is business and not personal.
17 yrs in but yet it took a 21 yr old to come in and have to manage you when you should have been the one managing the 21 yr old. But you settled got comfortable took shortcuts and now you blame the company. Much success in your new job but if you repeat that cycle again your gonna end up with negative results.
ATT is headed down hill! Consider yourself lucky you're gone! Collect unemployment, get your insurance license and it's a cakewalk!
Sounds like it was part of your action plan.
What a bunch of company BS 💩 As a manager I'm here for my employees ....lol your here for yourself and a cover your own a--..... bottom line! And to get your quarterly bonus! And your daily company kool aid you pass down to the employees! i've seen managers lie everybody's face....oh everybody's fine in a week later five people are layed off!!
Thank you to the RSM to share such great insight. Our RSMs do not care how much someone makes per hour. That is a union tactic to incite fear. All managers care about it if someone is if helping their team be successful. End of story. If you aren't doing you're part, you're off the team. Offering DTV is a bare minimum standard. Industries change and evolve.... Get on board or move on. Even at #3, that may not mean anything if the store wasn't performing. This is a business. If you aren't here to help grow profits, someone else will. I know a lot of people who would sign up to make over 50k, have good benefits, and all kinds of perks for selling products they already love. We have a really cool job that is fun if we want it to be. It's all about our attitude. I for one love my job and if I had to sell mattress next week to keep it, I would be learning everything there is to know about mattress and telling everyone that walks in all about them.
Oh, and as another follow up, there is not a single Retail RSM in AT&T that wants to target "senior workers." RSMs have no say in what RSCs get paid. The only thing we can potentially help with is getting the RSC to perform better so their paycheck is higher, which in turn makes the manager's check hire too. The union agreements determine the sales reps hourly pay. I have no idea what most of my RSCs make per hour. It's not even easy for me to find if I wanted to. I don't pay it out of my own budget, so what do I care? In fact, I'd much rather have a good, veteran sales rep that knows that they are doing than a new person that has no clue.
Now, during the layoffs initiated earlier this year, did the company target veteran ASMs who were making more salary? Well, that's another thing altogether. I don't know the answer, but in some cases it did appear that was the case.
In the end, the company (any company really) is going to do what they want to do, so the best thing you can do is to do your job 100% and hope for the best. And, even if you get laid off, you can at least say you did your best, that you did it honestly, and you can hold your head high. That's much more respectable than saying "they gave me 4 warnings to offer DTV to every customer, and I can't do that, even though I can, so it stinks that I got fired." Yes it does, but, it was preventable.
First, let me say that I am truly sorry that you lost your job, regardless of not whether it was justified. I hate for anyone to lose their job in today's economy. There have been people that I disliked, that frankly deserved to lose their job, but I still felt bad. None of us is perfect and a layoff can happen to any us. Secondly, I will say that I am a veteran RSM. No that doesn't make me a "troll" or any of that other stuff. Any company needs good Reps and good Managers. I do understand that there are many hapless ASM, RSMs, ARSMs, and even DOS out there and you wonder how in the world they ever got hired to begin with (a manager who is bad at hiring). There are also many terrible RSCs that refuse to behave like mature, decent human beings, let alone do everything they can to sell. My strategy is not to find ways to discipline reps so I can fire them, but to hire great people with natural talent that I can help grow and help get their numbers so that is never an issue.
That doesn't mean that there haven't been a few losers along the way that I've had to deal with.
Unfortunately, the reality is that AT&T spent a jillion dollars on buying DTV, and so by golly they're going to make us sell it, and that means that every RSC had better offer it to every single customer, every time. Every RSC understands this. Every manager understands that they better ensure their teams are doing this 100% of the time, or the ARSM is going to discipline them. The good news is that everyone gets paid well on selling DTV. It's a great product and has great promotions. The bad news is that it's super hard to sell sometimes. So, we have to make sure we're trying 100% of the time. And if the manager catches you not trying with every potential customer, and you've been there 17 years and understand what you're supposed to be doing, then they have no choice but to do their jobs and hold you accountable. Even the union agreed. When the CWA tells you that the manager has you dead to rights, then clearly you just weren't doing your job as expected, and its as simple as that. I know its brutal, I know it s---s, and I know you were there 17 years, but the game has changed and its no longer as easy as doing a few upgrades a week and maybe tossing in some accessories if you got around to it. The message is clear -- if someone can't or won't sell DTV, then a job in retail is not for them. On the flip side, if you were "#3" in your store every month, then certainly you must have been selling DTV. Now if your store has 5 RSCs and you were #3, well, thats not that impressive. If your store has 10+ reps and you are #3 every month, well then it sounds to me that you were pretty good at selling DTV. And if that's the case, perhaps there was some other good reason that they felt you were a cancer on the team and needed to go. Still another scenario is you have a combo of an idiot RSM and ARSM. Hard to tell!
More kool aid manager talk....go back to your office and conference calls to the bean counters!.... sounds to me like the usual T way of doing business.... Target the senior worker before you can retire....bring in new blood at lower pay!!!
If you are going to attack this person then you clearly never did this job before. They do the same to reps on phones as well and most of those managers have never even took a call. Would like to see the managers do what we do and we will see just how fast they get fired for same mistakes store or phone rep.
lmao
The only person at fault is you. You did not follow company procedures. You probably saw this 21 year old manager and thought she does not have what it takes to write me up. I'm glad that you got fired! Employees like yourself should get fired on a daily basis.
I thought this was a lay off site. People are LOSING their jobs by no fault of their own. When sales go down, profits go down, stocks go down, people get laid off. Why would I feel bad for someone who wasn't doing their job and not contributing to making the company. We need more mangers like this one who held the Person to the standard she expected. Kudos
Typical T.... at 17 years they don't want to make it to 20 to get a decent pension! So they nitpick micromanage and try to find anything they can to get rid of you!.....i've seen it happen before it's sad....
Why is it impossible to demo to every customer you sound like your his manager who fired him smh...
Why is it IMPOSSIBLE to demo DIRECTV to every customer that doesn't already have it? Sounds to me like you didn't want to do your job so your forced your manager to do hers.
Did you give commitments to the behaviors of demoing DL to every customer? Did you ask for a union involved during the initial discipline meetings before the meetings began?