Am I going to lose my job?

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I'm really scared that I'm going to lose my job. I can't say a lot about it because they don't want the public to know about us but suffice to say it's my job to look at orders people place on our website and decide if they're real or fraudulent and either release or cancel them. In the end it all comes down to guessing. There's never any guarantee that a perfectly good looking order isn't fraud or that the most suspicious looking order in the world isn't legit.

But they grade us based on our accuracy and the lowest score they want us to get is 98.5%. Any lower than that can result in discplinary actions and eventual termination. So basically my whole job is a gamble. If we don't think we have enough info to decide we can escalate to another department who can call the customer for more info but they throw a fit if we do that too often. And they expect us to get 16 orders done an hour and escalations don't count anyway so the more we have to escalate the farther behind we get so a lot of times I end up either releasing or denying orders I have no idea about because I have to meet my quota.

And then there's chargebacks. Chargebacks can take up to three months to come through so I might get a score about 98.5% one week, and my manager tells me I did good and keep doing what I'm doing. So I do. And then three months later chargebacks come in and suddenly my score for that week is 94%. And then since I was told I was told to keep doing what I was doing all my scores for the next three months start going down the toilet too. and then my bosses start tacking new rules onto the ones we already have like nobody is allowed to order more than three gift cards in two days and that just makes things even more complicated.

So yeah I'm really scared I'm going to get fired. I've asked for more training I ask for help whenever I think I need it but nothing changes. Do you guys think I have anything to wory about? I actually like this job and don't want to lose it. What should I do?

You need to stop LYING about your work to meet your QUOTA. That could get you fired. You may want to talk to your boss about needing more time to handle escalations.

I don't do the escalations that's another department. That's why they throw a fit if we do too many of them because every escalation adds to their workload. And besides I just said that the entire job revolves around guessing. For those I know I don't have enough information but I make a decision anyway based on what I think is less likely to be wrong. That's actually something they encourage us to do. Trust our gut instinct they say. And then they slap us on the wrist for it.

Bump

It sounded to me like you didn't have enough time to think about what you read so that you could trust your gut. So you were taking the shortcut of just guessing without getting a gut opinion. Who will know? Well, pure guessing is likely to be less accurate than your gut opinion. So they try to fix the problem of inaccurate opinions by adding rules, which actually makes the situation worse, since you now have a bunch of stupid rules to follow.

You must not have read my entire post. EVERYTHING about this job is guessing. That's what drives me crazy about it. The most innocent looking order can be fraud and the most suspicious can be legit and if you guess the wrong one you get slapped on the wrist for it. Sure we have a few tools that can help us lean in the right direction but in the end it's still flipping a coin and hoping it lands heads instead of tails. A lot of orders are so messed up that it's literally 50/50 either way with no way to know which option is more likely to be right so we escalate them. But the escalation department gets all their work from the orders we escalate and they throw a tantrum if we give them more work than they think they should have. And since escalated orders don't count toward out daily quota a lot of time we're pressured into not escalating them and just guessing (IE gut feeling) which we then get slapped on the wrist for if we guess wrong. There's not much anyone can do to keep this from happening.

You're in a dysfunctional work place. I hate to tell you, but it really sounds like you are.

My advice is to err on the side of caution. If an order's all messed up, then throw it out. That is, cancel it. An exception might be if it's a big money order, then it might be worth escalating. Try to not escalate for a couple of days, then maybe don't escalate more than once a week.

This is probably not in the best interests of the company, but it might be in your best interests as an employee.

^^ what Aardvark said.

This is an abusive organization, and I bet their turnover rate is astronomical. Who's the most senior person on your floor/in your department - in terms of time, not rank? (IOW, how long do people last there?)

Why do they have staff "available" to escalate decisionmaking to, if they're going to punish people for consulting them "too often"? How often is "too often"? What happens when people ask for specifics on that? If your supervisors won't tell you "how much is too much" in clear, explicit numbers or percentages, why won't they?

(That, right there, is a big honkin' red flag for abuse. They judge you with metrics; they ought to be able to guide you with them.)

If more escalations are needed, why haven't they just expanded the staff that handles that aspect - or better still, why aren't they having those staff members come down to your work area and train you guys in depth, so you can make more decisions without them?

(To be very clear, I don't advise asking the above questions where you work. Not even of people you like and trust. Your workplace does not sound like a safe place to ask questions like this. I'm raising these partly as rhetorical, and partly as things you may be able to figure out by observation.)

I've never worked in a boiler room, but this sure sounds like one. From what you describe, involuntary terminations (firing people) are part of the business model, and if it happens to you, you have nothing to be ashamed of.

I've worked in a couple of dysfunctional workplaces. One was H&R Block which did not want its employees to disclose the negatives of its loan and bank products. Another was a furniture store which I'd rather not give the name of, which was dishonest about the reasons for its discounts, as well as really disorganized in a number of ways. It was a "Sell, Baby, Sell" type of company.

Well, even in the most dysfunctional and disorganized company, there are things it does right, even by accident if nothing else! So, yes, there's things to learn and silver linings.

All the same, I'd start making plans for your next job, as casually as you can, whether it's updating your resume or searching online or something else. I think you'll feel better if you're at least thinking about back-up plans.

^^

Funkypunky, The Aardvark is wise... listen to the Aardvark.

(This is absolutely sincere.)

If only it were that simple. If we cancel a good order the customer will usually call in to complain about it and it will still affect our score as a Customer Insult.

The questions as I see them:

1. How do you compare with your peers? Higher percentage or lower percentage? If your "slap on the wrist percentage is higher" then there may be something they know that YOU don't. Use that to learn from your co-workers.

2. Can you ask for further instruction as far as clues to sort out the good from the bad? Fraud is rampant, so anything that you can do to help protect the companys product is of benefit to the company. Demonstrate to your boss that you want to learn and are willing to learn to do whatever it takes to make the right difference in your current job.


FF

Okay, so I was mistaken, and there's no side of caution to err on. Wow.

To use a baseball analogy, it's like the company yells and hollers and has strict rules about the importance of a high batting average, and yet there's no coach or manager able and willing to give specific suggestions on how to see and swing on a slider, how to see and swing on a changeup, etc.

I like FerrariFan's suggestion about comparing yourself to peers and potentially learning from them. Although personally I'm made a mess of this at times. I've been too abrupt, people have felt ambushed, I've intruded on people's break time, all without meaning to. Maybe as people are sitting down to begin a work session? Maybe a short, matter-of-fact sentence to ask for permission before I ask my question?

The part about no more than 3 gift cards in 2 days seems reasonable. But I'm guessing a lot of the other rules aren't.

Don't get me wrong I love this job. That's why I'm so afraid of losing it instead of just looking for another one. The people I work with are mostly cool and there's a really laid back atmosphere here. It's just that theres too much left up to chance and you have no idea how good you did until they give you your scores at the end of the week and by that time there's no going back to fix it. I haven't had a passing score in five or six weeks. And my older scores that WERE passing are going down because three month chargebacks can do that. So yeah I'm worried they won't keep me around.

I think I can understand, at least somewhat. I very much enjoyed my time at the furniture company, even though the operation definitely had its problems. I guess the analogy of baseball again, that even if a person is having quality at-bats, their results will still have both bad streaks and good streaks?

Maybe also be open to brief and low-key coaching of your co-workers? I mean, if the opportunity presents itself, say if the person asks you a question or seems open to a little bit of information.