I was a Temp Worker, Hired by Countrywide at the end of 2001 shortly after 9/11 happened... I worked in the West Hills, California Office - Right near where the Controversial Rocketdyne Nuclear Waste of the 1950's — near partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor AND the Rocket Fuel and VOC pollution of the surrounding area was done until lawsuits were filed in the 1980's about it...
Getting to the point: i am very unhappy with the treatment of the employees and the general public who are getting ripped off on their loans at countrywide... Still — to this day.
It is now 6 years later. I worked there. My job was to handle confidential, sensitive real estate files — i.E. — the entire file of real estate documents - everything from the initial application, credit reports, appraisals, etc... in them and to enter those papers' information in a fast and timely manner into the complex computer system countrywide had.
I saw all these balloon notes — in the heloc division. I handled the paperwork daily. When i was hired, i was poorly trained. Questions were not encouraged. The trainer was on speed and/or like a train wreck — nobody could understand her.
So it was up to me to teach myself the foreign computer system — where mistakes were not tolerated, as your job depended on * accuracy * of the paperwork info matching up with the data you entered on the computer screen. Talk about pressure.
You were expected to be able to handle 3 files an hour at the end of a 2 week training.
I busted my butt - even worked on saturday — and was the first one of the group hired that reached not only accuracy, but speed in reaching that goal at the end of the 1st week — all by myself, since the trainer was literally never around to help and noone wanted to help the new hires along with me.
So then i had to teach all the other people. I even made my own personal binder of instructions that they were welcome to photocopy — out doing the trainer's own manual which was greek.
Ok — so what is my reward after busting my butt —
And i was the * only * licensed real estate professional - a sales license — in the whole group of people that they hired.
I don't think the other hires understood the significance of the files they were handling — they were legal papers!!!
Like the truth-in-lending statements — much less, how to read one and what it really means???
And so, anyhow — after 1 month of working there, all of us — our entire group were laid off without any warning, without any notice in advance.
We were just told that they did not have enough work for us and that they would call us when work picked up again.
They also said that we could walk back in after 2 weeks went by and check-in in person with the supervisor.
The building was security up the kazoo, so you could not even do that if you wanted to.
I called, i tried to go in, but could not get past security after having been their top hire there...
All without warning. They blamed it on 9/11 — and there was a shortage of files, but that obviously was not going to last long and they were obviously going to have to hire back again...
Wouldn't it make more sense to re-hire the people you already trained — it would save you, the owner of the company lots of time and money — instead of having to re-train new people all over again your complex, overwhelming system to the people you were hiring without real estate licenses (who much less, most could not understand what their job was to do in the group you hired me with... And i had to explain everything in layman's terms to them...)
Question to the ceo: wouldn't it be in your best interest to save time and money to keep the people you already trained instead of wasting time and money over and over and over again training people who: 1. Won't stay due to the complex nature of the job 2. Don't understand what to do and thereby slowing your company down and giving your company a bad image as an employer and 3. Costing you more money out of pocket than if you had simply kept the people who did perform and do their job and knew how to do it?
Not to mention the consumers i saw getting first hand ripped off on balloon note after balloon note files — most of them 90% of what crossed my desk and entered into your computer system...
Nicole
Klamath Falls, Oregon
U.S.A.
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