About four years ago I was hired to work at American Conference Institute as a Sales Associate. There are two things that happened: (1) I was basically locked into a contract which now in hind-sight I realize is nothing more than a one sided, self serving document, where the company can legally take advantage of you. (2) I was lied to basically promising the new hirees that if we are having trouble meeting a quota that they will work with us more to bring us up to snuff. The first problem was the contract. There were several clauses in the agreement which stated "You owe ACI a degree of loyalty". Whoa! Problem number 1.. Loyalty is a two way street. No where in the agreement did it say that ACI owes their employees any degree of loyalty. If the company is not going to reciprocate mutual loyalty in any way shape or form they have no business requiring that their employees be loyal to them. This should also be spelled out from day. The contract went on to state that "The first thirty days of your employment will be probationary" while another clause stated something along the lines of "There shall be nothing in this contract that shall fix or give term to your employment" In other words they can fire you at any time and 30 days is your probationary period. Problem number 2... 30 days is 30 days! You should have 30 days not a day more not a day less to get your act together and show them that they made the right decision by hiring you. Both issues were mo re or less intertwined. Unless you do something that is illegal or extremely immoral they should NOT get rid of you due to low performance within the first thirty days. Since I was having difficulty in reaching quota instead of working with me to improve my chops I was let go before my 30 day time period was up. I distinctly remember Matt Godson telling me "It has nothing to do with sales. It is due to your diction on the phone". If that's the case then diction is was needs to be worked on and I had about 20 more days to go. Ergo, I was flat out lied to as to the reason why they terminated my employment. All I can tell anyone is, if you want to go to work for these people look elsewhere. They treat people like shit. I also heard a horror story about how Toby the CEO and Founder walked into the office one day and basically shot a marketing campaign dead out of the water. Well isn't that stupid! If you hire people to work for you to do a job better than you can (e.G. Lawyer or accountant) you'd be pretty stupid to think you know more than they do.
0 comments