Interactions corps. Is a small start up company based out of Indiana that decided to open an office in Austin. They do a terrible job of micromanaging that office and have a turnover rate that I haven't seen even in retail. I didn't realize this until I was made manager out of the necessity for the office to go overnight for one of our clients.
The upper level management is based in Indiana where the cost of living is among the lowest in the nation and highest in unemployment, so they don't feel the need to offer competitive wages to their Austin employees.in addition, since Upper management is not present, don't expect any office parties or any kind of recognition for personal achievement, except for the occasional good job, thanks. I worked there almost a year as a manager and never received any kind of review, benefits, or payed time off for my efforts. The only time I ever got any feedback was for things they deemed negative. I was eventually fired for a attendance technicality that involved me calling in sick for one of the four days a months an employee is "allowed to call in and/or be late." I was never written up or formally disciplined once before my termination. I felt totally alienated, used, and targeted to be made an example of. Others had done the exact same things at the company and faced no discipline. Others had left the office altogether and were at work the very next day. This is how they treat alot of the employees in Austin. Since Texas is a work at will state and I signed an attendance contract that is the same for normal employees as it is for supervisors, I was never available for unemployment.
Why they really fired me is what seemed like a personal problem with the manager in Carmel. This same individual has caused a number of personality conflicts with other managers and got them fired as well, or demoted. It goes without saying he is difficult to work with.
When I first started there, it was like walking into a quiet boiler room. Nothing but boring white walls and the hum of computers. I was excited when I first started b/c you get payed based on a point scale, in theory this is supposed to pay the employees by output per minute, meaning you get payed more for harder and more efficient work. What I didn't realize is that the company had no regulation or rules on this point system, except on the what the labor could do. This lead to mass confusion for new hires. At first, it seemed, when a large training class came through they would give more points for correct answers in their system. Then a couple weeks later when they were fully staffed they would have the programmers lower the points again. This led to the unusually high turnover rate that I explained earlier, leaving the rest of the staff to pick up the slack.
This was a huge problem as a shift manager cause you could be working in an office building in the worst part of austin with minimal security, BY YOURSELF. You would think being manager is a good thing. NOT HERE, there will always be 3 or more employees that make a better hourly rate than the shift supervisor. As well, you still have to do the same painstaking job the labor does, while trying to explain to the labor why they can't get their points higher.
As well, they made it a practice to run the office efficiently by sending employees home early to reduce costs. So if you plan on working there, don't expect to work the full schedule that they schedule you. Don't depend on those hours from this company to feed your family, and don't expect to eventually see things change. I never did in my first year, even after acquiring one of the biggest tech companies in the world as a client and watching it go from a 5000 call a day center to a 20000 call a day center.
To finish, if you've read this carefully, you'll realize that interactions corp. Is not a work friendly environment. They justify this by claiming that they are still a small company in the red. The fact is they are not willing to pay anyone but upper management, and advancement is almost a penalty instead of a blessing.
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