I quit Comcast/Xfinity because the company became greedier during the pandemic
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In March of 2020, Xfinity sent me home with my desk supplies, personal belongings, computer, monitor and earbuds. Covid-19 was raging and states were beginning to announce various levels of shut down. While we were assured it would likely only be a few months, our call center would be working from home for the foreseeable future. The situation felt dire and I was frightened about what this pandemic would do to me and my loved ones.
Comcast did make some sweeping changes at first to help both employees and customers. Wi-Fi Hotspots that were normally available only for customers were opened up and made public, data limits were removed so that customers and employees were not facing over charges and employees were given a temporary increase in hourly pay along with 40 additional hours of paid time off to use for family needs. I felt fortunate that I hadn’t lost my job and was being taken care of. I did need to buy my own office supplies, chair, desk, headset, etc. The company was not immediately prepared to supply those. It would be months before our second monitors and desk phones would be shipped to us.
Many of the customers I spoke with sounded anxious, frightened and stressed. For months, the most common call came from people trying to drastically lower their bills by removing any and all services besides the internet. For one commission period, sales reps were held harmless on their score card (a series of required goals and metrics that accumulate as a number score by which we are ranked and/or coached/terminated.) Once baseball came back, there was a huge push to raise our video sales exponentially. We received emails informing us that we were back to “business as usual” even though, as far as I could see, nothing else in the world was back to normal.
Working in my bedroom during a pandemic without any of the other amenities that used to be available at the office gave me time to focus entirely on the depressing aspects of isolation and the pitfalls of the job. Every 2 months, I would hear that our date to return to the call center was pushed further out yet again. Every coaching meeting about my sales, every phone call on which I was expected to sell 2 mobile phone lines became too much for me. After 9 months (and using up a lot of…
