Life After the Death of AT&T

Letters to the Editor

Office Whisper by D Lingo

As you know, there were a lot of "opportunities" to move around in the AT&T office... IF the job was designated for you. Many of the loans, special projects and temporary promotions were already designated before the request went out in the office.

I remember one summer where EVERY person who got a special project was a white, female and blond. Now, we could say it was a coincidence, but the whole selection guidelines were overlooked and a person was selected as a trainer even though there wasn't a six month gap between her projects. The criteria at that time was as you had a 6 months minimum between projects.

Another temporary manager stayed beyond her 6 months... and lasted for 3 years... how did the management accomplish this? They would let her be a temporary manager for 6 months, then move to In-charge (an occupational position) for 6 months, then back to management... So, no matter who applied, we all knew it was useless because the job was already saved.

I've also seen jobs "postponed" because management was waiting for someone to become "qualified."

Answers by K Arlen

As much as I loved working for AT&T, I hated the job I was doing because I felt management made it difficult with the unrealistic goals. I did however enjoy helping the customers, but sales is not for me. At least not telephone/telemarketing sales. 

So, every month was a struggle just to stay ahead and who knows, I may have been fired eventually because sooner or later, my numbers would have dipped. Right now, I'm looking for a job that involves NO sales. Clerical, data entry, internet based and/or anything else except sales....I hate sales.

Just Let it Be Truth by  Lex R

Enough is enough. What can we lie about AT&T's truth?

AT&T  had a variety of products, valuable services and many incentives to choose from. Why do we have to hide the truth in order to make a sale? I am talking about the business ethics here. No wonder people hates telemarketing callers. Oh, I forgot, AT&T was famous for telemarketing in the 80's.

I've worked with a group of unreal people, who omitted some information in order to make a sale, a lot of sales. The monthly objective was unreachable by far. Like one time, some customers complained about them been called 7 times in 5 days. When we report to the management, they told us that we were not paying attention and focus, focus on our sales. It was a mistake in the auto dialer system. Why didn't anyone fix it?

Oh, I forgot. They fixed it... after few class action lawsuits, over 35,000 layoffs and shut down of the residential division completely.