Hiring 12 people to fire 4, then fire another 4, to keep 4.

[Ksa]

Do you have a name for this? It's become a common pattern for a large organization to hire an amount of employees triple of what they need in order to, during training or probation, narrow down the number to a third, to keep the best.

I was recently hired by a large organization paying me a good salary. It's a call-center with 2 types of managers, sectional and floor. Every time the floor manager pays a visit to the group, he makes sick jokes about how he's going to pick the best, he once compared us to a box of Tim Bits where he would pick the juiciest ones, constantly reminding about past hires where he hired 14 and kept 5 (firing the other 9).

The atmosphere in the workplace became pretty charged up, especially when he makes those jokes that everybody politely laughs at but no-one finds funny because they're the ones about to get fucked.

Does anyone have experience with this type of work environment and if you do, what's your best practice, what are the outcomes of such employment and what would be THE thing to do?

 

[Burnt Offerings]

Some people derive sick pleasure from having control (in some way) over the lives of others.

 

[thujone]

i did call centre work through most of my twenties and high churn rate was normal. i was fortunate that i had other things going for me so i didnt have to stress about performance metrics costing me my job but it's too much stress to be suitable for long-term employment and pretty well everyone i met there were either at a low point in their normal careers and just needed a job to make ends meet or were just there while working on starting in another career.

 

[hydroazuanacaine]

everyone i met there were either at a low point in their normal careers and just needed a job to make ends meet or were just there while working on starting in another career.

my first job out of school was a temp-to-hire call center. the above describes my co-workers well, and many but not all of the managers were pathetic and unprofessional like OP describes.

the department hired applicants the day of the interview. i came in with a group of about eight, and after two months i and only one other remained. many of these individuals were incompetent or displayed terrible work ethic and needed to be let go. i didn't need to destroy myself in competition for my position; learning the processes, being a friendly team member, and doing a decent job was all it required.

take it for what it is. i was job searching as soon as i got the call center job figured out. if i had been let go in those first two months, i would have just left it off my resume. my coworkers were all job searching as well, so the networking was great. in a little less than eight months i gave notice for a better job. i used a slightly elevated co-worker as one of my references. i connected another one of my co-workers to a higher paying job the month i left because the transition gave me a whole new network.

and the place offered better drug networking than a college campus.