Complaint Review: AFLAC

I am so glad that I am not the only one who has had a horrible experience with AFLAC.  After being unemployed for almost a year, AFLAC picked up my resume' on Monster.  I thought that I was being "specially recruited".  I hold a MS in Management with several classes in financial management. I am currently a candidate for a specialized PhD program in international finance and am teaching myself Mandarin Chinese.  To say the least, I am no dummy.  I looked up the company's 10-K report to make sure that they were financially stable and everything looked pretty good to me except for one year out of the past five years.  That was understandable in this economy.  When I came to the interview, I was extremely professionally.  I too, thought, it would be an individual interview.  It was a group "hooray" session, where they told us how much money we would make.  I played the good sport and tried to make the best of it.  I have always tried my best to learn new things and push myself beyond my comfort level. 

In my time on the phone with the office director, I was told that the company was very family friendly, cared about their employees, was considerate, and was a great fit for the unconventional life.  It was supposed to be a "fit" for all kind of people from all walks of life.  Nothing less than the truth was true.  They ended up being prejudiced against people from certain walks of life, personalities, and situations. 

However, AFLAC took me beyond what I have ever seen and is truly for the insane...or the in-crowd.  You decide.  On day one.  We got our "hooray" speech.  On day two, we were sent 50 miles away to a training session on warm contacts versus cold contacts.  That lasted all day.

On day three, we came back to the office. We were told to be there at 8 AM.  Nobody even showed up to unlock the office doors until 8:30.  We didn't even start cold-calling until 9:25 AM. I was enraged.  I could have gone to Morning Mass and gotten there in time for that - and that would have fulfilled me spiritually and prepared me to handle what I was going to have to face that day and the rest of the week. They were sucking the lifeblood out of us and demanding our time for no pay but they were not respecting our time. I made it clear to the director that I was not pleased.   We were promised half a day of cold calling, half a day of studying for our license.  We never got the half a day of studying. We did our half a day of cold calling and then our babysitter disappeared.  He was too important to even find someone else to babysit us.  So, we sat for an hour clueless as to what we were to do.  Then, after an hour of no productivity, someone came in and told us that we were going to lunch for an hour.  There we go, two hours wasted! That's fine for someone who doesn't want to make money - I wanted to make money!   My stress level was growing.  I had been unemployed, I had run a full tank of gas in my Honda (a very gas efficient vehicle) just running back and forth for nothing at all so far) and they didn't have the courtesy to show up on time or stick to a schedule.  On that day, I got sick in the bathroom and had a simple partial seizure, something that I hadn't had in months and had to go home early.  My body was reacting. I was throwing up and having other tasteless reactions which I will not mention here.  I studied at home that afternoon. 

On day four, same thing, nobody showed up until 8:30 AM.  My rage was growing and growing.  Why was I getting up and getting my affairs in order for people who didn't have theirs in order?   I had come from a job of over 8 years where if you didn't show up for work on time 3 times in a row, they would kick you to the curb.  I had been laid off and had never been written up for being late in the entire 8 years.  What was wrong with these people?   That was it!!!  As soon as the door was opened and we were let into our "cold calling room", which was basically a dry-walled room with bare tables and not enough phones for everyone, I ranted.  I ranted so loud everyone on the floor heard it.  I couldn't contain myself anymore.  Was I wrong to handle it in that way?  Probably.  Did someone need to do it?  Yes!  I had already been to the director two days in a row trying to get something done about the scheduling. The truth was, he didn't care. When I did it, the girl who was "babysitting" us for our cold calling session was literally shaking and it wasn't because she was afraid of me, it was because she couldn't believe that someone had finally said something.  She told all of us that she had been treated like crap for years at the company and had never said anything. 

Needless to say, the rant didn't go over well.  I didn't expect it to and as it was coming out of my mouth, I half wanted to take it back, but also didn't want to take it back.  Every new recruit was being abused horribly.  At lunch that day, the district manager for my section called me into an office - which was also a thinly dry-walled office where everyone could hear what was being said.  In the office, she cussed me out.  In tears of frustration, I tried to explain everything what was going on to her. I only cried because I really wanted to cuss her out too but I had the Blessed Mother and a Crucifix hanging around my neck and I figured I had done enough damage to their names that morning and didn't want to do any more damage!  She called me the "bad apple" and told me that I had 45 minutes to decide if I wanted to stay.  I didn't give her an answer in an hour, i just stayed and I'm glad I did, because I witnessed worse abuse after lunch that definitely needed to be documented. 

After lunch, we got a new babysitter.  Mind you, I am keeping all of the names out of this document because it's not necessary.  If the "big guy", Dave contacts me, I'll give him all the names, otherwise, I think everyone concerned can figure the rest out.  The new babysitter was wicked.  She was supposed to be cold-calling with us.  Instead, she was sitting on her laptop on a social networking time the entire time.  I've been advised not to mention the site because it will be redacted, but the initials are FB.  We had a kid in our class who was from the inner-city.  He had no car, he had no money, no mother, an abusive father, he barely graduated from high school, but I'll be darned if I had never met a kid who wasn't trying harder than he was.  He asked what the word "maternity" meant.  The babysitter looked up and said, "You have got to be f'ing kidding me?".  I calmly explained to him what the word meant.  When he asked what another word meant, she said, "get the 'f' out of here!"  When we dismissed for a break, I walked up to her and told her about his situation.  She didn't care.  She said that he needed to get an education.  What kind of way is that to treat someone?   That kid was the only one in our class who had set up three appointments already on cold calling.  How dare she treat him that way!  I gave him a pep talk and told him to not give up.  I don't know where he is today, but I hope that he is doing well. 

But, that wasn't the end for that babysitter.  While we were cold calling, a girl came in from another part of the floor to use a phone.  We only had a few working phones.  She asked the babysitter if she could get someone to get a phone for her.  Obviously, she wanted to do some calling and be productive.  The babysitter said, "No! You can go find her and get it yourself!".  Why?  Why did she do that?  She wasn't doing anything but sitting on FB playing games online!  When the kid from the inner city asked who the girl was, the babysitter said, "She's nobody".  I nicely said, "Everybody is somebody".  The babysitter said back to me, "She's nobody to me!"  The kid then said, "I thought she had been here like six months or something".  The babysitter responded, "Pshshhtt!  Maybe six weeks!".  I was so disturbed.  Later that evening, I talked to my priest about this particular exchange with my priest.  He was appalled.  He made a very good point in that if she was treating someone like that after either six weeks or six months, how would she treat the rest of us.  Point well taken.  We weren't even being treated well after 3 days. 

At that point, I had not yet met with my "mentor"  more than once and that was just to say hello.  I had flown some great ideas by them, but they hated me by then.  I asked to change mentors and they got mad at me because I was rocking the boat.  Then, they decided that I belonged to "another team".  WHAT?  I was also told that once I was licensed, I was locked into whatever team I was in when I was licensed.  I wasn't about to get into that with AFLAC.  I was miserable.  They were sucking the will to live out of me.  It was back and forth.  They decided that I belonged to an entirely different team.  Nobody knew what was going on.  It was like being in the middle of a hurricane all of the time. 

Needless to say, after about a week of dealing with that, my body was worn down both physically and mentally.  I had lived through a very difficult winter of being ill and had recovered completely before coming to AFLAC and they were tearing me down to the state of what I was when I had just gotten sick.  I can't believe that they were able to do that to me.  I had worked my way through eight years of school, graduated with honors, and worked an extremely hard job, volunteered in my community, and never had the same issues I faced in that week at AFLAC.  To add to that, I had family issues to deal with.  My uncle was dying (at a very young age) and I was not going to let them tear apart my family worse in the grieving process.   I told them that I would come back when they figured out what team I belonged to and an appropriate apology was made for their inefficient management style and the way we all were treated.  I also told them that I wanted to be trained - not just to waste my time.  The one girl who took my rant seriously kept in contact for a while and I appreciate that, but the rest of them are inconsiderate and don't care about anyone but themselves.  They need to clean up their affairs and treat people with dignity and respect. 

Amazingly, since I left there, I have picked up the rigorous studies of the Chinese language, managing family life just fine, volunteering, and doing all kinds of activities that keep me up from dusk to dawn just fine.  I have managed an entire county in a Congressional campaign and have done a fantastic job at it. 

I will leave you with this and for those in the office in Greenbelt, Maryland.  Particularly those who claimed to be Christians:

"And what should it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his soul? And what should a man give in exchange for his soul?"