Complaint Review: The Robert Bruce Company - Chicago Illinois

At the end of April, I was "hired" by this company to be a typesetter. When interviewed by the office manager, a woman named Gerri Salvatore, I was told I would be on probation for three months. As it turned out, I was not actually hired by this company. Rather, I was hired by a temp agency called Express Personnel. I did not realize this until the Friday before the Monday I was to report for my first day at work, when I was directed to Express Personnel's office to fill out employment forms. I was assured this would be fine. Frankly, I should have known better.

Within three days of starting this job, the office manager, Gerri, started being abusive and contemptuous toward me. I was initially thrilled to have this job as I'd been looking for work for the entire two years since I'd obtained my second bachelor's degree (in fine art). To scrape by, I'd been collecting unemployment from several temp jobs I'd managed to obtain in late 2006 and early 2007, and the small income I received from a program to help "seniors" obtain jobs, plus my Social Security benefit check. Finding a full-time job was a blessing, or so I thought.

By the second week I was there I was involved in long conversations and writing long e-mails with my rep at the temp agency about the way I was being treated by Gerri Salvatore. In that second week I gave up any hope that I'd be hired at the end of the probation period. I'd started hoping I even last it out for the three month probation period. Was I a bad typesetter? I don't think so. I made the kinds of errors a person usually makes during the first couple of weeks on a new job. But I fixed them, and I learned a lot about the company's procedures from talking extensively with the pressmen and with my coworker, the other typesetter. I felt I could do well in the job and was willing to pursue it, and tried not to take Gerri's contemptuousness and impatience too much to heart.

On Thursday of the second week, she informed us that she was going to "restructure" the typesetting department. She wasn't certain of how, but she was committed to one thing: It would involve bringing in some interns from graphic design departments of local colleges. Well, no need to have a degree in rocket science to figure out the unspoken message there: She would need to pay these interns about $10/hour for a part-time job, not the $15/hour she was paying me for full time.

Even after I heard the first intern, who came to work on Friday, which was my coworker's day off, tell Gerri she'd "see her on Tuesday," I didn't really suspect that Friday was my last day. When she hired me, Gerri had told me she wanted to get rid of my coworker, who turned out to be a really nice guy, so it made me feel really uncomfortable to know this information. No one there said a word to me, and it wasn't until seven p.m. on Sunday night that my rep from Express Personnel called to tell me the assignment was over. She had known this since Friday, and why she waited until Sunday to tell me is anyone's guess. I've just concluded it's part and parcel of the almost total lack of professionalism involved in this entire experience.

This, after a promise of at least three months' employment, after I resigned from the program I was in and from the position where I'd been working for nearly a year! If I'd known the job was temporary, in any way, shape, or form, I'd never have taken it, and for the life of me, Gerri Salvatore's behavior is to a great extent inexplicable. If she needed a temp, why didn't she hire one? Why did she promise to hire me permanently in order to get me to work for two weeks?

The one thing I did that bothered me was that I was nearly always late for work when I took public transportation. The job was over an hour and a half from my home. The two days I drove, I got there about one minute after her the first day and before anyone the second, and was still not "on time." She kept telling me that it didn't matter, since she didn't care about things like that, but she insisted I not keep anyone waiting and be ready to leave promptly at four, when the business day ended. My coworker told me that the company had never worked that way before, but basically, if I wasn't there on time, and if no one was there to let me in, since I wasn't given a key, how was I ever going to make a full week's wage? I wasn't, plainly.

I've concluded that Gerri Salvatore was just stupid, after all is said and done. She apparently didn't realize that to hire a temp she just needed to use a temp agency that specialized in creative types, like Aquent, the agency I worked for in 2006. There were no follow-up ads for a typesetter, so clearly, she never wanted anyone to do the job full-time or permanently.

I would advise anyone who comes across this woman to avoid her like the plague. The other people in the company seemed quite nice and friendly, and the place had a fairly good atmosphere, when she wasn't around. She, for her part, sat in her office with scent candles burning while she smoked like a stack, something that is not only illegal in Chicago but actually dangerous in a print shop, which is loaded with reams and pounds of paper.

I'm writing because I was so angry and upset after the jerk-around I went through on account of her. I got back into my program and was taken back at the agency where I'd been working and given even more responsibility, but unfortunately, not more money, since it's funded by a government grant. I worry constantly about being able to pay my bills and buy food for me and my cats. I worry because one of my cats is ill, and beyond a minimal level of care, I can't afford to pay for the radiation treatment he should have because I don't make that kind of money. This job was going to help me make needed repairs on my car, buy new clothes (instead of wearing the stained and torn things I wore in art school), new shoes, and so on. And finally, the greatest ripoff of all is that I am a capable, intelligent, well-trained fine artist with an extensive background in the editorial side of print media and publishing, and no one will even interview me because of my age!

Rosy xxxxxxx

Chicago, Illinois

U.S.A.