Hi there,
Today I want to talk about a situation that I had to struggle with for almost 4 years.
In July 2015 I started working at Sellbytel (today absorbed by Webhelp) an outsourcing company that at that time had very good clients like Apple. When I saw the job offer, everything seemed good. In addition, it was the first time that I did a normal job interview in Spain.
They wanted to hire me and in July I would begin the training that was paid by the company; then I would work from home. I would be in the Italian market of the Apple Online Store.
All of us who had been selected, almost 40 people, were very excited. The training was a brainwashing attempt; instead of teaching us how to work, they dedicated themselves to telling us how wonderful Apple was.
When the time came to sign the contract, we realized that everything the company had promised was a lie.
What changed?
- Instead of being a full-time job, it was a part-time 30-hour week in which you “committed” to do overtime whenever the company needed it.
- The salary was far below what we had been promised.
- It was a specific work and service contract, which meant that the company could fire you with the greatest ease in the world and with the minimum compensation.
- Even though each market had its specific hours (9 to 20h from Monday to Friday in the case of Italy), the company made you sign that you “committed” to work from 8 to 22h from Monday to Sunday.
An infinity of fraudulent clauses that most of us signed. Some left as soon as they saw the contract, others within weeks of being on the job, and most were fired in December. Here I understood what the company was doing, hiring massively for the high season (September to December), then making collective dismissals, relying on these fraudulent contracts. They did not lose money because the trainings were paid for by the state.
Strangely, I was surviving these massive dismissals and I was left without the colleagues with whom I had entered. At the beginning, I was working in sales where I had two quite polite team leaders and when the high season ended, they moved me to after sales “as a favor not to fire me”.
The beginning of a nightmare…
The first team leader I had was called Ilaria and she was incredibly rude. She treated everyone badly and whenever you asked her any questions, she would tell you to read the procedures. I understood that you had to solve your problems alone. Of course, if you were wrong about something, they would immediately come to denigrate you and threaten you.
After months, Ilaria resigned from the position. Later I found out that she spent her time crying in the bathroom because she couldn’t stand the pressure of her boss.
Critiana (Ilaria’s boss) remained as team leader, another horror of human being. Even though she didn’t know how to send an email without misspellings, she was “someone’s friend.” The season with her, even worse than the previous one. She never appeared and when you asked her something, she didn’t answer. But if you were wrong, she would immediately call you to insult you. She justified her mistreatment by saying that “she was that tough.”
When I spoke with a member of one of the unions in Barcelona, he told me that he knew perfectly well who Cristiana was, that I was not the only one she was harassing.
Then, she placed a friend of hers as team leader: Anna. To everyone’s surprise, this girl was not Italian and for the position, you expect her to be someone who at least knows Italian. Anna from the beginning stood out for writing with spelling errors and for not having a clue about the job. At first, she seemed nice, but in a short time she developed an overwhelming arrogance.
She got along well with the people who “butter her up”, but with those who didn’t, things were difficult. She started harassing me because “I did the job well, but I wasn’t nice“. She constantly told me that I had to be nicer and laugh with the customers.
Think that the customer who calls after sales, generally, does so because he/she is upset because something has not gone well. Either the package was not delivered on time, or the invoice did not arrive, or the payment was charged in duplicate, etc. Am I supposed to laugh with the customers?
My workday consisted of countless calls from the team leader to tell me how unhappy I was and in team meetings, she always made it a point to say that I was bitter.
In addition to having to deal with a job that is by its nature difficult and frustrating and being in a company that is a complete disaster, you must endure humiliation from your boss.
After more than two years of this situation, you can imagine the level of anxiety and irritability that, logically, also affected my personal life.
One day, I exploded on the phone and told her that “I was tired of the humiliation.” After that confrontation on the phone, they changed my team leader. They placed two new team leaders for the high season, and they just put me on the team of another of Cristiana’s friends. What a coincidence!
Rosa also began her empire of terror. Every day I received the same calls. “You work well, but…” “You’re too unpleasant…” “If you don’t like the company, you know what you have to do…” “Things aren’t going to change here, so you know…”
In December 2017, after another confrontation, I had an anxiety attack, and the doctor gave me a sick leave. At the end of the month, I asked the sick leave to be finished since I had a scheduled trip for 6 months. Just on December 29 I got the bad news of an illness and when I came back, I started doing all the tests.
The company, after having been full-time all year, changed my shift to part-time after I went on vacation, so they would pay me less money while I was on vacation.
When I returned from the trip, I asked for medical leave again because I got horrible tests results, and I would have a long season of operations and treatments. On February 12, 2018, I stopped working, but it was always a problem for everything: they forgot to pay and blamed me, they registered the papers wrong as discharged, etc. So, in addition to dealing with the disease, I had the problems that the company generated for me.
On March 14 I was discharged, and the problems tripled: I was forced to be assigned vacation time and to top it all off, I had to use my vacation time to pick up and deliver work equipment, when that had to be done during working hours.
From the first day of work the workplace harassment began.
After seeing how disastrous everything was because they weren’t giving me the training they should have, but simply making me listen to calls, I sent an email to say that I needed time to read the thousands of emails I had since I wasn’t going to in my spare time.
Instantly, Cristiana called me, who was at that time head of after sales, to insult me. She told me that “Things were never going to change and that I already knew what to do.” After 30 minutes on the phone enduring insults, I had another anxiety attack and went to the emergency room.
Company’s strategy
When you come back from a year of medical leave, you are no longer of any use to them. You are a worker who is outdated and would need another month of training alone to start getting up to speed with new customer procedures and products. Since they can’t fire you for having been on sick leave because it would be illegal, going to trial would be a null dismissal and they would have to pay you a lot of money, and since they don’t want to spend on an unfair dismissal either, they dedicate themselves to drive you crazy until you decide to quit.
Measures to be taken
After all those years of workplace harassment, I joined an union. It turns out that workplace harassment is something super difficult to prove since you must make recordings for many months to be able to go to trial.
In that company it’s even more difficult because they don’t put anything in emails, they call you and the company phone can’t even be put on speaker to record it.
Although it is very difficult, it is not impossible. You must act from the first moment to have proof. You also must know the laws to know what the company can or can’t do. You also must use the internal channels that the company has and report it.
I found out about the many fraudulent things that Sellbytel does and reported them to the labor inspectorate. In addition, I reported to the social jurisdiction the denial of my vacations, because in almost four years, I could never take vacations when I wanted.
I consider it important to join a union that will really defend you. I asked UGT and CCOO first because they are the largest, but in addition to the fact that they charge you membership, you must pay for each consultation with the lawyer. In the end, my boyfriend was recommended the CGT. Since I liked the lawyer’s attention so much, I joined. I think it is the only union that works, the others are corrupt and bought by the companies.
Thanks to the help of the CGT, we managed to get a dismissal with compensation, although that money did not even remotely compensate me for the nightmare I lived through for 4 years. The most important thing is that I learned that no company deserves any kind of sacrifice from us.
It’s amazing how many people are harassed at work to the point where it’s seen as “normal”. My story is just one of many in this company. From my learning I advise you not to tolerate even the slightest disrespect. If you are in a toxic company, find a way to leave as soon as possible. Your psychological well-being comes before everything else.
I was told that at one point Cristiana Staibano was fired despite having friends in the high levels of the company. The number of complaints for workplace harassment was such that there was no possible way to contain the situation. They said that she was on vacation, then that a leave of absence had been requested and then that she wasn’t going to return.
Years after publishing this post, I received an email from Lautaro Cantard, HR payroll & HR admin, threatening me to remove Apple’s name from the article. He did not apologize or make any comment regarding the workplace harassment that I suffered and that the vast majority of Sellbytel/Webhelp employees suffer.
He simply said that I had signed an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and that I could not reveal that they provided outsourcing services to Apple. I did not sign any NDA since in 2015 the company still did not request that; they just verbally asked you not to say anything.
It is also absurd that they send the intern to write to me when there should be a legal department in charge of that. Once again, the company stands out for its incompetence.
I started to investigate on Linked-In and Lautaro Cantard has the most mediocre profile you can imagine. In fact, see the “About” section where he simply copied a general cover letter (text that is not even suitable for use as a cover letter). With a profile like this, it is understandable how he ended up in that company.
It’s cruel
Yes, very 🙁