Deceitful Employment and Practices By Cooper Concepts/Soren Inc. Deceitful, Unfair Treament, Questionable Tactics, Alarming Factors, Chicago Illinois

Throughout my life I’ve done a lot of stupid things, like making an account on Cougar Life, and directing barnyard pornography, but without a doubt, working for Cooper Concepts was the worst decision I’ve made in my life. The first thing I would like to mention in this report is that their records will show that I was fired from this company, back in January 29^th 2015 (More on that in a bit) This is something important to keep in mind because despite being fired over a month ago, I’m still left with a bitter taste in my mouth as to how they run their company along with how they handled my termination.

So about my termination; I was fired on January 29^th 2015. I didn’t find out until the day after when I noticed I had a missed call from my boss. I listened to the voice mail he left, and was told not to come into the office as I was “Let go”. Right here is the first major problem that I have with my termination. This is a business that represents many Fortune 500 Companies, and this office I worked at in particular represented T-Mobile. As such employees are held to a high standard with not only their work, but keeping a sense of integrity in what they do. For them to fire me through a voice mail and not talk to me about things face to face is something I found to not only be highly immature, but incredibly disrespectful as well. In all of my previous jobs, if my boss had something to say to me, be it a mistake I made or something I’ve been doing wrong; they said it to my face and not through a voice mail.

So why did I get fired? To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure because they refused to give me a straightforward answer when I called them regarding my termination. I was essentially told that a client of ours didn’t like the way I had presented myself and that I “Damaged the company’s image” in doing so. They refused to go into further details due to client confidentiality. Now the reason this bothers me is that I started that job January 26^th 2015. I was still going through the four day training process, something that they seemed to have forgotten. I feel that it is rather unfair to be fired a mistake that they wouldn’t go in detail about, and to be fired when I was still learning the ropes. But there’s still one glaring issue that I have with their claims about me. During my training, I was under a team leader at all times, I was never out in the field alone, mainly because they didn’t even let me get to that point. This raises a huge question; If I had or did something that was so terrible that it warranted me being fired, then why didn’t my leader/trainer say anything about it to me or to the client? All in all, I feel that they fired me were for something else, and unfortunately, something they don’t want to talk to me face to face on. Furthermore because I was fired before I could complete the training, I was not paid at all.

Now, that’s the story of why I was fired, but there are still a few things that need to be discussed and brought to light starting with the hiring process. For starters, this is a company that contacted me expressing interest in me due to my experience in retail, and that I held a Bachelor’s of Science Degree. They advertised themselves looking for “Sports and Entertainment Minded Employees” and that “There is a lot of rapid growth potential in the company”. First off, this was an office that strictly worked with T-Mobile, which begs the question “Why advertise sports and entertainment when they have no relevance to the company?”  I’ll even provide a few links for images showing verbatim what the job description was so you can see for yourself.

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As for the rapid growth they mention, it is true. You can become a team leader and even a higher up manager in a matter of months. However, they conveniently left out a tiny little detail in both the description and the first interview that the position for management only came -After- you worked as a door to door salesman for a month or two, and even then you’re still doing door to door sales. When I came in, I had expected to be trained on how to better manage a business and how to thrive as a leader. Instead I was taught about various cell phones, how to pitch a product, and most of all, how to push the customer aggressively or as they called it “How To Push Pain” (No really, that’s what they called it.) to try and get them to buy the product. This was something I didn’t learn until the 2^nd interview when I was sent out on the field for 8 hours with one of the leaders to see what the general idea of what they did was like. Now given that this was an “interview” they were essentially getting unpaid training by potential employees.

If you are hired, you are put through a very aggressive training program that lasts for four days, after which you’re thrown out on your own. If you do not make a set quota in your first month, you are at risk of being terminated. This approach is an extremely flawed one, as it raises the question: “What happens during the holidays?” Your initial job is to go door to door to various businesses, and try and get new customers. But if these businesses are busy during the holiday, and you can meet said quota as a result, you are at risk of being fired.

Now with all that said, there were a couple of aspects about the interviews that I found to be extremely puzzling. I was asked about my previous jobs, my strengths and weaknesses, but also asked questions such as “What is your favorite color?” “What was your favorite toy when you were a kid?” and “What is a movie you can watch over and over again?” I understand that this is a company that likes to get to know their employees, but I felt that these questions were trivial at best and hurt the interview process. In asking these kinds of question, you gain borderline useless information about the interviewee, and it doesn’t allow the interviewees to try and talk about their previous accomplishment amongst other things that would be useful.

So that’s the company in a nutshell, but there are still a few issues that need to be addressed that are rather concerning. The job description states that they are looking to fill the positions as quickly as they can, and I was told during my hiring process that they talked to over 100 candidates, and that they picked me from that pool. However, even after I was hired the interviews continued every day I was there. This gives me the impression that they are dealing with a high turnover rate and that despite interviewing over 100 candidates prior to my hiring, they were still looking. It seems -incredibly- suspicious that they express a sense of urgency, yet they can’t seem to fill the positions needed. While I can’t directly confirm this, I strongly suspect that they have a “Hire to Fire” mentality, and that the job security is flimsy at best.

Another thing that I noticed is that during my training, we had several clients complain that we had already come to them before and that they weren’t interested. These clients ranged from just politely stating that they already heard the pitch and weren’t interested, to angrily stating that they were sick and tired of people coming to them. The latter part should be a concern to them, but they seem more interested in getting the sale rather than respectfully leaving said clients alone. This is a dangerous mentality to have especially when you consider what they’re doing is borderline harassment, and this reflects poorly on the companies they represent.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly is I did some more research on the company, and I learned that Cooper Concepts is -not- accredited by the Better Business Bureau. That really should speak for itself, and is something that anyone who wants to work for this company to keep in mind. They have not met the standard criteria for running a proper business and is something that should be considered if you decide to try and work for them.