Saturday, June 12, 2010

Prisoner of Bureaucracy


The temp job I had from April to early May was through Kforce in Boston. I really liked the rep who placed me but the administrative support and communication was incredibly lacking. It also doesn't help that the company's head-quarters are down in Florida which translates into a lot of errors and communication problems. My assignment ended May 7 so I had to re-open my unemployment claim. Of course that took a month to go through so I went through all my temp job money in May just to afford life.

Luckily, I got all those weeks of unemployment money paid back June 2. So, I used most of that to pay off bills. Then came the next day to submit my weekly claim (June 6). The system alerted me that there was a problem with my claim. Oh crap. Sure enough, June 8 and 9, my bank account did not receive any deposits. So, I had to call Unemployment, wait on hold for 45 minutes and then find out that Kforce misreported my end date on my assignment as May 18!

I wasn't too surprised considering how horrible the agency has been with paperwork and details. So, I had to call Kforce and ask them to fix this. That was on Wednesday. Thursday I had to call again for a status update. I was assured that they were working on fixing the situation. Since I don't trust the person I spoke to, I tried calling Florida head-quarters. Just a maze of voice-mail. Friday I called Unemployment to check and see if they had received the correction. On hold for an hour. Nope, they haven't received anything and I might owe them money for those "extra" two weeks I have been "overpaid". This is when I started having anxiety attacks and getting really angry.

I was supposed to get a phone call from Kforce Friday. I did not receive one. I did get a pointless email that evening. I have filed a Better Business Bureau complaint and have lined up an employment lawyer just in case. I have also been staying up until dawn because I just can't fall asleep with all this crap going on. Knowing how long it takes MA unemployment to process anything, I'll probably not get benefits this month at all. I'm hoping venting and writing down this situation will help me get some sleep tonight! Moral of the story: Kforce is a horrible staffing agency, avoid them at all costs.

1 comment:

Angela said...

My company uses Daniel Roberts (http://www.danielroberts.com/) and Atrium Staffing (http://www.atriumstaff.com/) and they're great. Both local, too.