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I am a 34 year old father of three. I provide the sole income for my three children and estranged wife. I started work full-time as an editor for online classified ads at Digital Media Communications in December of 2005 (the day after my son was born). I rose steadily in salary and standing in the production department. I received nothing but praise and outstanding evaluations in the time I was there. I was responsible for streamlining the projects we used to make the online classified ads in such a way that it saved the company something like a month of labor hours in a year. I was promoted to making profiles for businesses without an increase in pay, yet with many added hours per week. I reached a point where they became so understaffed and unorganized that (as an example) I ended up working 30 hours STRAIGHT (and had only very recently been made overtime eligible as a result of a Department of Labor audit). Was lied to about advancement by a manager, called him out in an e-mail, received an obscenity-laden and completely erroneous e-mail in response. Filed a complaint about it to the manager of the whole department and found myself suspended without pay for two days. Decided I'd had enough and gave five weeks notice to give them time to replace me and myself time to find another job. Two days after I turned in my notice I was fired without reason or warning. I applied for unemployment on these grounds and was told that I could not get it because Digital Media Communications and Allegro (the company which handled payroll and insurance for DMC) had lied to the Employment Security Commission and told them that I had voluntarily resigned (after having given two days notice!). I appealed, brought in all the evidence I had, which I thought was more than enough to prove my case, and was denied unemployment again. Most everyone there had become my friend by this point since we had been working together for years in some cases. I have just heard from one of them that ELEVEN people have just been laid off, one of whom I know was the person responsible for instigating the aforementioned labor audit which cost the company upwards of $100,000 in severance pay to current and former employees for unpaid overtime, and which forced the company to start paying overtime in the first place. You hear stories of corporate greed and mismanagement. Well, now I can say I have firsthand experience. I have never encountered, in all my years of working, a place that misused the talent (and I use this word intentionally, because there were a lot of talented people working there when I was there) that they had at their disposal, nor have I worked anywhere where so much advantage was taken of the staff. Under no circumstances would I ever recommend that anyone ever work at Digital Media Communications.
The pay was slightly better than any other production work in the Columbia, SC area, but the benefits and vacation were standard. None of it was worth the time and energy they purloined from me.