Originally Posted by intern05  Future interns, by August you will hate your life and hate ERAC even more....
About 1 week before my internship started last summer, I came across this website and took it is a bunch of sour grapes who didn't deserve to work at ERAC anyways, however, through my time I learned that everything bad about ERAC is true, and all the good stuff only temporary. "Interns" are basically "short term MT's". It is actually a better deal though, because all ERAC employees are required to work 49 1/2 hrs a week, whereas interns start getting overtime at 40 hrs. So, at $8.00/hr I actually made more than an MT who just got hired at $29,000/year, or whatever measly salary they offered.
This company sucked so bad that on my first day "office shadowing" I was required to pick up breakfast for everyone, and wash all the cars becasue I didn't know how to use the RALPH outdated computer system. After taking the one week training course, I was finally reqarded by putting in 58 hr weeks, and I even reached 60 one time. This si due to idiot mangement, and even dumber customers who return vehicles at 5:59pm on friday, and want a 45 min. ride home in the opposite direction of the branch. Also, once a month, everyone is required to stay in the office all night to catch up for a months worth of shitty paperwork. Halfway through the internship you are required to begin working on a prohject about how to "improve" ERAC. This is a joke, considering I was leaving my house at 6:30am to be at the branch "ready to go" by 7:30am, and getting home at 8pm. When was I supposed to work on this project? Well, not on the weekends, because you were required to work 2 Saturdays and Sundays, so bascially I worked 14 days in a row twice through the internship.
The best part of that summer was at the end, when I has slaved away my entire summer, only to be rewarded by getting free beer at the party at the completion of the summer.
The worst part about the company is that the higher-ups at Admin keep telling you their "Enterprise story", basically, how they came from nothing and now make $100,000/year and how everyone respects them because they used to wash cars and now they are all-powerful. Everyone in each Group is hoping to one day cash in and become a Group Rental Manager ($350,000/yr), or the General Manager ($900,000/yr). But other than that, you are pretty much stuck at Area Manager ($90,000/yr) until you are 45, then you might have a shot at real money unless you are fired by then. A week after I started my ARM who had been there for 9 years was fired and 6 people quit in a period of 2 months.
If you want to hate yourself, take the internship. The only thing that kept me going was knowing that after I put in 40hrs/week, I was making $12.00/hr from then on, so I started taking the long way home from drop-offs, clocking in early, and other dis-honest things I would have never done had I accepted a position with a real company.
Damn, I do love reading these threads though about people who were deer in the headlights, dreaming of making the big bucks very quckly. Next time you go into a branch, ask to see the BM. I guarantee they are overweight, and look terrible. That is all |