how does enterprise justify the hours?

honest question. the following is a list of people i know and see on a regular basis in the form of their job, a rough idea of their salary, and the general pattern of their work. and of course, the hourly pay (pre tax). to put in perspective, i'm a 23 year old graduate.

graphic designer. £14k. 9.30-5.00 monday-friday. no weekends. £7.20 p/h.

sports journalist. £15k. 9.00-6.00, 4/5 days a week. 1300-2200 on occasion, once every 2 weeks (replaces one 9-6 day). one day off at weekend, occasional both days off, often one day off mid week. £7.20 p/h.

pensions advisor. £16.5k. 8-4 monday-friday. no weekends. £9.05 p/h.

sports betting analyst. £15.5k. 8-4 5 days a week. 1 weekend day every other week, day off mid week to compensate. £8.50 p/h.

call centre worker. £12.5k. 8-4 monday-friday. £6.85 p/h.

enterprise rent-a-car mt. £15k. 8-6 monday-friday, plus 9-12 every other saturday. average working week therefore 46.5 hours. £6.20 p/h.

doctor. £31k, shifts, 50 hours a week. £11.95 p/h.

these are all starting salaries, obviously the figure can vary around the country, and the figure can be improved quite quickly. an interesting comparison is the hourly wage figure. naturally the doctor is on the higest, earning over ten pounds for every hour of work, but erac is comfortably beaten by jobs that have much lower salaries. working in a call centre will pay you, in cold terms, £2500 less in a year than enterprise will. but you're getting more money for each hour you put in. you could say that your boss at the call centre values your contribution more than your manager at enterprise.

another point i made when i spoke about this with friends was that they tended to finish at the same times or at a set time. the pensions advisor leaves work, every day, at 4. he gets out of his chair, and leaves the office. rarely, very rarely, are people expected to stay back.

how on earth can enterprise defend this? paying it's employees, per hour, less than you can get at a job which needs no degree, no qualifications and no specialist skills. and we all know that the hourly rate is far from 46.5 a week. every single person working at erac works more than 50 hours a week per day for the vast majority of their career.

if erac pays you £15000 for a 52 hour week, you walk out with £5.54 p/h. minimum wage in the united kingdom is £5.35 p/h. a 19 pence improvement on the very lowest legal wage. you would need to earn £23000 per year at this number of hours just to equal the betting analyst's hourly wage. i think we all know that the hours above mt level are often far higher than 52.

in short, the hours you work at enterprise are an absolute disgrace. all it takes is a chat with friends, an explanation of how other people work and live their lives, and an honest assessment of how happy you are with your hourly wage to see erac's shocking work-life balance for all it's worth. erac can give no reason as to why it has to stay open for so long, or why it expects people to work such long hours. all it offers is rental cars. a less important job than saving lives? of course, but you have to work just as long as the doctor.

erac can give no justification as to why it pays so very, very poorly for such a demanding, tiring and stressful job. next time your manager trots out 'the grass isn't greener' line, ask yourself if you really believe it.

sometimes people who leave erac, leave for the wrong reason. what i mean by that is someone who is doing well at erac will do well elsewhere, some people who do not give 100% will be a job bouncer. I have seen people leave and bounce to 2-3 jobs in 3 years after leaving. Now in reality, leaving erac is the best decision you can make however you want to make sure you have a solid plan in place when you leave. you need erac for at least a year to build a resume have work experiences to talk about sales,cust serv etc... i chose to work real hard get to a manager spot work 2 years as a manager and see if could get an area spot. I was with erac 3 1/2 years and 2 as a a manager. I was real close to AN AREA spot however i saw the light and said this is not want i want to do with my life so i left and go a pharma job making about 65-75k. i gave myself a 25k pay raise and now i have a life. an area mgr pays 75k to start now in the USA and that is peanuts for that job.... gain exp, make friends and contacts and get the fuck out and don't ever look back !!!! me getting prmoted up the ladder and the duration i was with erac my pharma company liked internal promotions which show being a go getter and the duration your not a job hopper. if you can stick it out go for the mgr spot and then leave.

Its easy to justify it. Assuming things are the same in the UK as the are in the states, enterprise hires a bunch of college graduates with low GPA's or degrees in social sciences so they have a hard time getting a job that actually uses their degree. Enterprise hires them, you can work there a year, get experience and move on. Whether you like enterprise or not, they do teach you a lot about how to run a business. Chances are, a lot of people applied for other jobs on your list and didn't get hired so they settled for enterprise. Enterprise always has a big pool of workers to choose from. With so many more people getting college degrees now, the degree means much less. Enterprise recognized this and saw a way to reach out to a pool of workers that was slightly more qualified than the average worker, but still desperate for a job. Also, I'm not sure if I'm right on this, and someone may want to correct me, but I think doctors may actually require a couple extra years of schooling, so that is why they get paid more. So really, the more pertinent question is how does the medical field justify making doctors spend those extra years in school when call center operators don't even need a degree? It's just a racket to get people to spend more money on tuition.

[iriswalt]

if you do not like the hours then do not work there. very simple

you do not actually belive that doctors actually get paid what that poster posted about 31k. put a 1,2, or 3 in front of that is probably more accurate and they have job security and it is a very prominent position to hold minus all of the malpractice suits out there. plastic surgery is the way to go today even though most insurance companies will not cover it is a material world and mostly women will pay out of pocket or their rich husband pays for it. that is why in encompasses a couple of extra years. you do not need a degree to work in a call center. the problem is there is a lot of degrees today but most likely you will have to move out of state to attain a job in the field so most people will work at erac save money and then move to where there jobs are unless they have a rich mommy and daddy and they will pay to relocate. iris walt again this is a site for open speech and your are entitled to your opinion of belittling others however this site was designed for venting about erac's poor employee satisfaction and customers for that matter.

hang on. is the last post suggesting that the starting salary for doctors in the united kingdom is around £130000 per year? i'm sorry but that is simply not true at all. the starting salary for a newly qualified doctor is around the £30000 mark.

a medical degree takes 5 years. the reasoning for this is that this is the amount of time it takes to learn what you need to practice as a doctor. simple really.

in comparison to your pay and job at erac in the uk from doctor to erac. you guys over there are doing pretty well compared to the us. erac in the us - 30k to start. doctor somewhere in the range of 75 to 150 to start. after residency it is several hundred. now compare that to the us 30 to about 150- 200, to your 16k

dollars and pounds of course, and cost of living. it's expensive to live in the uk.

anyway, erac's crap. i honestly can't think why anyone would want to work there. 60 hours, crappy pay, you rent cars, etc etc.

erac is a joke to work at i think no matter what country you live in.

I like it when I tell customers I have recently graduated from Uni, and they say
"Are you doing this until you find something better?"

or

"You are better than this surely?!"

Just shows what customers think of car rental people!!!