Pros
Ability to work from home
Kontras
The pay is abysmal. Your starting salary is $17 an hour, and if there is a high demand for your language, you will be interpreting call after call with no real breaks in between. The job is incredibly mentally taxing. Your training doesn't prepare you for the trauma, burnout, and often the abuse you'll be going through and there is zero supports/benefits to help you when feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of your calls, or by how dark some of them are. Expect 911 calls, dispatching ambulances, prison calls, telling people they have cancer or their family is about to die, suicide calls etc. and expect zero resources to battle all of this. You are not provided with a phone or a computer or tools to get the job done except for a $10 boogie board. Your employer expects you to use your personal phone for the job, and prohibits you from using your personal phone in your personal unpaid break time. And yes, your breaks are unpaid and you only get a 30-minute break in an 8-hour shift. Do you need to answer or send work emails? Do you need to review or learn new vocabulary to be better at your job? Do you need to complete/read mandatory training? Do it all in your own time. You will not be paid for a minute spent on these and are only paid for hours you are actively on shift. If the app glitches, and you can't take calls -which happens more than you can count- you'll not be paid for it. You'd have to submit a formal request and go through a long process to get paid for it. Expect to be paid straight on holidays and then fight for 6 weeks to get what is rightfully yours! In Xmas 2021, and New Year's day of 2022, Kelly's management decided to observe the holidays in days other than Dec 24th and Jan 1st with no heads ups! Those who worked on the holidays were not paid overtime and had to file complaints with the employment standards and wait 6 weeks to get paid properly. Expect to be treated with disrespect by your clients and by your management. Management's only way of communication is downward. On the public forum on Deputy, they find themselves not accountable to respond to any objections or inquiries by their staff. Frequently post statements that have the least diplomatic tone, in which they threat all staff with termination, and accuse them of larceny for incidents that are mostly the app's fault and not the interpreters'.
