SBA Flex
Avoid at all costs, you have been warned!
OK.... so, where shall I begin.... ?
Ah yes, SBA Flex, the most "professional" agency that I worked with on my first time here in the Netherlands.
As soon as I stepped inside their office I already sensed their professionalism, imagine wasting arround 8 hours inside to sort out some paperwork that was already done online and to wait for their extremely busy drivers to take us to the accommodation.
All fine and dandy, after 8 hours well spent guess what, had to wait for another 3 hours to pick another guy and then finally to drive us to the accommodation.
Upon arrival to our SBA villa (an old garage office transformed into "living" quarters), a wonderful smell of moldy ventilation greeted me so I immediately knew that it's going to be an interesting adventure. Went inside, the first person who greeted me was a drugged & messed up fella that even asked me for a slice or two of bread.
I completely ignored the guy, went to my "penthouse" room and guess what? It was warmer outside than inside.
So, decided to finally rest..... can't do that mate because SBA Flex doesn't have bedsheets, pillows and duvets for the new arrivals. Well that wasn't a surprise, nothing for the beds, no cutlery or plates, NOTHING so lets spend some money on useless stuff.
After spending another 2 hours to the shop and back again ( No, this is not a Hobbit's tale ) I finally can get some well earned sleep.
First day at work in the famous Syncreon warehouse was nothing special, chaos everywhere, most people barely spoke english (even their native language) but most notable was the work that I had to do. I was told before I came to the NL that I'm going to be in a certain department and upon arrival everything changed. But in every failure there is also information and knowledge so the best part was meeting a lot of new people ( some of them clearly didn't belong there )
Now inside Syncreon there is an interesting hierarchy, all the new agency workes are basically slaves, rookies etc. while contractors aka veterans, generals have an easy life and longer than usual breakes.
Finally, I decided to leave them when all of us in the wonderful mansion were fined for "putting ice" on the thermostat (whereever and however that thing is or looks like) so there was 50 euros gone from the week's payment.
So in short, here are some pros and cons for working with SBA Flex:
Cons:
1. You get to experience first hand how does it feel to have alcoholics, drug addicts, uncivilised and messy people arround you.
2. If you want to cancel your gym subscription now is your chance because you will do everything at work ( dunno about cardio though)
3. If you want to improve yourself and become better in the logistics area you will be denied, they want you to be stupid ( I still have my reach truck license in the pocket , nobody cares that I can do that job, better off loading mate)
4. If you want to go sightseeing, you are in luck because the wonderful SBA chauffeurs will take you see the surroundings for 3 hours before you reach your destination.
5. If you want to build up tolerance for dealing with idiots and complete morons, look no further, you are in the right place because at Syncreon, you have 8 bosses per department, each smarter than the other.
6. Agency coordinators will never communicate any important things with you,accommodation related or work related but they immediately know you exist when you take a day off due to medical issues. Why? Because you don't earn them any money, that's why.
Pros.
1. Sometimes they give you free cookies in the canteen but probably they will ask you to do something in return aka a survey or ask you for overtime which probably they forget to pay it or fine you to have money in their pockets to pay you.
2. If you are Polish or Lithuanian ( nothing against them, I love their unity and compassion for each other) you will probably get a nice accommodation and a good spot inside the warehouse.
Google, please give us an option to rate someone with a corner of a star or something, one star is way too much for them.