Vantaggi
It was very close to my apartment, 15 minute walk. My job allowed me to listen to music (headphones) while I worked. I had no assigned computer or phone (it wasn't required that I answer the phone or reply to emails immediately). They do temp 2 hire and occasionally let you work four, ten hour days.
Svantaggi
Management couldn't care less if you worked yourself to injury. I, along with another co-worker eliminated the 'all you can eat' overtime policy there about 60 days after I started. It was pretty obvious who was responsible for doing this, but no praise or recognition was ever given. When I started to develop carpal tunnel symptoms, I was told to slow down, not work as fast. When work began to pile up we all were blamed for not working hard enough, it was all too obvious (looking at statistics and computer log on/off times) who was working and who wasnt. It wasn't a situation were I'm just complaining about people being slower than me and my co-worker, no they just didn't want to work. We had one person repeatedly take 60-90 minute lunch break. Another would spend an hour at the start of each shift eating his breakfast and reading the newspaper, mind you this was all done on the clock. the company paid these people who slack off. We had one woman who previously had carpal surgery on both arms, while she was slower than most people, she was consistent and kept a steady pace that embarrassed the lazy co-workers (she and I quit the same week). Note: we had shared computers, so you would have to stop working and walk away from your station. When the boss would stop by, "Oh where is whats his face?", "Cant you see him 20 feet behind you surfing the web?". With the time clock being right in front of the boss and a red LED light showing you who was clocked in, it would take all of 3 seconds to realize that they were goofing off on th clock. You would think this would be a big deal, but it wasn't. Went to HR about 5 times, confronted my bosses boss. I began to get into arguments about the fact that some employees simply weren't productive, took excessive breaks, bent or broke company rules, failed to pass along information (manager rarely used email to keep us informed, relying heavily on the dry erase board or word of mouth, which makes sense if it was 1954). The advice I got from HR was for me to confront my boss and tell her lay down what I felt were problems in the department (which I already did), and the advice I got from my boss was to ignore my co-workers. I don't know what planet she came from, but ignoring problems DO NOT make those problems go away. By doing so, it only made things worse because once the co-workers knew I stopped caring, they just went ahead and continued to slack off. Seriously, how can it not be a big deal when part of your job is to image Federal Employee Program claims and occasionally those image files disappear from the network due to bugs in the software. Those FEP claims are kept for a few weeks, recycled, then gone forever.