I had been working for a outdoors company in their telemarketing division where they would sell memberships to people across the country. A lot of them were previous members, or possible new comers that new us from TV.
Quick backstory: Before my dad died when I was 7, we would kick back and watch the show and it lead to more bonding outdoors over time. So going into job, I looked up to the president of the company, who was a big part of my memories of my father.
So after working there for a while it became obvious that people were hustled for money, and sometimes didn't get what they played for. We didn't follow almost any telemarketing laws for the longest time until the AG stepped in.
This was the first lawsuit, which they got away with by "fixing their wrongdoing" by adjusting to the laws. They shouldn't have even had the chance, they let people harass customers for over a decade about collections. Collections that didn't exist, when the invoices were sent out, they didn't have to pay for it at all.
Eventually, due to my excellent customer service, I was put on this team(which was the center of many of the points of the lawsuit.) I quickly found out we were trying to trick the more loyal customer into upgrading to our lifetime package.
The kicker was, we had three. They had no idea until they notice they weren't getting all they thought. One time I had a lady call back at the end of my shift with my notes on her account, but another coworker made all the sales for me, I just buttered them up.
I was really nervous as she ripped me a new one on the recorded line, but I told her to call the actual customer service. This was in the main building, where I was told to direct all lifetime members with issues.
The next day I come in and my team is giving me the stank eye. The team manager(which was also the HR for legal obligations i guess) called me into his office to tell me "even though that was the right thing to do, it got me in trouble, so dont do that again".
At this point I was severely stunned. With in the next week I demanded I go back to the sales floor. I did, and so began a miserable 3 months where they began pushing me out of the company. They purposely gave me numbers that had been called multiple times so I would get the most angry customers.
The upper management of telemarketing were cheats, liars, drug addicts, and unfaithful( I heard about a parking lot orgy at some point). I'd never been reprimanded for my work in telemarketing besides the knee incident. I kept going down hill, getting 6.55 a hour because I couldn't get any commission from making sales.
Eventually I checked out completely, I got smart with one customer(that didn't even know who we were, and wasn't the right number) and my boss got one of my cooler managers to get me into his office. He fired me on the spot, lied that the lady had called back in even though we illegally spoofed all our numbers. I was broken emotionally after that, I cried and said my goodbyes, but plotted revenge.
I was going to go to the AG with all the things that they promised to fix, but didn't. As I began drawing unemployment I sunk even lower, and couldn't bring myself to do it. I had everything needed to SHUT THEM DOWN.
I recently got a job nearby and saw an old coworker. He said about 4 months after I left they got hit with $2M in settlements by the AG office. They couldn't possibly stand up in court without getting reamed. It was quite what I was hoping, but it was definitely a huge relief.
Tl;Dr telemarketing company fired their only honest/caring employee and they had to settle $2M with the state, and has now lost most of their sponsors, and is still going downhill.