Thursday, April 13, 2006

Take My Job, Please


Call centers are really shitty places to work, and I should know because I've worked at several of them.
Yep, I've been a professional customer service rep for 6 or 7 years now.
But here's the irony: I'm not very good at it, in fact, I suck.
Even more ironically, call-centers (thats right, more than one) are begging me to come work for them.
I loathe being on the phone, and have become quite clever in constructing ways to stay off it. Really, it's amazing how much energy I will pour into not doing my job.
When a call starts going really bad my blood pressure rises and all the pranayama (Yogic breathing) on the sub-continent can't help me now.
I mock the caller's ignorance, idiocy, parentage, geographical location, and so on.
I make smart-ass remarks, which always suceed in enraging the customer further; and when the call is finally over I replay everything that was said, and dream up better come-backs.

I'm not good because I couldn't develop a callous around my soul.

My glamourous career in customer service started in college.
I attended school in a beautiful little town where the job scene was not nearly as spectacular as the views.
These were the employment options:
1) On-campus: Oh please, oh please, will you pay me minimum wage to clean up after a bunch of punks away from home for the first time, please? I want to spend my time between classes throwing away used condoms and hosing vomit off the dorm showers.
2) Fast-food: I can't even begin to explain how horribly wrong I am for food service, it's just that bad.
3) The call-center: it seemed to be the least offensive of my options.
Getting hired wasn't a problem. They always needed fresh meat. Turnover was at least 50%. Probably more. Probably alot more.

As of now, I'm still in customer service, but my customers are the same 3 year old and infant every day. They are extremely demanding and I can't hang-up on them, but I certainly prefer their company to those customers at my old job.

And to finally tie my head line and photo into my entry today, if some hard-working, educated Indian nationals want my shitty customer service phone job, they are welcome to it.
I'll even give them good references.

1 Comments:

At 11:52 AM, Blogger Laurel said...

Yo. I'm sorry you didn't get that job. They never did call me for a reference. I was all prepared to tell them they'd be lucky if you agreed to work for them.

I mean, what's up with wanting your customer service person to actually be good at customer service? That's the backwards-type thinking that leads to those ridiculous things like "success" and "profit." *snerk* Amateurs.

Working internet requests is way better than being on the phone. My biggest fear is that this job won't last, and I'll be back on the phones again. *shudder*

Well, not my biggest fear. My biggest fear is that I'll die never having accomplished anything worthwhile, but having to go back on the phones is right up there.

Did you know that your blog doesn't allow anonymous comments? You have to have a blogger account to comment. Fortunately, I have a blogger account. I set it up so I could read and comment on Willamette University's Anthropology Alumni site. Not a lot of traffic there I DON'T KNOW WHY.

 

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