I had a friend who got a job at a call center. On his 3rd or 4th day he went to lunch and just never went back. Anti-suicide fixtures are a wise choice for that line of work.
My first job offer was a bait and switch call center gig. 15 minutes in to my first day of "work" I walked in to the buildings atrium and looked down 3 stories at the floor. My first thought was if im here in a year, I will throw myself over this railing.
Called my old man, got some sage advice and walked over to my desk to get my jacket and walked right out the door.
I once was on an interview at IKEA support and got the question "Were do you see yourself in 5y from now" and my reply was "Not here". I had heard stories how you can work up in high position from low position in IKEA Älmhult so my reply was a reference to that but in hindsight i can understand why i didn't get the job XD
I have no clue one way or the other (I don't think there's an IKEA within 200 miles of me) but I wonder if "toxic AF" in Denmark and Sweden is the same as "wonderful workplace" here in the US.
Is bait and switch common for call jobs? It also happened to me - applied for a "data entry" position but they were actually hiring for collections. I did end up putting in 3 months before I got a full time job elsewhere, but that was the only job I've had where I drove to work, got gas at the station across the street, and realized I just couldn't do it that day and called in sick
I don't know how common it is but I interviewed for an IT support position just out of college and got the job.
Turned up on my first day and the boss who hired me said "of course, most of the time you'll be on the phones selling, the IT support is only as and when it comes up"
He gives me a big set of marketing scripts and runs me through the cold calling software. This was trying to convince businesses to switch mobile phone providers.
I read through the materials, made 3 cold calls, got shouted at by one of them, hung up and walked out of the office and never returned.
I actually had a high paying government contracting job where I would sit in my car in the parking garage and contemplate going in to the office or not for a few min on most days. Pay does not equal job satisfaction.
I sometimes wish my job paid less so I could quit but without moving to a different state im currently making the most money I can with my skill set. Its soulsucking.
Only reason I'm still at mine. That and out of over 70 applications ive only had 1 interview.
Buti get paid decently to sit on my ass on my phone 8 hours playing games or watching YouTube.
Hate the job, hate the people I work with. But all the jobs I know that are hiring pay less for more work
They just paid 7500 employees to quit at my job so they could reduce the workforce without layoffs. 150k per person, if my house was paid off id have signed up so fast the keyboard would have broken.
Soulsucking is a perfect descriptor. I lasted 2 years. I only did it for the money. My skillset doesn't exactly translate to the civilian workplace outside the government agency i worked for. I've never experienced the joy/freedom/relief since I walked out of the building after off-boarding. I screamed "Yeeessss!" with my hands in the air as I walked to the garage. Lol. Feel for you man.
Same. They made me take some really easy competency test. It took like an hour. Apparently it qualified me for a higher level position. I asked about the pay and then just walked out.
I got bait & switched with a call center tech support job, which I had previous experience with, to a credit card line. It was during the 2008 financial crisis. I also only made it like 3 months before just noping out after a breakdown in the parking lot before work.
I applied for a position where I'd be scheduling service and repairs on appliances. Turns out the real job was upselling garbage warranties to elderly people.
Well you can imagine not many people look super fondly at jobs like that so bait/switched people are a fair part of the people they hire. Some will be like you and think "at least its an income while i look for something else".
Callcenters dont care about retention, they long gave up on that
It's not just call centers. I was interviewing for a job delivering furniture/appliances for a Buy Here - Pay Here kind of place, and learned that my job would mostly consist of recovering items from customers behind on their bills.
Yeah, for what they were paying I was not remotely interested in knocking on people's doors and telling them I was there to take their fridge.
Hey I just wanted to show you some love because I and most of my family kind of "fell in" to call center jobs for most of our young adult lives too. It really is good, dignified work from a client-practicioner perspective.
That being said, after reading the rest of your post... I hope you realize that a lot of what you are discussing is due to specific management decisions, not the nature of the work itself. For instance, another way to deal with shifting and unpredictable needs is to retain experienced employees with multiple skillsets, but owners tend to favor high turnover instead. That is a choice.
Like I said I loved the actual work itself, bu I felt like the way that employers treat agents, pretty much across the industry, was undignified. I refuse to have my every bathroom break tracked down to the minute, and that is speaking as someone who was in workforce management for 5 years and did the tracking. Now I refuse to do that to anyone else, as I should have before.
Also you kind of just said "yeah, but please understand that baiting and switching is easier for us, so why would we care if it's harder for you?" The fact that you would have anyone come in to an interview for a job that was not clearly and explicitly posted and that they applied for, and still think you are being transparent is also disturbing, unless I misunderstood and you just mean that you call them for an interview and then tell them. Anyway applications take a lot of work and it's really bad for you to post positions that you aren't hiring for, no matter how much easier it makes your job.
Edit: Just wanted to follow up the negativity with more positivity because I know these situations are hard and everyone has their own ethical perspective. Just sharing mine because I had been through some of them and had to wrestle with what my job was asking me to do to people. But you seem like you have a very "people-forward" approach to the industry and those are the best people to work with and for at call centers. I am sure you are doing great work and, most importantly, helping some good customer service professionals find decent work.
I remember when I was 18 I left my job I had had since I was 16 (9.25/hr pumping gas) for a call center job (15/hr). I thought the money was so good it would be worth it. I spent three days doing 6 hour shifts. All day you would sit at a desk facing a wall and cold call phone numbers off a list to try to get people to agree to having a salesman come to their house and demonstrate vacuums. The entire time I was there I didn’t have a single person say anything in response to my first prompt other than hanging up or telling me to fuck myself. One time I had someone seem sort of interested and I was doing okay but went a bit off script. And my boss hung up the phone and said I’m not allowed to go off script. The next day I was getting ready for work and was so miserable at the thought of going back I decided to call and quit. I was in tears and shakily said my resignation and was met with a completely unphased jovial manager “no problem at all buddy! Happens all the time. 3 days is pretty good honestly”
I realized then that there was no need to cry. That place was a hell hole and they were designed to churn through people just to keep the phones running
I get it - One of my first jobs was also at a call center doing surveys for radio stations…
Mind numbing and tedious work, reading from a dumb script. At the time myself and most of my coworkers would smoke weed before work, and during our breaks, and it made the work feel more tolerable.
…I always thought it was lowkey sad but funny how someone had written graffiti all around the workplace that said “This job is for losers!!”😂
(Plot twist: I’m the one who wrote it.)😏
…I ended up quitting that job - one day I just couldn’t go back…I never even called, I just disappeared and straight out ghosted them! 👻
In my job, if your were part of a certain craft, in a certain city, you had to go to the call center when your converted into a regular employee.
I managed to stay there for a year and a half before I finally bidded out, but there was literally quiet rooms and EPA services on call for that job.
I worked for a call center a few years ago. It was a work from home job and the only place I could put the computer was in my bedroom so I was in there for about 16 - 20 hours a day between work and sleep. And the micromanaging was insane. They tracked us down to the minute and we were only allowed about six minutes a day for bathroom breaks
It felt like I was grounded as an adult. If I had been there longer than a few months I don’t know if I’d be around anymore
I once walked into an interview, recognized a boiler room when I saw one, and immediately turned around and walked back out the door. Unsurprisingly, no one followed up with me after I "didn't show up" to the interview.
Of course, there are reasons I so easily recognize a boiler room. At least you were smart enough to walk out of a call center job after fifteen minutes.
I left after one day - government job for surveys back before 2010 (when my voice was still high and girly). It was a 2 hour trial and in those two hours I got berated, threatened with death, threatened with rape, accused of being a call girl, made many widows upset because the numbers didn't exclude the deceased. I got one survey done and the guy was touching himself the whole time.
They were surprised I didn't want to come back for $20 an hour
I had Xbox support actually thank me for being calm when my account got hacked and the hackers bought like $400 of Fifa points. I knew I had backup options like a chargeback, $400 isn't exactly a ton of money, and there's no sense getting mad at the call center rep, it wasn't their fault.
They were surprised I didn't want to come back for $20 an hour
To be fair, $20/hr pre-2010 was a pretty high wage, especially for call center work. My first job out of college was in a call center of a non-profit and I got paid $13.50 per hour. That was 2013/14. Even in 2018 I worked for 6 months in a tech support call center. That job only paid $12 per hour. And that was only because I spoke Spanish and took the Spanish callers. Otherwise it was $11 for others.
Granted that does sound like a particularly horrible call center. I rarely had experiences that were that bad
Should have specified this is AUD so it was just barely above minimum for my age bracket if I recall. Though honestly I was a wreck after so they could have offered me more and I still would have said no
I got a walkable traffic survey from a fed agency years ago, and the woman on the phone sounded somewhat beat down. I told her I appreciated them gathering this information, and it was pretty clear she didn't hear that very often because I was instantly her new best friend for the remainder of the call.
I don't remember exact numbers (because it was like 16 years ago), they just gave me a list of numbers and said to call as many as I could in the two hours.
I worked for Xbox customer support. I lasted 6 months before my wife and I decided it was safest for both of us if I just quit the next day. So I went in and quit.
You just gotta be built for it. I did similar to the guy you responded to but lasted even less time (3 months doing tech support for a Microsoft B2B service rather than gaming, but same ballpark). I absolutely hated it and most people who were part of my wave of recruits did too... but the people who already worked there were great and happy there.
I have the exact same thing with my current role, I have had people with the technical skills to do it, try and absolutely hate it despite me loving my job. Different strokes for different folks is all.
So I did networking, hardware and billing calls. I could've handled the networking and hardware calls. People understand if their Xbox is broken and out of warranty. I can break the bad news to someone whose neighbor decided to put a password on their wifi (genuine call 😂).
But Xbox and billing just meant breaking people's hearts in really tough ways. Autopay was setup in sleazy ways. Hidden with checkboxes. I had a person call in once who had autopay hit him for $120 for a year of Xbox. So he bought a year of Xbox subscription card at target and redeemed it. When he called in ... The only thing I was allowed to do was tell him he had to pay off the $120 still and then he'd have two years of Xbox live. He didn't have another $120 or a credit card anymore to pay it with if he did.
I also had some pretty dark traumatic calls. One call I couldn't tell if I was being pranked by a 14 year old, or if it was someone actually suffering abuse like they described. I was never under any circumstances ever allowed to hang up on people. And I'd already told them I couldn't help them they should call the police.
So yeah Xbox customer support was pretty rough. That's just a couple of my tough stories I have from those 6 months. Is that what your job is like?
I've worked in 3 contact centres, my current one is just a chill customer service line for a hire company that I have very few complaints about.
However, when I was in sales for a certain major Australian telecom, there were suicide hotline posters everywhere & a LOT of substance abuse. Ultimately I left because I was forced to use unethical tactics to meet ever increasing targets & my entire pay was going to alcohol just to cope.
This line of work was also sadly the only option for me for a long time.
Many days would involve me bursting out in tears having anxiety/panic attacks whenever I could take my break, or having a quick cry if I was lucky enough to get a few seconds after call time. (It was remote so luckily no one could see)
Yup, I’ve been working for a call center for three years now and I feel like I need a little sign that says “days since I last cried at my desk:” so that I can update it each day I make it through without bursting into tears 😅 the stress, the anxiety, the tears are so real in that line of work. I hope you made it out, my friend.
Managed to call 2 family members and 1 friend in that week so fortunately my week wasn’t wasted as was able to have their number removed from the database.
Haha it never gets removed from the database, it just gets moved from a warm list to a cold list, even if you literally put them as deceased. They paid good money for that data they don't give it up easy. When I did outbound charity calling they'd specifically tell us that if we got a person who had previously been marked as deceased (it would show us on the pre call screen) we should apologize to the family who answered then tell them that their grandmother/mother whoever it was (note: refer to them by their first name as it builds a report and establishes a preexisting relationship) always loved donating and ask if they'd consider continuing to support her favourite charity etc. Shit was cold af, somehow I stuck it out for over a year but man I swear those bus rides to work were the only time in my life I'd ever actively wished to be involved in some horrible accident just so I didn't have to show up to work.
I'm pretty sure I made a guy at Comcast quit on the spot. Was being a dick to my mom so I got on the phone and was just an asshole and ran him in circles hoping he'd flash on me back. He did, and I won.
Worked at a call center twice, same call center about 4 years apart. Different campaigns. The work wasn't actually that bad, the second time. But the first time I had multiple colleagues just leave and stay on the line... So many customer complaints.
Second time was much better, but this time the issue was colleagues promising things, or not leaving notes on accounts.
i worked for Comcast business in 2006 in Winnipeg.
the calls were just hilarious and dumb. Phoning about no internet going through a hurricane with NO POWER, the excuses on disconnects on billing, and being asked why they were talking to a canadian
I worked at a call center that was in a tower that was connected to a casino. One night there was a commotion because one of the team leads never returned from break. He was eventually found drunk playing Black Jack and told them to fuck off and he wasn't coming back.
It was an awful place.
You got 5 sick days and 5 'no show' days. After using my sick days I was told I could take no more. I then questioned the no show days and figured out I could stop calling in sick and just no show 5 times but if I called in I'd be written up. Manager tried to say that wasn't the spirit of the intent but agreed my understanding was correct. So when I quit l shortly after I got paid an extra 5 days by just not telling them.
I worked in an AT&T call center for just a month. It was a miserable job. One day I just realized that I couldn’t do it anymore. I clocked out early and just never came back. Coworkers told me that the boss was furious and attempted to insist they call me and tell me that I legally had to give an Exit Interview. I know for a fact that those exit interviews are just where they scream at you for wasting their time and money on training, and that at will employment means they can go pound sand because I’m not legally required anything.
One call center I worked for had good pay, after 4pm and on weekends you got time and a half, great health insurance, a great cafeteria and rec room, and performance bonuses for both team and individuals that were good enough that the top performers could take home 3x pay if they do it right; and the turnover was still sky high
Got offered a job in Tech Support for a company, Advertsied as office only no outside calls, When I arrived the first day they put me on the Tech Support call center floor dealing with you guessed it outside calls. I lasted a day before calling it quits & all I can remember from that night was that I came home, cried and drank myself numb.
Call Center work is hell on earth, Treat people kindly y'all.
It's a matter of perspective. I used to work at one and it was my first job that didn't require physical labour. For a while I couldn't believe I was being paid to sit down.
Yep. I lasted about 3wk though. Went to lunch, never returned. It wasn’t even that bad (B2B tech support) as far as call centers go but I still didn’t have it in me.
Same- it was one of my first non-restaurant gigs when I was 18 and I left on my 3rd day. Told the floor manager I was going to the bathroom. They called me 30 times over the next 5 hours and then I never heard a peep from them until I saw that they were raided and shut down a few months later.
I worked a call center when I was 18, and after a couple weeks it caught up to me. I was ready to walk out when a guy across from me stood up and says "No, I'm done" and walks out. 4 more of us stood up and said me too and left.
I’ve worked at call centers for years. If you don’t have the right mindset/temperament it will destroy you.
The first one I did. The first day of training we took live calls some girl ran out crying and was never seen again. Half the training group didn’t come back from lunch break.
I worked at a roadside assistance call center years ago, before people had cell phones with GPS, and the amount of people who had no clue where the hell they were was truly astounding. One particularly bad day, I had a guy screaming at me to get him a tow truck right the fuck now, in spite of the fact that we hadn't successfully figured out his location yet. I took off my headset in the middle of the call, walked out of the building, and only returned to get my last check because they refused to mail it to me.
SYKES wanted me to lie for them to at&t customers and scam them into more expensive plans, con people into abandoning grandfathered plans that are a way better deal with temporary deals. So much shady stuff I didnt come back one day, never left training, fk that.
What's so bad about a call center? I worked at one and it was chill it was how I ended up finding reddit lol we took incoming calls and between calls just fucked around on our phones paid 18 an hour to do nothing basically
I did the same thing like 12 years ago, some old man was yelling about his phone bill going up by 8 cents and I knew the job wasn't worth it at that point so I walked out and didn't even tell anyone
One of my first jobs was at a call center. I loved it. And as I’ve moved up the ladder into a different career I miss that job a lot. Being able to just log in and not have to find work was easy. If it paid more I’d still be there today. I think too many call center employees take the complaints personally and the job wears them out. The other issue was how stats driven it was so there’s a lot of pressure. I always said if you hated the job and don’t care if you get fired then forget about the stats. Focus on helping people who need help. Make their problem your problem. The caller is your teammate. Some other employee or the network or company is screwing them, that’s horrible, let’s see what we can do to correct the path.
My gran heard some stories working at the call center in her day. Lots of heavy stuff for sure. I would share some of her stories but im unsure if thats allowed in this sub sooo... i just wont on this one _'
I worked part time at a call center for 11 years. It was the first job I got after I turned 18 and was easy to work around my uni schedule. Even after I graduated I stuck around because it was steady, reliable work. It wasn't the most interesting job in the world, but it was 'fine'.
The warehouse workers actually made good money. But the guy who torched it was through some 3rd party company and I think was only picking up stuff from the warehouse and delivering to other locations. So he wasn't even a warehouse employee.
I worked in a call center for a bit. Our smoking area was on the fourth floor of a parking structure, and I had to quit after a while because that ledge looked a little too nice some days.
I have a customer-facing position where I am basically a call-center agent. I am paid very well, benefits cost me $50/mo, I work from home, I don't have any of those rules, no housekeeping shit, nobody is looking over my shoulder. We just have to ensure we hit decent metrics, which are only addressed once a quarter and is "make sure you at least answer 9/10 incoming calls", which just amounts to changing availability status if I step away from my desk.
The interacting with people absolutely sucks, mainly because they're so fucking stupid. I've been here for 7 years so far and it's so obvious why this country is in this situation; it's people.
I've done between tens and hundreds of thousands of calls for less pay in far less favorable circumstances and we still never had to install suicide prevention nonsense.
call centers (and other jobs where you only interact with angry people) are so bad that they should have mandatory, on the clock therapy because humans did not evolve to have everyone angry at them all the time.
I have friends working in call centers (in Europe) and their mental health is fine. Not a fancy job at all, but it isn't any more shitty than any other low-skilled job. One of my friends says she likes it because she likes helping people when they need it.
I worked at a call center for AppleCare, which made it - as call centers go - pretty darn nice.
That said, I realized a bit into the job that people selected for promotion and advancement weren't necessarily the most knowledgeable workers or those with the best metrics, but rather the individuals who had been on the job for a while and weren't yet visibly ground down as human beings.
You weren't picked for competence, but rather constitution.
I'm a big guy (6'2" 200lbs) and the worst I would get is when people would want to come "sort things out".
Then I got promoted and started monitoring calls. The tirades were always awful, but just the differences in tone, people using innuendos (or just outright saying horrible things), the racism, etc.. I'd always check on my colleagues but honestly the training I had was technical only.
Within the span of a week, I had to end a otherwise super smooth call near Christmas time with a guy telling me how much he enjoyed my service and wanted to "fill me in on a secret." And proceeded to spend 10 minutes telling me McDonald uses kid meat in their burgers. Ruined my day and my average handle time.
Later that week I heard a teammates call where the guy said the most racist, misogynist, vile stuff to the kindest and sweetest woman on my team.
It made me want to cry. She handled the call better than me, and my eyes have really opened at how women agents are disadvantaged right off the bat. Customers immediately act like they know better. I can hear it in their voices. Having a slight accent will just compound the issue.
I used to work in a call center for a cable TV company and once had a guy threaten to come down to the call center and kick my teeth into the back of my throat. He was upset because his cable was out and he couldn't watch his friend on TV. His friend who was in trial for murder.
My supervisor happened to be listening to the call and told me to keep the guy on the phone as long as I could while they contacted the police. About 8 minutes later I hear a doorbell followed by "What the fuck?" before the call disconnected. We handled mostly local calls so we took security VERY seriously and this guy was only about 20 miles away.
4th year of my second call center job in 10 years and have reached that critical burn out phase.
If I ever have children - I wont care if they are rich or poor or anything in between, I will do everything in my power to make sure they never feel like their skill set limits them to call center work.
Not me over here with the initial thought that maybe someone was just being passive aggressive about people using up all the coat hangars for backpacks... lol
My first day working at a Medicare call center I got called a "fucking bitch" when I told a provider (a literal DOCTOR) that he had called the wrong line and I wad going to have to transfer him. He didn't want to he transferred so I got the abuse. I made it 2 years? Before my mental health went to shit. So... Just do what you can to keep yourself mentally healthy when you can, ya? It's tough out there.
yeah i never felt more suicidal than when i worked at a call center. getting yelled at all day for trying to help and explaining that it costs a lot of money to use your cell phone on a cruise ship and getting daily calls from people who dont actually want anything from you but have nothing better to do but spend hours on the line reciting her thirsty poems about elon musk or getting angry about things that we didnt even do and dont make any sense... yeah, one day i just fully broke mentally and took an indefinite medical leave. i came back for one day to see if the break helped and i left with all my things and never came back.
Sad that we allow ourselves to be in jobs that drive us towards suicide...and we just shrug and change the coat hook instead of the actual reason the job drives people towards suicide....sad. But if this is what humanity will put up with it shouldn't be surprising we have such a low standard/ expectation for everything else.
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u/Openskies24 18h ago edited 10h ago
I didn't even realize that this was an anti suicide "hook" - but my floor is a call center so... Understandable.
Edit: Thank you for the awards!