The Horrors of the "Professional" World - Stories that will make you wonder how we exist.

[The Un-Clit]

I just wanted to get out of there, no point reasoning with a pajeet about bathroom habits anyhow.

Fair enough. But fuuuuck me, I woulda lost it.

i work at a head shop. one day a couple came in that had trouble getting their hash adapter for an ecig to work. they had no idea how to smoke hash, and were asking about how they should cut their wax with ecig juice, of all things.

FFS I knew how to hot-knife hash when I was 14 years old in the 1980s. Fucking punkass kids today in the era of legal dope and they don't know shit. I never thought i'd become one of the 'kids get off mah lawn!' fogies over HASH of all things.

Damn I am grumpy today.

 

[Stasi]

Bit of a bump but I've been doing a lot of reflecting about my career because I hate my current job and it reminded me of this thread.

Sure this happens in other places but remembered a couple of cases of people's names becoming a by-word/verb for something at work.

Worked with a guy, Jerry, who I guess was embarrassed about his toilet habits. One of the other guys at work, Steve, tried to make small talk at the sink while washing hands and I guess Jerry was embarrassed after just having a shit so acted really awkward, ignored the guy and got out of there asap. Steve decided to use this to make some poop jokes in the social group at work much to Jerry's embarrassment. At one point Steve gets up to go to the toilets and declares 'don't worry, back soon, I'm not going for a Jerry' and everyone burst out laughing. It somehow caught on and having a Jerry became the code word for having a shit at work. The department was pretty small and soon everyone from the low level grunts to the department heads knew about the Jerry lore. This was maybe 5 years ago. To this day when nature calls I think to myself 'man, really gotta go for a Jerry'. On reflection, surprised the guy didn't make some kind of bullying complaint with HR over this.

Worked with a woman in another place, Susan, who did nothing. Like literally nothing. Would just browse Facebook all day and fuck around on her phone. She was smart though and did the absolute bare minimum to not breach her contract and get fired (though even the shit she did do was so bad it did more harm than good). I think employment law is much more protective in Bongland than the US and it took the company about 2 years to build up enough of a case to get rid of her, even though everyone from co-workers to management knew she was absolute dead weight. To this day if someone is not productive they say they are "pulling a Susan".

 

[haunted vagina]

I spent several years in front-line management at a call center before finding a better job. (I make the same money but I sit in an office and deal with documents all day, I don't have to deal with customers or manage employees, so it's much better). I learned everything I need to know about how broken that entire industry is. I don't even know where to begin with some of the people. And yes the bathroom destroyers were real in that industry too, but it also combined with the malingerers and the bathroom obsessives, so for a period I got to hear 3 times a day from a lady on my team about how she walked all the way across the building to her favorite restroom, passing 4 others along the way, only to find that someone had shit-bombed it and it was unusable, and this was unacceptable because her knees made it difficult to walk so far for no reason, blah blah blah. The same person was later disciplined for staring through the crack in the door at people on the handicapped toilet, which she felt belonged to her exclusively.

 

[Emperor Julian]

I spent several years in front-line management at a call center before finding a better job. (I make the same money but I sit in an office and deal with documents all day, I don't have to deal with customers or manage employees, so it's much better). I learned everything I need to know about how broken that entire industry is. I don't even know where to begin with some of the people. And yes the bathroom destroyers were real in that industry too, but it also combined with the malingerers and the bathroom obsessives, so for a period I got to hear 3 times a day from a lady on my team about how she walked all the way across the building to her favorite restroom, passing 4 others along the way, only to find that someone had shit-bombed it and it was unusable, and this was unacceptable because her knees made it difficult to walk so far for no reason, blah blah blah. The same person was later disciplined for staring through the crack in the door at people on the handicapped toilet, which she felt belonged to her exclusively.

Weirdly I've had to experiance the opposite, it's quite a unique experiance when you realize your boss has had to moniter how long it takes you to shit.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

Weirdly I've had to experiance the opposite, it's quite a unique experiance when you realize your boss has had to moniter how long it takes you to shit.

I once had a coworker who would literally sleep in the bathroom and he was shielded by a manager because they were both the same race. Said manager would also blame subordinates for his own failures. Certain things were verboten for all subordinates, except for those two, it was okay when they did it. I know that the racism is ostensibly the worst of it, but there's little more that forms seething resentment than getting the bus treatment by your boss for their fuck-up.

 

[haunted vagina]

I don't know how it is in other parts of the country with different demographics but here the call center industry is about 80% black women and I could not believe the amount of "are you fucking kidding me" racial interactions that happened. Someone got a formal reprimand for telling the person in the next desk "you smell like white people." It wasn't limited to the black employees, we also had multiple all-stars of white intelligence who decided to go into a majority-black environment and start sharing their opinions about the various skin colors. I'm well aware that people who are sitting right on the border of unemployable might have some crazy opinions but I thought everyone knew that there's some shit you don't say at work if you want to keep your job. I was repeatedly disabused of that notion in my time at that place.

 

[Picklechu]

I don't know how it is in other parts of the country with different demographics but here the call center industry is about 80% black women and I could not believe the amount of "are you fucking kidding me" racial interactions that happened. Someone got a formal reprimand for telling the person in the next desk "you smell like white people." It wasn't limited to the black employees, we also had multiple all-stars of white intelligence who decided to go into a majority-black environment and start sharing their opinions about the various skin colors. I'm well aware that people who are sitting right on the border of unemployable might have some crazy opinions but I thought everyone knew that there's some shit you don't say at work if you want to keep your job. I was repeatedly disabused of that notion in my time at that place.

Shit like that is why I refused to work in a call center, even when I was desperate for a full-time job a few years ago. I had a few friends who did call centers, and they said they were hiring constantly, but considering the fact that all three of them seemed like they wanted to kill themselves (or at the very least get hit by a bus), I think I made the right call. Working the front desk of an office was bad enough; I can't imagine dealing with that many idiots in a single 8 hour workday.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Shit like that is why I refused to work in a call center, even when I was desperate for a full-time job a few years ago. I had a few friends who did call centers, and they said they were hiring constantly, but considering the fact that all three of them seemed like they wanted to kill themselves (or at the very least get hit by a bus), I think I made the right call. Working the front desk of an office was bad enough; I can't imagine dealing with that many idiots in a single 8 hour workday.

Call centres are the sweatshops of the 21st century. It's absolutely soul destroying work.

My school friend who later trooned out worked in a call centre selling insurance on cold call a number of years back. On Fridays, in order to motivate the phone monkeys, they instituted a rule that you had to stand up and only once you made your first sale that day were you allowed to sit down.

Frankly if I had to work in such a dismal job I'd chop off my dick and rename myself Cynthia as well.

 

[haunted vagina]

There were times when I thought "if you don't mind talking to people all day it isn't that bad" and honestly for a lot of the people there it wasn't. We recruited from people who would otherwise be working at McDonalds or Wal-Mart and paid them substantially more than those places to work in a climate-controlled desk job rather than on a fryer or a loading dock in the middle of the summer. I would never have touched telemarketing, those people are fucking criminals, this was inbound work for existing customers who needed support. As far as the spectrum of "customer service jobs" goes it had a lot going for it - higher pay, stable scheduling, full-time hours every week with benefits as opposed to constant fluctuation in a retail environment.

The real drawback for someone trying to just make a paycheck out of the front-line job who wasn't interested in moving into management was the constant sense that effort and professionalism didn't matter at all. We had people commuting to work from homeless or DV shelters who busted their asses to be on time and presentable each day, follow the rules, and put in the effort to handle inquiries correctly. The person in the next desk might be someone who has 10 callouts and 10 late arrivals on their last 20 shifts, thinks that "I have kids" is the trump card answer to why they show up when they feel like it, and outright refuses to use the resources they are given on information and procedures and either bullshits their way through every call or puts every caller on hold for 10 minutes while they wait for me to come over and explain something to them that they should know because they handle it 15 times a day. Since everything is driven by whatever metrics the company's upper management chose to emphasize in the last e-mail, maybe today we're writing up everybody who fucks up, or maybe they don't like how our turnover numbers look so we're not allowed to fire anybody for the rest of the month no matter what they do. When you see that doing things right doesn't matter you get demotivated and either stop trying or go to another job where people care.

There were far too many people whose basic needs were being met by gimmedats and baby daddy money who were only working at all to fund their recreation. They didn't care if they got fired because they could just stop buying new clothes and makeup and booking cruises for a few weeks until the next job started paying them [nobody goes on more cruises than this kind of person]. They didn't care if they consistently only got paid for 25 hours a week because out of the 40 they were scheduled that's how many they could be bothered to show up for. More than once during downtime I heard 21 year old employees advising 19 year old employees of the need to get knocked up as soon as possible because most welfare programs these days are for people with kids.

If you find yourself needing a paycheck right now at a place that will hire literally anyone, and you have a call center that pays well in your area, it's something to consider, but despite what anyone promises it's never a permanent career for anyone who has self-respect. If you actually like managing people then you might make something out of it but the culture of these places works strongly against the notion of answering phone calls for more than a few years before you either get promoted or leave.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

met by gimmedats and baby daddy money who were only working at all to fund their recreation.

This must be how scratters always seem to have the current model iPhone and ginormous televisions and the heating on full blast.

 

[L50LasPak]

Here's a classic one that I didn't think too much of at the time but with Current Year politics could have landed me in some seriously hot water.

When I worked in that ghetto grocery store, I was the only white dude there other than one of the managers. At one point, one of the coworkers I frequently worked with was carting a fresh display of product down a hallway, and i made some remark in passing to the effect of "Or, are those new?" He legit looked at me like I'd been rude to him and he said, "What was that about grape soda?" Now, being nowhere half as near as much of a hard-hearted prick as I am these days, I was mortified that he though I just slipped him a racist joke. Moreover, I was confused: I replied "I meant the M&Ms." and pointed to the only display he had on the dolly. I'm sure he wasn't fucking with me because he was like "Oh, I thought you said grape soda." with a completely straight face and went right back to work as if nothing had ever happened.

Still sticks with me because I'm not completely sure how the hell he interpreted me talking about a display of gimmicky M&Ms as "haha black people like grape soda" joke. I did catch him just staring off into space once in the middle of a task he was supposed to be doing. Maybe there was more going on with him, or maybe it had just been a long day. I know if we had the shit going on back then that we do right now that whole incident would probably have stressed me the fuck out though.

 

[Cpl. Long Dong Silver]

My current role is to work as the system sme and liaison with client contacts. On certain contracts we have a call center for the clients employees and if the call monkeys cant handle it, then it gets sent to me.

Seriously call center people are the same type of people who huff paint. I've gotten tickets with such broken english that its reminiscent of "How is baby formed" Yahoo answers content.

At this point I just send it back for clarification or just out right close tickets. If it's an issue worth looking into I figure they'll call back.

I actually fucking love my job tho

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

If we're talking about call centers:
I've worked in the service industry for my entire life, with one exception, and had the displeasure of working in a call center for debt collection. The experience was akin to Hell: although not because of the angry debtors. Virtually every three days, our geriatric manager would call us into a "group talk" that was nothing short of a torrent of verbal abuse hurled at us about how we're all retards who can't do our jobs, collections are down and it's all our fault, and that (essentially) we're all a bunch of zoomers who only know how to play on our phones and never had to work a day in our lives.
2/3rds of the time, the people we were calling wouldn't even answer. Of the third that did, 4/5ths simply refused to pay, because we collected for a timeshare firm and no one wants timeshares anymore. The old fucker over us seemed to think we either should be capable of some kind of over-the-phone hypnosis, or we should just drive interstate to these people and make them pay their debts at gunpoint. It was easily one of the most depressing periods of my life, working there, and I debated quitting several times.
I should have done it, because the company downsized three months in and they cut me off because I was five minutes late once because of fucking summer tourist traffic.

 

[L50LasPak]

Thought of another one from the ghetto grocery store. Different dude this time, one who I know liked fucking with people. Now, there's this long ass asile at the back of the store, and he finds a pack of frozen shrimp some dumbshit customer droppped on the floor. It wasn't burst, and I'm standing on the other side of the asile next to the display of them. So he yells at me with zero warning; "Yo, L50! Catch!" and does this long underhand throw that clears the entire asile.

I didn't exactly dive for it but I did take a step forward and snatched that bastard just before it hit the ground for the second time that day. That fucking thing was still frozen solid too by the way. This dude immediately turned around to the manager and yelled "HOLY SHIT HE CAUGHT IT!".

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

the culture of these places works strongly against the notion of answering phone calls for more than a few years before you either get promoted or leave.

At my first real job, our top client/contract saw us providing outsourced IT services for an insurance company. Part of the contract included us hiring someone to take calls from a toll-free number inquiring about claim status/rejections. "Hank" was that person. He kept largely to himself, but it sounded as if Hank had a major meltdown one day. What sounded like Hank stomping his feet and saying "No, no, no" could be heard across the cubicle divider separating my work area from his. A few minutes later, he used profanity in response to the phone ringing -- thankfully before he answered. I have no idea what triggered the meltdown, but I'm pretty sure any call center position can drive the most devoted worker to some degree of burnout.

At this point I just send it back for clarification or just out right close tickets. If it's an issue worth looking into I figure they'll call back.

At the same place mentioned above, I eventually became the programmer that worked on an office management program we sold and supported through a reseller. It was a nice gig while it lasted. I had more independence and one less layer of management to report to. Our reseller, however, would send us trouble reports -- many of which had incomplete or missing information on what caused the issue or how to replicate it. We also received reports for issues that were best described as people not knowing how to use the software. It reached the point that my project manager finally directed me to handle the former by making a request for the information needed to replicate the error. If the request went unanswered, the issue was closed. For the latter, we would remind the reseller that this was an end-user/training issue that we didn't handle. Most of those cases largely went away after that and we miraculously got more detailed error reports except for the most stingy of bugs where we'd end up fetching the client database with remote access software and then try to recreate the issue locally with our copy of the production-versioned software.

The old fucker over us seemed to think we either should be capable of some kind of over-the-phone hypnosis, or we should just drive interstate to these people and make them pay their debts at gunpoint. It was easily one of the most depressing periods of my life, working there, and I debated quitting several times.
I should have done it, because the company downsized three months in and they cut me off because I was five minutes late once because of fucking summer tourist traffic.

Collections does sound like the worst, especially when the economy is in recession as it is now. As much as their reason for letting you go sucks, perhaps it was a merciful blessing in disguise for you.

Including my manager who was telling a story of an old woman someone on her team would call constantly until the woman said she would kill herself and her cat. Then she did it and my manager burst into laughter.

I wish I could give you multiple for that story.

At a different job I loathed and was glad to resign from, my boss used to brag how she had been threatened with violence at one of her previous jobs because of how much people hated her. She seemed to think it was a point of pride to be disliked that much and totally not related to the fact she was absolutely insufferable as both a person and supervisor. She left less than a year after I quit, if I recall, and I couldn't help grinning to learn that she left the company feeling butthurt because nobody took her out for lunch on her last day like they did for me.
(Edited for spelling and clarity)

 

[haunted vagina]

I've worked in the service industry for my entire life, with one exception, and had the displeasure of working in a call center for debt collection. The experience was akin to Hell: although not because of the angry debtors.

One of the people I worked with was a 50-something white male who was not even in a management position but was occasionally pulled off the phones to help answer questions. He spent most of his downtime complaining about how a change in the law made him unable to perform properly at his previous debt collection job, where at one point he was allowed to, quote, "really raw dog it" with people on the phone.

 

[BrunoMattei]

One of the people I worked with was a 50-something white male who was not even in a management position but was occasionally pulled off the phones to help answer questions. He spent most of his downtime complaining about how a change in the law made him unable to perform properly at his previous debt collection job, where at one point he was allowed to, quote, "really raw dog it" with people on the phone.

Heard a lot of horror stories of agents pretending to be cops and getting gullible people on the phone and threaten to send a squad car if they didn't pay.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

One of the people I worked with was a 50-something white male who was not even in a management position but was occasionally pulled off the phones to help answer questions. He spent most of his downtime complaining about how a change in the law made him unable to perform properly at his previous debt collection job, where at one point he was allowed to, quote, "really raw dog it" with people on the phone.

I kinda sympathise sometimes. Yes, there's people who can't pay because they're terminally broke or lost their jobs or married a woman with expensive tastes and traded the opportunity for two and a half minutes of squelching noises twice a week for their car, house, and half their salary. But also there's people who just take the piss.

I had a client who was owed 32 grand by a former tenant relating to a pub that he had rented out to them. The tenant then fucked off leaving tons of arrears. We managed to get into contact with him by post at some other address we found and then we got an angry call off him from a number in Broadstairs, Kent, saying our client was scum and we were scum and on the day he paid us what he owed, Satan would be skating to work.

There's no inverse directory lookup in the UK. I thought, maybe if I were to go out to a phone box or something, ring the number and pretend to be BT and asking him to confirm his address because we have a question about billing, and have to take him through security to snag his address and send in the bailiffs. However a call to the Law Society's ethics line told me that if I did that I would probably be struck off for conduct unbecoming of a solicitor.

I couldn't persuade a tracing agent to do it either. Fucking code of conduct.

 

[haunted vagina]

I had other colleagues there who came from debt collection and unsurprisingly it seemed like the older women who could bring some patience to it and actually talk to people instead of screaming threats at them had better success both with getting people to pay and avoiding constantly skirting the boundary of what's legal and illegal to do on the phone.

 

[XYZpdq]

I had other colleagues there who came from debt collection and unsurprisingly it seemed like the older women who could bring some patience to it and actually talk to people instead of screaming threats at them had better success both with getting people to pay and avoiding constantly skirting the boundary of what's legal and illegal to do on the phone.

tapping into secret Mom powers