Why I will never do call center work again - My whole sad story

Shit was the easiest job I ever had, they had to phone me to get what they wanted, what were they gonna do? Put the phone down? Lol no, our wait times are 35+ minutes
I work remote and able to leave a call on speaker while at work, I’ve regularly held zoom meetings with a customer rep on the line, muting my mic every so often to apologize for the distraction. Recently I had an insurance plan that was a covid travel insurance, obviously they were doing everything they could to avoid paying out, “oh I see you didn’t send these documents sir, oh you say you sent them last week?”. Took me several weeks of calls to finally get the payout. Didn’t really bother me in the slightest.

Not really directed so much against you, but I honestly do get a kick when I can tell there is this attitude on the other line “what are you gonna do, wait on the phone all day” why yes actually, that’s exactly what I plan to do lol
 
Thank you for the kind words, that really means a lot to me. And yes, I'm glad it didn't ruin our relationship too. I don't take that for granted either, I don't know if everyone truly gets a fair shot at having a real loving relationship, and I was lucky enough to have it. It's worth preserving and fighting for, too precious and rare.
Yeah, that's the real goal in life. Whatever people say, having someone at home who gives a shit that you exist is far better than some narcissistic 'experiences' chasing. Teasing the wife when we're at a good place so worth so much more than money when the wife's ticked off at me.

If your work is causing you problems at home due to stress or a bad work environment, get out as soon as you can. That employer does not give a shit about you and will use you, abuse you and ultimately fire you without a second thought.
People slip into roles, we're bred to do this so that we kill each other far less than we should. Civilization is a school of breeding more than anything else. Bosses though are terrible, I have someone under me who I tried to get to work extra one afternoon. They nearly cancelled a 2nd-ish date with someone to work on something for me. I felt like shit when I found out halfway through and got them out of there. People really need their job to eat these days, and its soul-crushing how easily you can ruin someone as a boss. It didn't work out, but I met the man later and I apologized sincerely for it. I don't like doing that at all, like torturing people for information it doesn't even work anywhere close to empathizing. Its just simpler.
 
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I worked at call centers before my current career (electrician). I made decent “buy gas, smoke weed, take my gf out to eat” level money for a 24 year old kid but the work and the environment was absolute dog shit. I’m either too nice (lol) of a person or too honest (double lol) but I could not just lie or be intentionally vague enough to sell customers on satellite TV contracts, a new phone, or a new tablet.

The job was a thin veneer of customer service over a very very thick layer of “sell them anything you can, who cares if they’ll cancel it in a couple months or default on the payments”. I didn’t mind the “helping people out” part of the job but I hate(d) sales. I would show up to the job stoned every day because I was crushed by the bureaucratic rules, my calls constantly being recorded and reviewed, and some of the coworkers made the place worse. You would have a supervisor or team leader riding herd on your ass to meet sales quotas but the ladies with no scruples and low self esteem would skate by because they’d blow/fuck the sup before or after work. I didn’t even begin to maybe attempt to pursue any of my female coworkers because the HR fag (he was comically gay) made such a big deal about drilling the sexual harassment regs that I didn’t want to get in any hot water. And for that paranoia, my female coworkers ended up throwing the “we thought you were gay since you never hit on us” psyop my way.

I eventually quit and now I work in construction. maybe it’s a little gay since none of my coworkers are female, but I make way better money, even if I have to get through some physical pain and discomfort to do so. I get to operate cool machinery, have banter with the boys, it’s a genuinely meritocratic job, and I’m usually doing something different every day so I don’t have the same soul crushing repetitive monotony. The hours are a little early/long, but the physical aspect of the work in addition to the tempo of it kind of makes the day go by quick. That’s another thing I hated about being at that call center. I had a fucking awkward “oh I get wednesdays and Sundays off” thing going on where I worked from 12-8pm. With what I do now, I work from 7-3:30 (kind of) and I get weekends off, like normal folk.

>tl;dr: I prefer working in construction over a call center.
 
Worked for a couple of years selling satellite TV and program packages for them. Nothing much I can add except getting written up for sexual harassment for giving my then-fiancé now wife a peck on the cheek when passing by her on the floor. Also, this is where the largest weight gain of my life happened, not just from the sedentary work, but also from a massive amount of stress eating to keep the homicidal urges down.
 
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I worked for the big pay TV (cable/satellite) company in Australia for a few years. I started off as a regular customer service agent, but after a year or so I progressed to being a team leader.
We were told in training that only 5% of customers actually call with any regularity, so we were basically dealing with people who either didn't pay their bills, or people who just wanted to argue about stupid shit. We used to take 70-100 calls a day, and we had to average less than 294 seconds per call to get our commission, plus we had to pass "quality" assessments based on an ever changing metric.
I personally found the job hilarious, because I don't care about people calling me names or threatening to kill me, but it broke a lot of people. To call the work toxic would be an understatement, well over 50% of callers would abuse whoever they spoke to. It was routine for the younger women to break down after particularly tough calls, and people who pay for television are not the smartest people alive. "Your service has been cancelled for non payment" doesn't seem to be a difficult concept, but it was quite beyond a lot of our customers.
The workplace was based around lunches and after work drinks at the pub next door, and there was a lot of "inappropriate" contact (from a hr perspective). I was well liked by most people there, and it wasn't unusual for me to get a hug from 10 different people between the door and my desk when I arrived. The Christmas parties were notorious for drugs and excess drinking, and the cameras in the stairwell were well known to be fake, so it wasn't uncommon for people to have sex in them on their break. It was prior to #metoo, and that place was a shooting gallery. There was no expectation that management should not have sex/take drugs with the agents, so pretty much all of the team leaders had sex and/or partied with the people they were supervising.
Pay and conditions were abysmal, so the majority of the people who stayed for more than 6 months were self medicating pretty heavily.
I left after a few years, and when I look back, it's all a blur. I probably worked with over a thousand people in that time frame, but I could only name a handful, and they are either people who were fucking painful to deal with, or people I had sex with.

Tl;Dr- 1/10, would rather have a bath with my toaster.
 
I worked at call centers before my current career (electrician). I made decent “buy gas, smoke weed, take my gf out to eat” level money for a 24 year old kid but the work and the environment was absolute dog shit. I’m either too nice (lol) of a person or too honest (double lol) but I could not just lie or be intentionally vague enough to sell customers on satellite TV contracts, a new phone, or a new tablet.

The job was a thin veneer of customer service over a very very thick layer of “sell them anything you can, who cares if they’ll cancel it in a couple months or default on the payments”. I didn’t mind the “helping people out” part of the job but I hate(d) sales. I would show up to the job stoned every day because I was crushed by the bureaucratic rules, my calls constantly being recorded and reviewed, and some of the coworkers made the place worse. You would have a supervisor or team leader riding herd on your ass to meet sales quotas but the ladies with no scruples and low self esteem would skate by because they’d blow/fuck the sup before or after work. I didn’t even begin to maybe attempt to pursue any of my female coworkers because the HR fag (he was comically gay) made such a big deal about drilling the sexual harassment regs that I didn’t want to get in any hot water. And for that paranoia, my female coworkers ended up throwing the “we thought you were gay since you never hit on us” psyop my way.

I eventually quit and now I work in construction. maybe it’s a little gay since none of my coworkers are female, but I make way better money, even if I have to get through some physical pain and discomfort to do so. I get to operate cool machinery, have banter with the boys, it’s a genuinely meritocratic job, and I’m usually doing something different every day so I don’t have the same soul crushing repetitive monotony. The hours are a little early/long, but the physical aspect of the work in addition to the tempo of it kind of makes the day go by quick. That’s another thing I hated about being at that call center. I had a fucking awkward “oh I get wednesdays and Sundays off” thing going on where I worked from 12-8pm. With what I do now, I work from 7-3:30 (kind of) and I get weekends off, like normal folk.

>tl;dr: I prefer working in construction over a call center.
There were some years after one of my kids was born that I had to supplement my full time work with a part time gig during my full time jobs slow season. Generally this was accomplished most easily thru a temp job working retail, or call center work. Retail can be pretty horrific, especially during the Christmas rush, but even that, at it's most soul crushing, was not as bad as working for a call center. The worst one was having to cold call people to set "appointments" for the companies "salesmen" to stop by and extol the virtues of purchasing a Beef Freezer Plan.

Basically, our job was to cajole some poor person, over the phone, likely while they are in the middle of dinner, into allowing one of our sociopathic "sales reps" to stop by their home to sell them enough beef that they have to buy/rent an extra freezer to store it. the worst story I had heard was one of these maniacs had kept themselves at an elderly persons house for over 4 hours trying to unload one of these overpriced plans before the elderly person caved in, as apparently the sales psycho wouldn't take no for an answer... yes there are some people like that out there. I'd simply have threatened to call the police if he wouldn't leave...barring that, threaten to shoot him, lol.

I was so glad to be done with that place (I lasted about 5 months). Between having to meet the unrealistic/cooked appointment quotas, being -truthfully- reminded on a near constant basis, what a piece of shit I was for interrupting their dinner/relaxation time for something so stupid, and getting shit on by the sales assholes for not getting "good leads" (good lead = a pushover)... about a month in I had to drink to tolerate the job. before I'd start my day, I'd fill a 16 oz soda bottle with the strongest alcohol I could (preferrable a clear alcohol) Hide it in my car for the day and after my day job was over, drive to the call center, park, and guzzle that shit down as quickly as possible. Then pop some breath mints or chew gum, and presto. By the time my shift started, I could count on a sweet buzz that would last for roughly 2/3rds of the shift. One of my coworkers there turned me onto that, lol. Once some laws were passed around the mid 2000s that put severe restrictions in place on cold calling, the call center, and ultimately the entire business went under.
 
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