#notallcallcenters

I’ve seen a lot of depression stories lately so here’s a pep talk!

So I worked 5 years at a really shitty telecom call center and I have so many stories about the company and the employees and the customers, its insane. I am eagerly watching them toddler towards the edge of the cliff they dug for themselves cause I know they can’t pay back the loan for the third territory but they did and it is gonna be amazing to watch them go. And oh so satisfying after what they did to their employees over the last 4 years alone, not to mention the customers!

But I digress. This is about the call center I am in now. The call center that encourages us to move up in the company and is growing faster than it can keep up, but has plans in place to deal with it.

The depression and burnout is still real because….the key to good customer service is good customers and let’s face it, most of the population is morons.

Today I had a guy want me to start a dispute for him because the receipt said no returns so the company wouldn’t let him return the item and he wanted to return the item. I had to explain to this man how contracts work and I still got a crap survey score cause I wouldn’t help him get his money back.

Now I have a weird mindset so I find this stupidity hilarious, but still exhausting when there is an entire day of it. I try to help my new coworkers not burn out too fast cause its a hard job to get into. Make you bitter and better is my motto.

Most of us applied here more than once. In other words, turnover is pretty low, but replacing cause people got promoted is high so the people are amazing and the slackers are weeded out pretty fast. And this job is about customer service, not sales so no quality to meet. Just keep the people happy and take a bunch of calls. Or chats in my case cause irrational phone phobia is a real thing.

What I’m trying to say is, if you don’t like sales, don’t like outbound, don’t like tech support, whatever! Keep looking. I love call center work cause I can no longer not make a face when people say dumb things and it gets me into trouble. I also have anxiety and not having to look them in the eyes is great. But I left a sales job in tears and it was stuff I knew inside out! I just couldn’t bring myself to lie to the old people about prices to meet the company bottom line.

My sister meanwhile is doing great at that same job I left and sleeps like a baby at night. She plans her days off to make sure she doesn’t burn out and shows up when no one else will to get extra perks. They jerk her around but she is also has a spine so she knows how to stand up but not get in trouble when its too far for her.

We all cope in our own ways and there is no shame in not making it. And there are tons of other jobs out there. Also the money here isn’t always that great. Don’t kill yourself for this. And hit me up if you need to chat. Or rant.