My 1st job in any sort of a call center was a telemarketing job selling re- subscriptions to a popular magazine. I was in high school so this occured back in the 80s. The center itself was a small office space in an industrial complex surrounded by other small businesses.
It wasnt a very good job I wasn’t very good at it but it was a fairly fun group of people. A mix of high school students, college students, society burnouts and a former roadie for Blue Oyster Cult.
The owner/ manager was a long haired musician who had had a heavy metal band durring the 70s and told great stories and made fantastic prank calls. He gave me a good pair of headphones probably worth more than I made in a month.
So I worked there calling people trying to get them to resubscibe to their favorite magazine for about 3 months.
One day i got to work and a bunch of people from the other businesses were sitting outside. One guy tells me…you really shouldn’t go up there. I rolled my eyes and went up to the office….
And walked into a room filled with a bunch of VERY large men in 3 piece suits and running shoes. Who all turn to look at me.
Who are you? Ummmm i work here? Ok I wasnt very bright.
Turns out the leads we were using were stolen the gentlemen in suits were FBI agents raiding the very illegal scam center.
I got to sit with an FBI agent and get interviewed. I showed them our call sheet with what we were supposed to say etc then got sent home.
When I told my mom what happened she flipped out…how DARE the FBI interview her minor child without telling her? So she called the FBI to bitch them out.
Turned out the agent in charge was the brother of a guy she had dated for a year or so in college so he filled her in on a bunch of stuff(amazingly this isn’t the only time something like this hapoened once we had to call the cops when scummy neighbors stole one of our geese and one of the responding cops was actually a guy she had dated once upon a time)
He told her about it being a scam,the leads were stolen. That they didnt think anyone who worked there knew what wad going on and that we probably wouldnt get paid anything we were owed at that point.
I was never called or asked any further questions so I have no clue what happened. I didn’t work call center jobs for a long time but in the years since I’ve done many different ones from cold calls to tech support…i was even a Jane for ARC for a bit …but I’ve never had another job that ended with being interviewed by the FBI
submitted by /u/really4got
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