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And I know I don’t speak for everyone. As some people do enjoy working in call centers, and not every department is bad anyway.
But I worked at a call center last year, for nine months before getting burnt out and quitting. It wasn’t an “actual” call center. More like a virtual work-at-home job where I took calls from my PC. I had to help people with their unemployment. I don’t know if it’s just that department I was working with (unemployment)…but I think I hate humanity after working that job. It wasn’t not worth the stress in the end for me.
My worth and value as a human being was tied to stats and cartoonlishly impossible metrics and standards. The higher ups monitoring literally every single thing I do, which only makes you feel paranoid. If you’re one minute and one second late, they’ll write you up. The micromanagement was extremely aggressive and they were ready to pounce on you for even the smallest mistakes. One time after a call, I put myself in the “Not Ready” status for literally 3 seconds before one of the supervisors starts messaging me with – “WHY ARE YOU IN NOT READY?? YOU NEED TO TAKE CALLS!!!”
But that’s not even getting into the calls themselves. Getting bitched at all day by people who couldn’t care less about me, getting threatened with things like – “If you hang up on me, it’s your ass” and – “Don’t call me again, or I’ll hunt you down and kill your family”. Not to mention things like – “With you people making unexpected outbound calls, I bet you’ll accidentally drown a baby someday…no seriously, it’s very concerning” (yes, three separate people have actually told me these things over the phone), feeling underappreciated and overworked. Getting screamed at on the phone because there’s nothing in my power I can do to help the people on unemployment (“Ma’am, I’m sick and LITERALLY dying, and yet you can’t instantaneously transfer the funds to me at this very second?? I have to wait a few days for my money?? Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck”)
It was an absolutely stressful and traumatic job. I’m glad I got out…but damn…it’s been a year and that job still haunts me. It just changes you. You’re not human, you’re just a robot set of metrics. Unless I was about to go homeless and can’t find another job, it just wasn’t worth worth it in the end. What an awful job.
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