I worked for a call center for four years.  It called itself “the number one customer and employee care center in the world”.  I think everyone should know what it was like to work for the number one employee care center in the world, so I’m going to tell you about it.  You will be jealous of me when you find out how great it was to be the recipient of that caliber of “world class employee care.” I thought I knew what the work ethic was before I went there,  but this place taught me a thing or two.  It was so hard to leave.  I miss it every day.  Some days I think I just can’t go through another day without it,  but I manage somehow.

 

Beige Nylon Clad rent-a-Cops : Every day we walked past the front desk where the Nylon Beige Clad rent -a-Cops sat.  I guess you could call them the BNCC, Beige Nylon Clad Cops.  Their job was to sit there doing absolutely nothing-nothing-nothing for eight hours in a row without losing their minds.  It takes a special breed to be a good BNCC.  Those with opposable thumbs would have been building pipe bombs out of the Anarchist’s Cook Book by the end of the first day.  A good BNCC, however, can weather eight hours in a vacuum without batting an eye, and come back for more tomorrow. These are the men in beige.  These are the BNCC. Dream on, NYPD, well-armed, savvy, street-smart, tough and tight.  You only wish you had what it takes to be BNCC -- not even a night stick in hand, able to provide no more protection to the place but that which comes from a call to 911 to let the real authorities handle it -- balding, white-trash, slothful, roly-poly, boring and dumb as a brick.  A few more beers and a self-esteem problem though, NYPD, and you could be on your way - protecting the call center parking lot from villains who park in the wrong spaces, protecting us from ourselves, the BNCC.

     The BNCC had to check our work badges to make sure we were really employed there.  I had a white friend who pasted a photo of a black person on his badge, and showed it to the BNCC every day.  He also used a grocery store savings card.  My favorite trick for getting past the clever members of the BNCC force when I didn’t have my badge handy, was to make conversation with them.  “Hey guys! How’s it going,” I’d say, with a Cheshire grin.

“Same ol’ ----, different day” they’d invariably mutter, looking up from the noose they were tying.

“Well,” I’d smile, leaning in warmly, invading their beige-ness with rainbow charm, “you guys have a great day (wink).”

 The face is quicker than your eye, BNCC. Sleight of smile. Don’t f--- with the ultra-friendly or you might get hurt.           

 

Uneducated Superiors

“Their” at the call center, the managers constantly battled with “there” grammar - you know, “there” pronouns, articles, singulars and plurals, as well as “there speling”, even though spell check and grammar check, the tools that would prevent them from looking like assholes, were just a click away. The funny thing was, they didn’t know they were having trouble writing and when we told them, they didn’t care to improve themselves. So we had to field a constant barrage of memos that said things like:  “When customers call in, make sure to verify ‘there’ ‘name’ and social security number.”

     The managers were also unclear on the correct use of quotation marks. They often used quotation marks instead of bolding or italicizing their characters, making the memos come out like this: When a customer calls in, make sure to “verify there name and social security number”, so to speak, you know what I mean, tongue in cheek har har…”.

We graded the memos with red pens, circling all the errors and writing in the correct answers, usually giving them a C or a D, sometimes even an F. Then we’d hang the memos back up on the cubicle wall sporting their fancy, new, well-deserved marks. Believe it or not, few got it. Most employees and bosses didn’t even notice the graded memos hanging there in the first place.. When they did, they strained with furrowed brow, squinting at the little homework assignments and saying “what’s wrong with it? I don’t get it.” Or sometimes they smiled vacantly, long-lashed fawns, on behalf of courtesy, feigning comprehension. That was awful swell of them. It was a gesture that made those of us who don’t drag our knuckles when we walk feel less alone. Those were special moments. 

     When we came in every day, the boss would stand there clapping until everyone was sitting down. “Come on people, I want you in your seats at the computer right at seven ready to take calls! You shouldn’t still be logging in! Get here earlier!” clap clap clap. Heck I would hardly have time to get my bottle warmed up and find my blankie in all that racket. Everyone would race around in fear trying to blend in with  the cubicle walls. The boss, though foppish, was powerful. He could give you an “occurrence” which is a demerit for lateness or absence. “Occurrences” were distributed even for dire illness.  It didn’t matter if you had a car accident and were in the hospital. You still received an “occurrence”. You only had a few of these before you would receive a “verbal warning”, a few more for a “written warning”, and finally “deselection” which in Nazi means “getting fired”.  Everything was based on “warnings” and threats,  like you are a mass murderer who’d just gotten out of the clinker, and this kindhearted “number one employee care company” was giving you your last chance to do right by the world by providing “world class customer care” for it.  Putting its life on the line for you, so you could re-enter society after those bad deeds.

 

They had a perfect system for meeting the needs of the business and appropriately degrading the employee. They walked around the floor tapping people on the shoulder.  When you got tapped, you were fired.  You could be talking with a customer one moment, and then the next moment you could look up and see that the cubicle that had held your war buddy the moment before, was now crisp, clean, empty and unobtrusive, giving the illusion that your war buddy had never existed in the first place - turning him into a whisper, a rumor. You could have sworn he’d existed a moment before, but maybe you’re just trippin’. I could have sworn there was a guy named Joe that used to work here, wasn’t there? They’d shrug. Try to forget about it. For all I knew, Joe was just a figment of my imagination. Where do they all go? The CallCenter Conspiracy. The CCC. They are making lampshades out of Joe in the dead of night. Dead of night, dead Joe. Shouldn’t have gotten the flu that week, Joe. You might still be with us.

     They thought they were being discreet when they escorted you out, hardly giving you enough time to gather your things, because they walked you out with their hand on your shoulder like they were your best friend going off to play golf with you, or a kindergarten teacher gently guiding their toddling brood toward the lunchroom.  Tender parenting was the bosses’ objective, teaching you how to be a better, more decent human being.  The bosses were experts on treating you decently.  You didn’t have a clue about decency.  It was up to the bosses to teach you, and they were responsible for fostering your decency all the way up until the door hit your ass and another warm body took your place. If they needed you, they keep you no matter how many “occurrences” you had, but if business was slow, they used the “occurrences” as an excuse to tap you.

 

“Walking the floor”: Those of us who liked to kiss up to the boss were allowed time off the phone to “walk the floor.” “walking the floor” meant walking around and helping the other reps with their problems. Invariably, the person “walking the floor” was one of the newest reps who had no idea how to answer most of the questions, but had a “holier than thou” complex, a burning need to boss others about, making them next in line for manager. So with much pomp and authority, this young tike, a chick being preened by the boss to inherit his lofty position when the boss became God, marched around giving wrong answers to people who’d been working there for years.

 

Not having to talk to our customers was a reward for a “go get ‘em tiger” attitude. The place was littered with motivational posters, bicyclists laboring up steep hills in dewy mornings, the sun winking at the crest, with captions like “If you never try, you really are a loser” or “losers never win” or ---- like that. There were contests. “Most improved” could actually receive a little plastic key chain or a pen that didn’t have any ink in it, and “employee of the month” got a really bad picture of himself on the wall for the entire call center to look at all next month, and a parking spot that everyone else parked in. When it was time for your parking lot space to be given to someone else, They would give you the little sign with your name on it in case you forgot your name. The trick to getting “Employee of the month” seemed to be doing a really ----ty job. One person who bellowed “F--- you!” three times at the top of her lungs to her supervisor received “employee of the month” the very next month. She was also someone who didn’t know how to work the computer systems and made up answers for the customers when she didn’t know.  Perhaps the criteria for this prestigious award was “knowledge of foul language” and “creativity.”   

     These types of “employee of the month people” were also the people who got promoted the fastest.  Coincidence?  I don’t think so,  though trying to figure out why one would promote someone like that makes my head throb.  One of the people who was chosen to be manager of the entire project,  let’s call him Jim, used to scream “I’ll come home whenever the F--- I want to come home,  so get the f--- off my back about it!  What the f--- were you doing there?  F---you!” at his girlfriend at the manager’s desk. No manager noticed.  How convenient.  But I noticed.  Is that because I am operating in some sort of a parallel universe that skews the truth?  That’s got to be it! I’d tap myself in the head when he did that,  the way cartoon characters do,  to try to jiggle my brain back into position,  images flashing past my eyeballs like junk in a closet that badly needs organizing.  I’d think: he did not just blast obscenities at his girlfriend from the manager’s desk, right?  There’s no way he could have gotten away with that,  right?

     I think the managers were afraid of Jim because he sells drugs and has hydraulics in his car.  Oh I’m sorry.  I forgot to tell you,  Jim is a convicted felon who sells drugs and lied about having a high school diploma.  Though the manager badly wanted to hire this gem,  he couldn’t because the gem lied about the diploma thing.

     Am I hearing things?  Maybe Jim slipped something in my soda?  Could be.  He could probably get any illegal substance any time of the day or night.  Maybe he slipped something in the boss’s soda, huh?

 

Fifteen minute breaks: We would try to walk all the way across the call center which is half a football field long,  to the break room, get dinner out of the refrigerator,  heat it up,  and eat it,  all in the span of fifteen minutes.  By the time dinner was heated,  we would have three minutes to eat it,  go to the bathroom,  and get back to our seats and log back on to the phone.  If we got back even a minute late,  we were slapped with a half an “occurrence”.  If we had an eight hour shift,  we got a half hour lunch,  but on any shift below eight hours,  we only got the fifteen minute break.  We had two per night,  but we weren’t allowed to put them both together making one half hour break.  That was an idea that would only occur to someone lazy.  They’d give you a look as  if you were being a naughty kindergartner if you proposed such an atrocity.  As if you were a criminal for wanting to fully swallow.  We used to say to each other,

“I have to pee,”

“yeah, I know.  I have to pee too.  But I don’t have time to pee and eat.”

“I’m running out of occurrences.  I’m on ‘final warning’,”

“Me too.  We’d better hold it in.  I can’t afford to lose this job.”

“Me neither.”

We’d hold it while we ate,  get back online after the break,  and wait for like an hour to make it look like we weren’t slacking off by not peeing on our break like we were supposed to.  My friend was pregnant,  but she still got screamed at for going to the bathroom too much.

     I guess the reasoning behind the fifteen minute rule is that if someone has a seven and a half hour shift,  she ought to be able to eat dinner faster than she could if she had an eight hour shift.  Right?  I mean,  that makes sense,  right?  If you have an eight hour shift,  you just can’t eat as quickly as if you didn’t.  The thing was,  we wanted eight hour shifts.  We never asked for a shift shorter than eight hours,  but all the shifts were either ten hours long or five or six hours long depending on the “needs of the business.” Sometimes they would shorten our work week from forty hours down to like twenty five hours per week,  and tough ---- if you can’t afford to live on twenty five hours of work per week.  It doesn’t matter if you have a family to support.  Just be thankful that you have even twenty five hours in this place of glory.  Sometimes they would make us stay on the floor with no break or lunch even on a ten hour shift and just eat at our desks because the call volume was too high.  I said that has got to be illegal.  But all the other P.O.Ws said to me “it’s a ‘right to work’ state,  Kirsten.  They can do whatever they want to us.  If you quit,  they will just fill your seat with another warm body,  and if you try to organize a union,  they will fire you.  Even if they as much as smell the desire for a union emanating from your skin they will fire you,  the brave soldiers said.  Even if you say the word “union” aloud while on the premises they will fire you.  It could be a lot worse,  they said.  These are good conditions.  This is good money for this town.  Buck up and inject your dinner.  You only have a minute left. As a result,  with gastric trouble,  naturally,  and over food forming a knot in my trachea,  it was on to the next call.   Losers never win,  Kirsten.  Losers never win.

    

Involuntary Go Homes:  Sometimes they would do something called “I.G.H.” which,  in Nazi,  means “Involuntary Go Home” which means that they can pull you off line and make you go home because it’s too slow.  Again,  it doesn’t matter if you have children to support.  If you think it won’t happen to you, think again, because it happens to everyone.

Believe me when I tell you I’ve considered that possibility on many an occasion,  because I’ve always thought if you want to change the world,  change yourself first.  You’re the only person or force over which you have control.  You have to change yourself if you’re going to change anything.

 

Parties: Fairly often there was some celebration or another in which the company would hire a caterer to provide us with lunch.  We never knew what the lunch was exactly.  We thought of lampshades, of dead Joe, and tossed it.  For us night people, there was always a bit of dry, crusty cake from the day’s festivities to hold in our trachea to tide us over until we left for the night.

 

Insurance: We would have reviews of how much time we had spent working every year.  If we hadn’t spent enough time, our health insurance benefits would be taken away.  We always argued that the company had forced us to cut our work weeks.  They said it didn’t matter.  You could have picked up extra hours, they said, but you chose not to.  In addition, we were promised health insurance three months from our start date, but many people never received it.  They would pick and choose whom to give insurance to according, not only to seniority, but also to, essentially, the completely random picking out of a hat, because there simply wasn’t enough money.  From whence came all the posters, parties, and inkless pens, when there was no extra money?

 

Sewage Treatment Plant:  Right next door to the venerable place of glory was the only sewage treatment plant in town with an open cess pool.  It smelled like socks soaked in spoiled eggs and left to rot, but you knew it was human waste, not socks, and that made it much worse.  I went to the center director because I was concerned about cancer or some other dread long term illness resulting from inhaling human waste five to 15 hours a day depending on the Needs of the Business, and she said that they were going to put new charcoal filters in the walls, or wherever protective barriers against the odor of festering waste are placed these days.  Well, from time to time that overwhelming stench would waft in, and I waited and waited, but it never seemed significantly better.  We knew that those filters could probably be improved, but we were so happy to get out of there every night we ran with our tails between our legs and didn’t stop.  Besides, I worked at night.  The center director worked during the day.  That made it awfully difficult to complain to her.  When I called her, she never answered her phone.  So I left messages.  The messages made me feel a little bit better, but I never got a return call.  The little guy, that’s me.  That’s us.

 

Witch Hunts: About a year into my term there at the number one employee care center in the world, I was a “coach,” which means I was one of the people walking around and helping the poor sods on the phone.  Now this wasn’t the result of kissing the boss’s hoo hoo.  In my case it was just that it had become so glaringly obvious that I knew a whole lot of stuff and had seniority over most people there, and was smart.  So, I applied for the position of “coach,” and got it.  Well, anyway, they said “it’s considered a temporary position, but you’re a shoe in, so don’t worry about it.  It’s yours.” In addition to that, most of the reps said “you’re great.  It’s such a relief having someone at the helm who knows what she’s doing, but is friendly to us and doesn’t talk down to us.”  So a few weeks later, they opened the position to the entire call center, even people from other projects.  Two people who had just gotten out of training class were promoted to “coach,” and I was put back on the phones.  I asked why someone who had just barely gotten out of training class two weeks ago was promoted to a supervisory position over me, and I was put back on the phones as an online rep.  They said because these two people had the right stuff, you know, the “go get ‘em tiger” attitude, and I didn’t.  I thought to myself, when we are trying to troubleshoot problems with someone’s phone or bill, who gives a damn about whether or not we’re leaping into the air like a man in a Toyota commercial while we’re doing it, as long as we fix the problem?  If you ask a customer who calls an 800 number to try to get help, he will invariably say having the real problem isolated and solved  quickly beats having a friendly upbeat voice tell you you’re a great guy and we like you lots, but we have no idea what the problem is or how to fix it.  Most customers would prefer not to be put on hold seventeen and a half times, but really be pumped up along the way!  They’re pretty much in agreement that having to call back three times, yet knowing “Up With People” songs backward and forward  sucks.  But, I wasn’t in charge of the whole deal.  The illiterate bosses were.  I considered quitting, but was still in that mindframe of “OK, maybe I should work on that Tony the Tiger thing, that, “Wooh!! Things are COOL! Wooh!! Life is really rockin’!! This place rocks!! Rotton socks!! Woo Wooh!  Being demoted really makes me feel like bicycling up a steep hill in the sparkling morning sun and just being all I can be,” and next time, if my attitude really shines, I may be able to keep my job instead of having it promised to me and then taken away.  So I swallowed my pride and pretended along with these freshly trained bosses of mine, that they knew more than I did even though I had been there for two years, and they had only been hired three weeks ago.  I went back on the phone.  I asked these new people questions knowing full well that there was no way they would know the answer to a technical question someone who had been there for two years didn’t know.  They would either have to make up the answers or go and try to find them out from another senior representative like myself.  We were on a sinking ship, but I pretended we had fine upstanding leaders, and followed their advice, like a good little camper.

     A few weeks after that, I was pulled off the phone and led to the center director’s office, where three managers and the “coach” who had been allowed to keep her job when I was put back online waited.  I sat down at the table, and the center director proceeded to tell me that she ought to fire me, but she will be nice and let me keep my job.  I had no idea what she was talking about.  Apparently, one of the just-out-of-training “coaches” had answered one of my questions, and had then seen me walk over to someone who knew more to get another answer from him, and taken his advice instead of hers, and this was grounds for immediate termination.  Well, naturally one would think “how could someone be fired for asking a question?  But worse, how could someone be fired when it’s her word against mine? I didn’t even remember the event.  And worse than that, how can someone be fired for something so ridiculous, and how can someone be fired for trying to verify the truth on something for the good of the business, because as I said before, she didn’t know much at all because she had just been hired?  So effectively my job was being threatened for doing something I didn’t even remember doing at all, and it wasn’t even that bad a thing to do, but since I was hurting this girl’s feelings, I was nearly fired.  Well, I thought and thought, and I did finally remember, during this Inquisition, that I had gone to someone for elaboration on another point relating to the subject I had asked her about (phew), but it was not the same question!  Yes, I did have a headache after that particular inquisition, if you were wondering, and yes, it probably was worse than the one you’re getting right now as you try to follow this.  

     That’s how affairs were conducted under the center director’s reign.  If you were a supervisor, and you wrote something down on paper and gave it to her, you could get the little campers in a lot of trouble. She believed that the moment something is converted from wispy daydreams and butterflies to neatly typed hard copy, it’s no longer someone’s opinion, but bare bone facts.  This makes me wonder how she interprets such material as “the Star” and “the National Enquirer”.  It’s true that an alien ate my nine hundred pound brother as long as it has been typed up on a computer.  Hmm.  At any rate, this is the kind of respect you can expect to have after two years at the camp.  Barely dodging termination and trying to muster up a guilty conscience for something a table full of managers thinks you should have one for.  I had a thick throat all day, and wanted to kill people.  That’s not like me, fantasies about murder.  Dead of night, dead Joe.  These camps can change a person.