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Aussie call centre, graveyard shift, wondering why it's so quiet, just realised it's a mother loving public holiday  
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Sep 6, 2010 17:11
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g0lbez posted:I wish people would realize that most the alphabet sounds exactly the same over the phone. I always get somebody rattling off their e-mail address like "tvenmezbet@shithead.com" and they get pissed off when I have to ask them to repeat it phonetically. My favourite is when you ask them to spell it phonetically and they start up with "TEE. VEE. EEE. ENNN. EMM. EEE...". This word, it does not mean what you think it means. A cautionary tale on the topic of the office sink: A few years ago, they decided to get rid of the nice little old couple who cleaned the building at night in favour of some cheap student labour. What became apparent soon after was that very few people on the floor had been washing their dishes/stacking the dishwasher, the roster was being ignored (for reasons which become clear ...), and it was disguised for years by the old cleaning staff doing more than they should have in the kitchen. The kitchen degrades significantly as soon as they are gone. The people who left their dirty dishes on their dirty desks didn't care, the people who ditched their dishes in the sink didn't care, some people didn't care about the kitchen roster so that wasn't a tight ship either, and the people who might have cared about their roster duties were so disgusted that they avoided the really grotty stuff. The problem got worse and worse until one day the managers decided enough was enough and got rid of all the dishes and cutlery ... Unfortunately they went overboard and took personal dishes in the loot riot (like my mug, from my childhood trip to a theme park with my god drat name on it, but it turned out some sales bitch with the same name as me had been using it secretly during the day, I was pissed for quite a few reasons about that). Some people stole dishes and cutlery from the other level - where corporate staff lived - and squirreled them away in their desks. Some of them still didn't clean up properly and there was a bug problem from dirty dishes living unseen in closed drawers. The lack of general use cutlery, tea spoons and all, meant that if you wanted a coffee you had to shake it out of the giant Nescafe tin into your mug and give the mug a whirl to stir ... which meant the kitchen got substantially grottier from spills. Some time later they brought in those little plastic swizzle sticks but they didn't solve the spooning grounds problems and weren't restocked often enough. Even later they brought in plastic cutlery, but they also weren't restocked often enough to be worthwhile so people started leaving them in the sink again to be rewashed so they wouldn't be without ... Not that long ago now they gave up and brought up back a bunch of dishes and cutlery - proper metalic and porcelain like the good lord intended. However, because we've been in Famine mode for such a long time, our poor little brains went into squirrel mode to make sure we never had to go without again. You still can't find a loving spoon/fork/bowl when you need it, because we've all stolen and hid them about the place.
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Oct 17, 2011 17:38
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Oh, customers, you make me weep. I don't know what your problem is but it is ridiculous that someone has to ASK you to [do a thing] instead of being able to do it themselves. FIX [unrelated problem] so I can do a thing. You need to FIX this so I CAN do this myself. Dear Angry, the [unrelated service] doesn't allow you to [do a thing]. If you forward me your account password and the details I will [do a thing] for you. At this stage it is not possible for you to do a thing yourself, and I am not aware of any plans to change this, however I can forward this as feedback to management. For the love of GOD, is it THAT hard? FIX [unrelated problem], SERIOUSLY, it's NOT that hard. Your unrelated service DOES do what I need. Get OFF your TAIL ENDS!!!!!!!!!!! My GOD, I swear you are all incompetent and clueless.I just checked the history, at some point between his first email and my response he called and spoke to an agent - who told him the exact same thing - and he went off his gourd and hung up on him too. You'd think that after the second time you'd been told that 'unrelated problem' won't help him 'do a thing' by separate staff you'd accept you were wrong. I sympathise with the problem, there is a bug with [unrelated] and customers should be able to do [do a thing] IMO, it was shut off because people were messing with it when they didn't know what they were doing which caused more support problems than just doing it ourselves. That's why I responded in the first place and offered to forward the feedback, even though I knew that alternative caps bullshit meant he was going to be trouble. Some people just don't want to be helped.
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Oct 26, 2011 19:29
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Well, back to the call centre grind for me tomorrow. 'Sup call centre from home buddy. I'm finding drinking takes the edge off. Plus a good bluetooth headset so I can wander around the house instead of being stuck in front of the laptop all shift long.
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May 17, 2012 08:44
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. Ah well, I'll only be doing it six hours a day, not 9+commute. And I'll be doing it from home. So I suppose it won't be that bad, but the idiots... oh god, the idiots.
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I subscribe to the empty vessel theory of call centre management. Nothing runs the way that logic or common sense or any other reasonable principle would dictate because the people hired/promoted to call centre management don't 'need' any of those skills: they are just hired to be vessels for the messages from up on high. You don't want someone running a call centre who has thoughts or suggestions or complaints - you want them to keep the monkeys moving, the budgets low, the customer's out of the executive's faces and sell the bullshit with a smile. That's it. Eventually you end up with empty vessels hiring empty vessels, without realising that they are hand picking qualities of apathy and borderline retard intelligence. Then one day someone in legal tells you the sales agents need to be careful they are covering all areas of the policy, so you end up with a rule that the script must be followed exactly - meaning verbatim and not just 'the same'. Then one day someone watches a management webinar that says people feel assured when referred to by their first name, so you end up with a rule that agents must use their name 3 times in a call and tell you with a straight face that you're meant to adhere to that even when the call is 20 seconds long and a wrong number. Then one day they see an episode of The Office, and you get a team building football analogue bonus score board opportunity. Then you lose your job because as long as everyone has to say the customer's name 3 times, read verbatim from a script and the budget can't afford another $4.95 iPlunge prize for getting 3 perfect quality scores that month so they may as well give the job to people in the third world. I'm not bitter. G-Spot Run fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Jun 7, 2012 |
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Jun 7, 2012 14:24
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Boomer The Cannon posted:Is the term 'valued customer' code for 'loving rear end in a top hat of a human being' with your call centers too? That or "you were too busy slamming the caps-lock key to include any useful identifying information like, say, your name". Occasionally it also means "I am bulk-processing a whole bunch of the same things today and this is a copy-pasta email"
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Jul 6, 2012 10:30
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1 manager to every 2.5 grunts ratio*. Before people left those roles I considered it a bit of a laugh, like we lost so many staff that they were left with this vestigal organ of absolutely loving useless management. Now they've rehired to keep the ratio alive and I am a little dumbfounded. This just means one more dipshit assigning work to me because 'nobody else has been trained' despite the 40% individual face time are all due thanks to the sheer volume of management and they still haven't worked out of how to, poo poo, I dunno, train people? *Effective rate is closer to 1:2 because of P/T staff and one-man-teams wh only need a manager to call when they're sick I'm taking some unpaid leave very soon. I dread the thought of what will be waiting in the queues when I get back, but then again there's something very cathartic and personally justifying about how every time I go on leave there is a backlog of cases to the day I left. I'm not even exaggerating. I need to stop reading the forums and start doing my homework so I can resign with confidence later this year.
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Aug 6, 2012 13:52
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I had to take a few weeks off, unpaid leave but it's all approved and written up in the roster. I've been gone a little over 3 weeks and I thought hey I'll check my work email for shits and giggles. I discover that one of the managers has been assigning time-sensitive work to my queue the whole time I've been away - not even a 'whoops didn't notice' in the first week, multiple cases over many days and even one from just yesterday. Just to reiterate from a couple pages back, there are only a dozen-odd staff so it's not like my bright blue multi-week "Leave" bar is some tiny blip on the roster and FIVE managers who, presumably, have enough time in their busy schedules to a) check the roster and b) check if the work that's being passed out like candy has actually been done. I think I can quit soon. I am tempted to hang out a little longer for the money, and it's probably unwise to quit without a 100% confirmed job around the corner, but ugggggh everything about that workplace, even NOT WORKING, is such a massive gently caress around.
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Sep 5, 2012 10:11
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cuntvalet posted:Out of the blue on Thursday my manager pulled me into the HR department, with one of the HR ladies, my supervisor and himself. My first instinct here is that they need to cut costs in QA or return a skilled agent so they went digging for dirt. I don't know what happened during these calls, maybe it was legitimately awful, but judging your current performance on your old performance is ... Exactly the kind of retarded call centres thrive on ... Work in a factory or get two retail jobs, poo poo go to another call centre and see if you can QA there - you're never going to progress at this place if they were supposed to fire you now.
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Oct 6, 2012 09:01
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cuntvalet posted:Maybe this is just something that is impossible to get over, but how do you make yourself stop dreading going to work? It's time to take your ball and go home. Nobody benefits from you being miserable, don't make yourself sick by waiting it out - it only gets harder once the hurt sets in. My HR person actually told someone who quit "you'll wonder why you didn't leave sooner" and she was 200% right.
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Oct 16, 2012 05:57
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I am going to start pissing down your well if you don't at least acknowledge that you are seeking alternative employment in your next sad post. Get two part time cleaning jobs. Go back to school. Move into a commune and forgo capitalist society. It's all better than where you are now.
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Dec 16, 2012 02:30
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When I worked graveyard shift (in Australia) I noticed Americans take holidays really seriously. We'd sometimes come in for a normal day of work for us but it would be, say, 4th July and we would just have absolute silence for 6 or 7 hours. Meanwhile, working daytime Christmas support would be a constant drip of calls. Not banked up or anything, but enough to keep you on the phone all drat day. I appreciate the idea of a 24 hour society, after working graves so long I relied on it, but I wish there was a bit more common sense on public holidays and whether you absolutely positively must have your brand new business email setup right now and not in a couple of days when the holiday is over.
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Dec 25, 2012 13:20
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You're so lucky! I'm itching for a redundancy, have been since they opened offshore ops a year and a half ago. I'm hoping it'll come soon, especially since we are considering selling business divisions right now. I'm looking for other work already, since I finished my teaching course, but it's almost worth it to rubber neck as I've been there so long my redundancy is 3 months pay.
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Feb 8, 2013 00:22
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I there some sort of prison black market system you could implement to buy back your breaks with cigarettes and concealed weapons?
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Apr 5, 2013 08:34
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I recently spoke with a good friend who had worked at a call centre with an infestation of fleas and rats. This went on for a very long time in a country with solid labour and workplace health and safety laws and low unemployment. This person is intelligent and educated and got stuck in the cultish mindset of the call centre employee. Please, please, please all of you keep your local laws on workplace rights bookmarked and jot down the numbers of workplace advocates or lawyers with free consultations so you can call someone if you need to. Don't accept what your manager or team leader or human resources rep says on an issue without getting a second opinion from a reputable source, they are generally just repeating the lies or misinformation of the person above them. Never let yourself believe that it can't be 'that bad' because everyone else on your floor puts up with it, or that it's okay if some things are a little bit against the law because of some other bullshit $0.05 concession like fruit baskets or gym memberships, or that a paycheck is more important than your health. p.s. I am technically a hypocrite - I had my 7 year anniversary last week as I am still trying to find a job in my chosen career to escape into, but I at least get to work from home and skip 70% of the bullshit. That said, I work from home and skip 70% of the bullshit and am effectively paid a full time wage to do very little and I am still itching, pardon the pun, to escape. Oh, and I also used to play WoW and got sick of people interrupting me - it's much better to play games with a pause button or just watch a movie.
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Apr 10, 2013 16:32
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I just resigned and it feels great. 7 and a half loving years, over 6 in the same position, more bullshit and breaches of workplace fairness than I can count. I'm not moving onto bigger and better things, it's just that their proposed new operations negatively affect me on every single bullet point and completely shits in the face of every 'career' sacrifice I've made - e.g. 4 years ago, to avoid 24/7/365 shift rotations, I volunteered to work permanent overnights which meant I gave up recognition of seniority and any promotional opportunities, and now my new manager who has been with the company 2 years (not his fault, just saying) delivered the news that we're going back to rotation. I am still angry, but I know that one day very soon I won't have to talk about how much I loving hate this job or even think about what a worthless soul sucking husk of an organisation they are. I would rather be unemployed than let them take
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Jul 5, 2013 08:25
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Because they don't understand what rational or vaguely competent human beings are any more so they make what should be common sense or a polite request to a particular individual a floor wide rule.
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Jul 8, 2013 18:25
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cuntvalet posted:I dunno how many people here are ex call center workers as opposed to present ones but from your opinions, how can you tell when a break down is coming/when stress leave is probably advisable? You personally should have quit about 6 months ago. Maybe longer, I have no scope of time right now, I just remember hassling you to poo poo or get off the pot when they demoted you and told you you'd never do any better because of "the client". Apply for the library job, physically turn up to hand it in, wear a nice outfit and ask for the manager and smile and make eye contact when you hand it to the manager while saying whatever. This may or may not sound obvious but you can at least guarantee you're ahead of the people who don't make that effort.
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Jul 15, 2013 23:50
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I feel like its wearing me down.
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Could be a reference to IWC / ironic war criminal. Either way I'd suggest ignore, report, move on. 3 shifts to go, I'm loving psyched. Freedom is so close.
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Jul 29, 2013 18:25
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Uh, I wouldnt take that on board as a reflection of the company that they didn't treat him well. He was a liability if the girl went for sexual harassment in the workplace and the workplace clearly treated her callously in the process so she could probably wreck them for not doing more. It's grounds for instant dismissal if the emails were that inappropriate, and that's what I'd argue if I was her and seeking damages.
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Nov 30, 2013 03:15
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 10 months without a job in my graduate field(s) (well actually more like 18 but 10 months without a job at all when aiming for my field). I start in a new call centre this week. G-Spot Run fucked around with this message at 14:17 on May 26, 2014 |
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May 26, 2014 14:04
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Lampsacus posted:What is your field? Teaching and training. I also had a go at jobs around my other studies like website or communications coordinator stuff but mostly learning and training. I always got great grades but I was also always working so I wasn't available for extra projects or internships outside the actual course requirements and a few small workshops.
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May 26, 2014 16:13
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If you know you will have a certain rate of natural attrition there is no actual loss to it. Very few people can afford to take 'unlimited' time off without a set return date, and forcing the very few who can to resign and/or reapply will potentially cost a fully trained staff member and take up extra admin time replacing them. "Sally is coming back from her years long backpacking world trip? Oh good, cos Joe just finished college and John will probably be ditched for poor performance soon"
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Jun 7, 2014 00:53
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I spent most of the day off calls doing admin. It's so beautiful I'm having such a nice day
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Jul 17, 2014 07:10
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At the end of a cs training session we were asked to come up with a team mission statement about our great cs. The look of confusion and concern I got when I said I didnt buy into the kool aid of motivationals and manager speak... I hate that it's not enough to do a good job, only 2 months in and nearly perfect quality scores (4 100s, 98, 92). Just let me work quietly and happily, drop the bullshit cult mentality of workplace culture.
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Jul 25, 2014 08:23
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Yeah, keep a real close eye on snacks and comfort eating
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Oct 16, 2014 22:43
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ZeroDays posted:That's too bad. This exact same poo poo happened a year or more ago ago. Cuntvalet has stockholm syndrome or something, don't encourage her.
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Oct 21, 2014 22:01
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Unless someone necroquoted her old post this is the second time her employer told her she was supposed to get the sack but as a consolation prize they'd let her stay in cs. I know times are tough for the young movers and shakers and you dont have to quit for nothing if you don't want to but finding a new job cant take that long if you're trying. They openly told her she will never progress past entry level and she's still hanging onto the delusion that one day it'll all be roses.
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Oct 22, 2014 01:01
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Team leaders are any combination of useless, flooded with emails from underlings they will never read, and too busy bullshitting their results to the people above them. Go corporate or public social media that they won't refund you, be explicit about the facts but brief so it can be read and understood in under 30 seconds.
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Nov 27, 2014 01:23
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Karma, customer just went apeshit at me to try and get to corporate, in case it wasn't obvious be polite to the phone crew you encounter while trying to get the message up the chain.
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Nov 27, 2014 03:21
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Teletech is the Kevin Bacon of call centres.
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Dec 4, 2014 12:09
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Welcome to the Hotel California.
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Apr 24, 2015 09:41
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Both. Also don't be too depressed about the Hotel California gag, kids, I quit my last call centre job in December because it got too much and a few months of unemployment* was so much better than the feelings I had working there. *I don't live in America so I was not summarily banished from society for being unemployed, your mileage may vary
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Apr 25, 2015 02:18
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