To my great shock and horror, I have been employed at a call center for a year and a half. Every morning the sense of dread that envelops me is overwhelming, and I am not sure how I have managed to muster up the strength to show up every day. Every day when I'm driving to work I have to fight the urge not to turn right back around, go back home, and go to bed. I've done that a couple of times and it was great, except for the grief I got the next day due to the strict and impossible attendance guidelines.

Every day while sitting in my itty bitty cubicle I dream about making a run for it. I could take the empty shoebox from my desk drawer and toss all items of sentimental value into in. I would make sure my supervisor was not at her desk and e-mail her the resignation letter I wrote months ago. My timing would be perfect. I would log off the computer on my scheduled break, put the shoebox under my arm, and walk out. It would be that easy.

Call center work is demeaning and soul sucking. I feel a little piece of me dying every day. Being literally tied to a headset for 8 hours a day is hell. I am yelled at constantly by people who cannot pay their bill and by the end of the day I have been called every nasty name in the book. My supervisor says this is just something everyone has to get used to and that I need to develop a tougher skin. I don't want a tougher skin, and I am sick of this place telling me who I need to be and how I need to think. The supervisors
don't care anyway. All they care about is average handle time and how high your scores are on the calls that were monitored.

I'm not sure what keeps me going back every day. The health benefits are great, but you can never get the time off approved to actually go to the doctor. Maybe I secretly enjoy being tortured every day, who knows.

I have not made any friends. I choose to call then acquaintances. If you get to close you will become one of then. The seasoned agents here all are bitter, angry women. You can even smell the whiskey on the breath of some of them. I do feel myself slowly becoming more like them though, angry all the time, too wiped out at the end of day to enjoy my children. My doctor wants to put me on anxiety and depression medication. What has this place done to me? Why am i still here. I used to be happy.

We have a stupid sign above the door that I pass by every day on my way to cubicle with a happy face and a sad face that reads, "Choose your Attitude" I flip it the finger every morning. Maybe I will walk under that sign for the last time today. Life is too short to be miserable.

Learn more about this author, Wendy Ware.
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