by Lisa Fagan

Created on: August 31, 2008

It has become management control, lack of trust, time constraints, quick decisions, and production. Every time you call a company you will get a recordind that says "For quality and training purposes, this call may be monitored or recorded."

In November of '97, I had left a part-time telephone fundraising job for a new job as a call-center operator. I was responsible for processing inbound calls from cellphone customers who wanted a telephone number to either a pizza place, an Italian restaurant, a doctor's office, a private residence, and so forth. Some of the numbers I was able to get right away; others just simply took time. As much as I didn't like the company, I took it out of desperation to get away from the fundraising job; which I felt was too high-pressured.

Not to long after I got this job, I learned that I had to prcess the calls really fast or else I couldn't work there. I felt as though I went from the frying pan into the fire. This was customer service. People were calling you up for information; you weren't calling them to beg them to give money or sell a product or service that they didn't need, and you had to meet a certain quota. If the call volume was ever down, they would end up sending you home.

I remember working there on Super Bowl Sunday, and we didn't get a whole lot of calls. The next day, I heard one of the supervisors asks "Why didn't you give them any E-time?" (E-time meant getting sent home). But if the call volume was high, the senior operator would shout out "12 on 36" (that meant that there were a lot of calls in the queue.)

Just like outbound calls, our calls were monitored and we had to meet the company's "ten standards.". Because I wasn't processing the calls fast, they put one of the senior operators right next to me to monitor my phone calls, and this really made me nervous.

A few weeks later, I was called into the office by the woman who hired and trained me. Because I wsn't processing the calls fast enough, she gave me a final written warning to imporive my performance in two weeks or else I was going to be fired. As much as I tried, and even though I got it down pretty close to what they wanted, it still wasn't good enough for them. Then two weeks later, just as I was getting ready to get started, I was once again called into the office by the senior supervisor. As much as he appreciated my attendance, they had to let me go, and I told them that it was simply for the best. That type of work was simply not for me.

In December,

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