by Jeff Smith

Created on: June 18, 2010

When I wrote this I originally was going to write my entire rant in one post, but as I delved deeper into the subject I found I have too many things to say, so consider this part 1 of 2.

I started my first call center job at age 21, I am almost 24 and I am still stuck in this line of "work."  I got my first series of crappy jobs as a teenager when I was 18 and in college, you know, working in retail stores, warehouses and other simple jobs like that.  Well, when I was 19, I was working at a warehouse, the job was simple, and I was content with it for about  a  year, but by the time I was 20 I had already spent 2 years in college, and at around that time I began to think that this type of physical labor was beneath me, after all I had spent two years in college, I thought, is this work really appropriate for me? I wanted something better, I wanted to work in a comfortable air conditioned office and I wanted to stop doing physical labor.

So I started looking for something else, I had done a bit of customer service work at the warehouse, so I decided to see if I could get a job in that, eventually I found a company called CableONE - they were an internet service provider and were looking for tech support agents, the qualifications were a technical background and some customer service experience, being a very computer-savvy person, and having a technology major, I seemed like the perfect fit, I had a couple of years of education and I had just enough customer service experience to be pleasant on the phone.  They offered $14/hour after the initial 90 day probation period, which was considerably more than I was making at the warehouse, they also offered bonuses which brought that hourly rate to around $16/hour, and the environment seemed nice: big air conditioned office, they had cubicles but I didn't mind them as they were fairly spacious, not the stereotypical tiny cubicles that you see on TV, they had xbox and ps2s in the lunch room, it just seemed like a cool job that payed decently. 

So I applied, I scheduled an appointment with their hiring people, I was interviewed and made to take  their technical proficiency tests, which were pretty easy, by the end of the interview and tests they hired me on the spot, they said I would start in about 2 weeks.  This was the first sign that something was wrong, who just hires people on the spot the same day of the initial interview?  I am not presumptuous enough to think I was

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