I've been working in call centers on and off since 1983, and I hated some of them; both inbound and outbound.

I've had to deal with the constant pressure from supervisors to keep my dialing and production rate up, while at the same time dealing with a lot of rejection. And this is not from outbound calls.

Ten years ago, I quit a part-time fundraising job that I hated so much, and was hired as a directory assistance operator for a company that took inbound calls from cellphone customers. It was OK in the beginning, but a few weeks after I was hired, I learned that I had to process the calls fast or else I wouldn't be working there.

I felt as though I jumped from the frying pan into the fire. If you ever needed a supervisor, you would have to yell out, "SUPERVISOR". One of the head operators would always yell out "12 on 36", or something like that everytime there were a lot of calls in the queue. Some of the numbers I was able to get right away; other's just simply took time. There were times that I couldn't even take a break or have lunch because of heavy call volumes.

I also this same senior operator sit next to me on Tuesdays from 12 noon until 1 to monitor me because I wasn't doing so well, and it really made me nervous.

Then one day, I was called into the office by the Call Center Trainer and was given a final written warning because of my job performance. I just wasn't processing the calls fast enough. They gave me two weeks to improve my performance or else I was going to be fired. Well, two weeks later, just minutes after I arrived for the start of my schedule shift, I was called into the Senior Supervisor's office, and even though he appreciated me coming in on time, I still wasn't processing the calls fast enought, and therefore, they had to let me go. I told him that it was simply for the best. And when I said my final good-byes to the staff, I just let them know that this job was just simply not for me.

My last job was as a Customer Service Rep for a company that had a contract with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. I had to hear these soap-opera style calls as to why these people couldn't pay their gas and electric bills. The supervisor monitored our talk times very closely and we had to process these calls fast. We were also given weekly updates and I just simply couldn't keep up with the changes. I even had disagreements with the supervisor over the length of my calls and I let her know that I could not put a time limit

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