A "self-portrait" doodle I saved in my stuff...from 28 years ago
when I was working at the call center...
These days when I have to call customer service for a problem, you know, the credit card…the power company…whatever call center I have to call I usually begin the conversation by saying: “Now if my tone gets a little angry or whatever it’s not directed at you. I am frustrated with your corporate masters. I’m sure you do a fine job, you should actually get paid double what they’re paying you, you should only have to work 30 hours a week and get paid holidays, full paid medical and a free bar in the break room for all the stuff you have to put up with all day…”
I say this because I have walked in the shoes
of those who work at call centers.
It was one of
those jobs that I worked once upon a time and I thought I could make a go of it
when The Lady of the House and I moved to Pensacola in 2015.
I had tried
selling cars and got fired after 6 weeks….I didn’t sell enough cars…six wasn’t
enough for ‘em. I worked shuttling cars and pickups to and from the
local auto auction and dealerships but that was basically just 20 hours a week
at minimum wage. I turned down a gig with a funeral home, being “on
call” to go pick up bodies at any time of day and getting 10 dollars an hour…it
was the “on call” part I didn’t like.
So the local
big call center was looking to bring people on board to earn “big coin”…for
Pensacola: $11.00 an hour.
By the way, sidebar comment: If you want to make a small fortune in
Pensacola…go there with a large one.
Anyway, back to the job at the call center…
The deal was
they put you through 6 weeks paid training and then you were on your own.
The place was
like a giant mutation of high school.
During breaks
many an employee would band together in their own little cliques and say snarky
things about other people and cliques. If
that doesn’t bring back memories of high school I don’t know what will.
I’d say on
average the cops were called to the place about twice a week over hair-pullin’,
nail-scratchin’, “cat fights” between female employees…I reckon because
probably 80% of the call center operators were women.
In week three
they let us trainees take “real” calls instead of role-playing with each
other. I should say that by week three we were down to about 30
trainees. We had started out with 60. Some folks
discovered that call center work was not for them.
I had trouble
navigating through all the stuff of this one customer’s account and the
computers they had us on weren’t the fastest.
“I’m sorry,”
I said to Ms. Customer, “I’m new here and I’m having a bit of trouble with the
system.”
Almost as
soon as I said that The Trainer comes to me and whispers, “When you’re through
with that call put your system on hold.” That meant I was to take no
more calls.
It turns out
she had told that to everyone in the room.
There was to
be a “teachable moment” for the class…
…about what I
had just said to Ms. Customer.
“Now class, Mr.
McGee just told a customer that he is new here and he was having trouble
navigating the system,” Ms. Trainer had just dished out that info in a calm,
measured voice. But then she turned a
bit sterner and louder, “WE NEVER TELL THE CUSTOMER THAT WE ARE NEW OR
PERSONALLY HAVING TROUBLE WITH THE SYSTEM.”
Ms. Trainer
looked around the room.
“Our
customers call here expecting to get top notch service. Admitting
that you are personally having trouble with the system does not convey the
confidence we wish to portray to our customers.”
“If you are
having trouble it is acceptable to say, ‘I apologize for the delay, our IT crew
is upgrading the system and it’s causing a slowdown.”
I raised my
hand.
“Yes, Mr.
McGee,” said Ms. Trainer.
“So,” I said,
“It’s okay to lie, to be dishonest in order to preserve appearances, for the
sake of good marketing.”
My statement
was met by an icy stare and silence from the instructor and a few titters from
some class members.
Halfway into
the next week I could sense that a career at the call center was not to be mine: I had trouble dealing with the questions and
the various products folks were calling about. During lunch I called
The Lady of the House and told her about my troubles in navigating the waters
of call centerdom.
“Just come on
home,” said The Lady of the House. “Come on home, have lunch and go
right out to the auto auction and get that job back.”
I thought I’d
do alright at the call center, after all I hadn’t done half bad when I worked
at one in Albuquerque in 1990.
I was working for a temp agency and had done
things like assemble giant-ass shelves for a warehouse, help move a department
store from one mall to another and moving along the floor of a nursing home on
my hands and knees wiping dried loogies and flipped boogers off the walls.
It was that last gig that gave me the nerve
to approach my handlers at the temp agency about getting a better gig.
“Guys,” I said one day with a smile, “Don’t
you have an office gig you can get me into?
I can type. I can wear a tie.”
The answer to my question was being assigned
to the credit card division of Megabank’s** offices in Albuquerque.
For eight hours a day I was placed in front
of a pre-Windows green screen computer with telephone headphones I bought with
my own coin at Radio Shack and took calls randomly thrown at me from various
parts of the country.
My job was to connect with Megabank credit
card customers who were just over 30 days past due in a payment on their
account. The department I was in was
called “Bucket 1.” The “buckets” ranged
from 1 to 6, that means from 1 month to 6 months past due. The higher the number the more hard-assed the
call center operators. After Bucket 6 it was off to hard-core collections peeps.
One day I was passing by the Bucket 6 room and heard one of the operators having a chat with a customer…
“Yes ma’am,” said the voice from one of the
cubicles, “I understand your husband died and your personal finances are in
disarray. Yes ma’am, I understand you
are two months behind in your house payments….”
Then the call center fellow raised his voice
and added some sharpness, “BUT THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS MRS. SMITH YOU USED
YOUR MEGABANK CREDIT CARD TO MAKE PURCHASES AND YOU OWE US MONEY. NOW WHEN CAN WE EXPECT YOUR CHECK FOR 275
DOLLARS?”
This was long before
computers could measure how well a call center operator was doing. Your success was based on how many “PTPs” you
could get per hour…PTP standing for “promise to pay.”
Get above 15 PTPs on average and you were
doing okay. Get an average of below 15
PTPs per hour 3 months in a row and you were out of work.
So there was no time to listen to sob
stories, no time to chat about the weather in wherever the cardholder might be…we were
on the phone to get the cardholder to say, “Yes, I’ll send that payment to you
right away.”
It was a pain in the ass job, working to
steer a conversation about someone’s personal finances.
But I learned a few things about people.
I learned that most folks in the Rocky
Mountain states, more specifically the Mountain Time Zone states, were generally
easy going and polite….at least in 1990.
On the other hand, it seemed like every
person I called in California thought they were lawyers. Hell, maybe they WERE lawyers. “I KNOW MY RIGHTS,” were words that
eventually came from many a California cardholder.
Texans didn’t seem to care. I can’t remember the exact wording but it
seems back in 1990 there was really no way to recoup the company’s money if
someone in Texas didn’t have a mind to pay.
The cardholder’s credit would be shot to hell but Megabank wasn’t
getting its money.
Oh, it was from a Texan that I learned a new
way to be an asshole.
“Hello,” I started the call one work day
morning, “May I speak with Mr. Wickerbill**please?”
“This is Mr. Wickerbill,” came the reply over
the phone from some town in the Dallas area.
“Mr. Wickerbill, my name is Grant. I’m with Megabank. I’m calling to remind you you are 30 days
late with your monthly payment. We’re
calling to ask when may we expect your payment.”
There was silence on the line.
“Mr. Wickerbill? Are you still there?”
“Yes I am,” said Mr. Wickerbill, “What’s your
name again please?”
“Grant.”
And with that answer Mr. Wickerbill’s
demeanor changed from that of just a guy on the phone to a Grade-A, US Prime
angry-sounding asshole.
“You listen to me, Grant. Are you listening to me Grant? Let me tell you something, Grant. Grant, don’t you or anyone else from Megabank
EVER call me at my place of employment, do you hear me Grant? Grant, I’m talking to you. ANSWER ME, GRANT.”
“I’m listening, Mr. Wickerbill.”
“I will pay this bill when I’m God-damned
good and ready, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME GRANT?
But NO ONE from Megabank better ever call me where I work, ARE YOU
TAKING NOTES GRANT? GOOD BYE, GRANT.”
And he hung up.
I sat there for a minute then took a break to
get my blood pressure down.
The dude had just verbally beat the hell out
of me with my own name. It was
different. It was unique. It was a weird feeling. I wondered where the hell he learned that.
It was a little thing I filed away for future
use.
There were some lighter moments too, like the
time I called Detroit early one morning.
“Hah-low?” it was a kid answering the phone.
“Hi there,” I said in my cheery Megabank
voice, “May I speak with Mrs. Anderson**?
“Jus’ a min,” said the kid.
There was a loud clattering as the phone
obviously fell on the floor. I could
hear kid footsteps running through the house.
And then the kid’s voice.
“MAMA,” yelled the kid, “THERE’S A WHITE MAN
ON THE PHONE.”
I leaned back in my chair and laughed a bit.
As time went on with my big bill collector’s
job with Megabank I saw no future in it.
My PTP average was 13 per hour for two months in a row. They always posted the standings on the
office bulletin board at the end of every week, like finals grades in college.
And there were meetings. Meetings for meetings sake. It was a culture I was unfamiliar with. Meeting to meet. I hate meetings. They make me sleepy. It’s why I won’t go into politics. I’d probably fall asleep during a key meeting
and then reporters would be all over my ass, front page news, “MCGEE SLEEPS
THROUGH KEY MEETING.”
I went back into radio.
While it wasn’t wiping dried loogies and
boogers off the walls of nursing homes, call center work wasn’t my cup of tea.
As a matter of fact, now I wonder why the
hell I decided to go after the call center job in Pensacola in the first place.
-30-
** Fictitious name.
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