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Today I had my first angry customer at my new job, I had to ask her to repeat some information a few times as she was asking for an intersection and I wasn't quite remembering one of the street names. After she said some rude things to me I hung up the phone to end the call as she had stated she didn't need my help anymore. After I was onto my screen to take another call, I mumbled "and f*ck you", really quietly and I didn't even enunciate the word "gently caress" however I am now scared that it might have been recorded in that call. How long in your experience does the call keep recording after the disconnect?
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Aug 8, 2014 04:39
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Robin Sparkles posted:Today I had my first angry customer at my new job, I had to ask her to repeat some information a few times as she was asking for an intersection and I wasn't quite remembering one of the street names. After she said some rude things to me I hung up the phone to end the call as she had stated she didn't need my help anymore. You'll probably be fine, I told multiple callers to die in a fire as the call ended in similar circumstances to yourself and never got pulled up.
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Aug 8, 2014 08:40
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Robin Sparkles posted:Today I had my first angry customer at my new job, I had to ask her to repeat some information a few times as she was asking for an intersection and I wasn't quite remembering one of the street names. After she said some rude things to me I hung up the phone to end the call as she had stated she didn't need my help anymore. I've known a member of staff to be picked up calling a customer a "loving twat" immediately after they'd hung up. If they'd waited half a second then it wouldn't have caught it, and the only reason they really got in trouble was the customer requested a transcript of the call which had to include everything in the recording. If you waited a few seconds after the call you'll be fine unless someone was monitoring you live.
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Aug 8, 2014 09:06
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Robin Sparkles posted:Today I had my first angry customer at my new job, I had to ask her to repeat some information a few times as she was asking for an intersection and I wasn't quite remembering one of the street names. After she said some rude things to me I hung up the phone to end the call as she had stated she didn't need my help anymore. You'll probably be fine. I've done this as well back when i did ISP support and didn't catch any flak for it. In other news, I'm going back in  . Working for the goverment this time so no sales targets and that kind of bullshit. Just the regular kind.E:Got budget cutted out of the teaching job, was the youngest in the team so first to go.
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Aug 8, 2014 16:07
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Still haven't gotten out, still haven't gotten fired, I'm holding out at this point to see if I can move in somewhere with someone and want to save up as much as I can and can't transfer out and don't want to quit and work somewhere else only to leave in a month or two. Today was crappier than usual for me. To just throw it out there I work for a bank, won't say which one since I'm still there, but as stated our department is SUPPOSED to handle inbound employee inquiries for pre and post-charge-offs but now we also handle outbound pre-charge-offs asking people to pay up. Since my last post in May we STILL have not hired anyone and we are down to less than half the people we had a year ago, instead of 5 people from the original group left there are now 3 including me, and they MIGHT hire more in October, they're not sure yet. Despite all this they ALSO have us doing inbound customer post-charge-off calls periodically so now we're doing the work of about 3 and a half departments. Out of all the things I hate and experienced today, including a lady who demanded to know if we were convicting her of a crime and that's why we wouldn't remove her debt from Chexsystems early so she couldn't get a loan, a claims representative who wanted me to tell a banker why THEY weren't able to complete something in THEIR notes, and a customer who gave me a sob story about how her purse got stolen and she wasn't responsible for a debt from two years ago on an account that had been open 2 weeks and involved multiple bad check deposits (and nothing else) with checks from HER OWN ACCOUNT AT ANOTHER BANK. But the thing I hate the most is when customers outright just lie to my face. I don't mean the standard "I never got that" or "I don't remember this" that you can't prove or disprove, I mean the ones who swear up and down your system is wrong. The reason I hate this is because a customer today had an account that closed three weeks ago, we waived half the balance in fees for her while it was still overdrawn, a manager approved an extension, and she said she'd pay it off over a month with deposits each week. Of course she didn't do a single one, the account charged-off, and she had a paltry direct deposit for about 25 bucks come in last week that we of course used because it was an authorized deposit by the customer. So cue the customer stating no, she never agreed to that arrangement, she was never told the account would close, she told them she'd make payments when she went back to work which she didn't even know when that would be. I call her out and state that it is against policy to waive fees OR hold an account without a valid arrangement including the date and amount, so she would have had to agree to it to even get what was done for her. So she calls me the rudest person she has ever spoken to and wants to talk to someone else. I escalate it, tell the supervisor what she wants (the account reopened and her direct deposit back) and he proceeds to tell her that we'll just forgive the whole balance and she can apply for a new account (which isn't even what she wanted and she told him so but accepted). Spineless managers that go against you to give lying customers what they want just ruin my whole day. On top of that, I decided to get a chicken sandwich on the way home because comfort food helps and didn't find out they hosed up my order until I got home. Great way to end a great day, and I still have one more day to get through. Abandoned Toaster fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 23:47
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Thanks you guys, I do feel a bit better. I guess I am scared of getting an IPSO and having that come back to bite me, but I think in a week or so if I haven't heard anything about it, I should be fine. Today was a pretty bad day for me, I was getting really overwhelmed and I had a lot of frustrating calls come in, one of which escalated to a supervisor (my first). I do enjoy my job for the most part, but today just sucked on all levels.
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Aug 9, 2014 03:28
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So my call center requires us to ticket each call. Reasonable, sure. How they track that you are doing it is matching your # of contacts in our phone software, to the number of tickets in our accounting software. If you go below X percent then you get on an performance plan and have to track them. So suddenly mine are in the toilet and now i'm on a plan. Day 1 discovery. When you transfer a call to another department, the phone system increments you twice. Once for the incoming contact and once for outgoing. loving awesome. It is only 1 contact for me, but they're counting it as 2. When I saw this happen and mentioned it, I was told it is a known issue. But it still counts against me. "It shouldn't account for that many calls." FIX YOUR loving SOFTWARE.
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Aug 13, 2014 17:44
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I hate the "metric is broken, but you should be trying harder to meet it" speech.
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Aug 13, 2014 23:20
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you ate my cat posted:I hate the "metric is broken, but you should be trying harder to meet it" speech. A number was made-up for a goal we have, and it ended up being twice what the reality is showing. We've made good progress in getting closer, but there isn't any way that the number is ever going to be made. I called the person in charge of this metric, and his answer was "we can't just change it so you'll be making the goal." This makes my blood boil because they made the number up in the first place because they had no data, and now they have data to make the metric relevant. No big though, it's just one of the few bonuses I had an opportunity to make this year...
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Aug 14, 2014 15:30
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I wonder how many complaints it takes to get fired around here. I have an awful attitude anymore, I honestly don't give a gently caress and can't stop it from leaking out into actual customer calls. A customer this morning was rambling about some box between the cord and the plug and I told him I didn't know what box he was referring to, but he could just follow the cord to the plug. Then he started asking if this modem was better than that modem, to which I gave him some stupid car analogy. They're cable modems, they do the same thing, this one has some features that one doesn't but it doesn't mean its better or worse. I know I should just say yes to stupid questions, but I can't. I'm tired of stupid questions and idiots who make no effort to educate themselves or think. The customer asked me if i was on pills in the midst of his you are bad at your job rant, which was pretty funny.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:47
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jassi007 posted:I wonder how many complaints it takes to get fired around here. I have an awful attitude anymore, I honestly don't give a gently caress and can't stop it from leaking out into actual customer calls. A customer this morning was rambling about some box between the cord and the plug and I told him I didn't know what box he was referring to, but he could just follow the cord to the plug. Then he started asking if this modem was better than that modem, to which I gave him some stupid car analogy. They're cable modems, they do the same thing, this one has some features that one doesn't but it doesn't mean its better or worse. I know I should just say yes to stupid questions, but I can't. I'm tired of stupid questions and idiots who make no effort to educate themselves or think. The customer asked me if i was on pills in the midst of his you are bad at your job rant, which was pretty funny. Most of the time they have to call in and complain specifically about you, or you start getting caught on your QA's. I know where I worked was really lenient unless you specifically cussed someone out or did something racist or something really stupid. If you were just cranky you got coached a lot then sat with people who got good CSAT scores for a while. It took a lot to get fired as long as you weren't doing something egregious.
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Aug 19, 2014 23:19
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Gothmog1065 posted:Most of the time they have to call in and complain specifically about you, or you start getting caught on your QA's. I know where I worked was really lenient unless you specifically cussed someone out or did something racist or something really stupid. If you were just cranky you got coached a lot then sat with people who got good CSAT scores for a while. It took a lot to get fired as long as you weren't doing something egregious. At my previous callcenter gig you only got in trouble for poo poo if it got caught in QA as well, since the ISP i worked for was kind of huge we were able to get away with a lot of poo poo. Good thing the phonesystem let us know when we were being recorded as well.
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Aug 23, 2014 08:41
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jassi007 posted:I wonder how many complaints it takes to get fired around here. I have an awful attitude anymore, I honestly don't give a gently caress and can't stop it from leaking out into actual customer calls. A customer this morning was rambling about some box between the cord and the plug and I told him I didn't know what box he was referring to, but he could just follow the cord to the plug. Then he started asking if this modem was better than that modem, to which I gave him some stupid car analogy. They're cable modems, they do the same thing, this one has some features that one doesn't but it doesn't mean its better or worse. I know I should just say yes to stupid questions, but I can't. I'm tired of stupid questions and idiots who make no effort to educate themselves or think. The customer asked me if i was on pills in the midst of his you are bad at your job rant, which was pretty funny. I imagine it's just more or less how insistent the people complaining are. I've had a coworker of mine get fired for some dumb thing just because the person kept calling in until she got to like, some exec who ordered her fired. That or like was said, QA catching you. That said, I have this same problem some times. Sometimes it's just so hard to stop it from creeping in. I actually got one complaint that was basically 'agent did their job and all they were supposed to do but it was obvious he didn't care about his job.' Normally I take direct complaints seriously but I really couldn't for that one.
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Aug 24, 2014 03:23
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Can anyone tell me what it would be like to work for a major auto insurance company in the sales department of a call center?
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Aug 26, 2014 14:09
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Philosopher King posted:sales department
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Aug 26, 2014 18:05
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Is it commission?
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Aug 27, 2014 01:43
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Philosopher King posted:Can anyone tell me what it would be like to work for a major auto insurance company in the sales department of a call center? I worked for Progressive for 4 years but only on the service side, not sales. However, I knew sales, and sat with them a few times. You have to do a lot of licensing crap and hit goals, as far as Progressive goes, you were NOT commission, so sell 10 policies in a day, sell a 100, you're getting your 14 an hour plus whatever bonuses are going on that month. Also, you do a LOT of script reading, tons of verbatim scripts, because there are a lot of legal entanglements to starting an auto insurance contract. My overall impression was that it's boring as poo poo and not very fun/well paying, but it's generally less stress than services, because that's just a rule of thumb with any product, the sales aspect of it is all smiles because they haven't been pissed off by how lovely the product is yet.
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Aug 27, 2014 01:52
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Loving Life Partner posted:I worked for Progressive for 4 years but only on the service side, not sales. However, I knew sales, and sat with them a few times. You have to do a lot of licensing crap and hit goals, as far as Progressive goes, you were NOT commission, so sell 10 policies in a day, sell a 100, you're getting your 14 an hour plus whatever bonuses are going on that month. This is pretty much what I'm looking at. I hear everyone burns out in call centers and I can sort of understand why. I just don't know if the system is meant to put you through a grinder or what. If so many people are unhappy doing this crap they must know they're doing something wrong right? Anyway, I'm pretty much having to go this route. I was really hoping to skip toward a management trainee route before the burnout hit, or even starting there but by god, I found the one company that cares what your degree was in despite being out of college and having business experience for the past 5 years. If it doesn't say Business, Finance, or Accounting then you're SOL and gotta start at the bottom. Why exactly do they keep raising you in different tiers and stuff? Is it better to lowball your tier and hit bonus? What should I be doing exactly? I'm pretty good at sales but 10 hour days seem like a grind.
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Aug 27, 2014 05:56
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Philosopher King posted:I just don't know if the system is meant to put you through a grinder or what. If so many people are unhappy doing this crap they must know they're doing something wrong right? Oh my God, this is precious. Oh, sweet summer child, what do you know of cold and darkness without end?
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Aug 27, 2014 13:42
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I'm off the phones for another month! 
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Aug 27, 2014 14:35
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Philosopher King posted:This is pretty much what I'm looking at. I hear everyone burns out in call centers and I can sort of understand why. I just don't know if the system is meant to put you through a grinder or what. If so many people are unhappy doing this crap they must know they're doing something wrong right? There's a couple of answers to this: - The phone representatives and their direct supervisors are extremely aware of the low morale. Unfortunately, they have to meet metrics of their own, so they continue to implement policies and management tactics that work in the short term and burn people out long term. - Middle management (which often may not even be in the same building as the call center) often sets stats that are not realistic. Middle management also creates scripts. It's one thing to create a script to cover yourself in case of a legal issue, but these are also the people who will require a standard formal greeting at the beginning of every call. They are aware of turnover, but not aware of things like people being denied bathroom breaks.
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Aug 28, 2014 04:19
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legsarerequired posted:There's a couple of answers to this: This. From my own experiences TL's and other middle management, even those start out decent, turns selfish after a while cause they get dumped with unreasonable metrics. "Oh, one of your staff is hospitalized for 2 weeks. We understand. No we will not reduce your sales target. Now go gently caress off!"
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Aug 28, 2014 07:38
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My favorite are the direct managers that act like middle management, like the boss at my last job (also a call center, I'm an idiot btw).
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Aug 28, 2014 07:48
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Welp, Back into the trenches for me. Doing goverment work now so it's not quite hell yet, didn't get informed about a certain metric they measure in calls technique wise so i got completely hosed on my first eval. oh well.
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Sep 19, 2014 16:45
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Hahahaha. The loving trenches won't take me back. That is loving hilarious.
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Sep 20, 2014 02:26
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Gothmog1065 posted:Hahahaha. The loving trenches won't take me back. That is loving hilarious. That is pretty unbelievable because we've been getting killed by attrition.
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Sep 20, 2014 03:32
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Sub Rosa posted:That is pretty unbelievable because we've been getting killed by attrition. Ralph said my attendance was too bad or some poo poo. Had my "interview" with him and got my rejection email the next day. I don't think he wants to deal with me anymore, even though I know quite a few people would love for me to come back. But whatevs.
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Sep 20, 2014 15:29
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I started a call centre job a month ago. How long is it until I get traumatised? 
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Oct 2, 2014 14:47
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Rarity posted:I started a call centre job a month ago. How long is it until I get traumatised? During my interview I sat in with a veteran rep. The very first call was someone who spoke almost no English, so we contacted the language line for a Japanese translator. It turned out that it was a bank customer who saw our label on a piece of equipment and looked up our number online. It was a very confusing (but not traumatizing) call, so expect a lot of that kind of craziness.
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Oct 2, 2014 16:35
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Nocheez posted:During my interview I sat in with a veteran rep. The very first call was someone who spoke almost no English, so we contacted the language line for a Japanese translator. It turned out that it was a bank customer who saw our label on a piece of equipment and looked up our number online. It was a very confusing (but not traumatizing) call, so expect a lot of that kind of craziness. Well it's outbound cold calls so I don't get any of that. Just lots of people slamming the phone down on me 
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Oct 2, 2014 16:37
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You will feel despondant within the hour. Youll feel sick thinking about getting up and going to work within the week. You will contemplate either suicide or murder (depending on your personaility) within the month. Eventually you will go numb. If youre lucky.
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Oct 2, 2014 17:01
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I walked into work yesterday to find that every single friend I had in the office had either been fired or quit overnight. So that kinda sucked. I'm working on a different campaign to the one they were on (we're fundraisers) so I still have a job for now but I'm new so it's hardly stable. I pulled myself back up and got back to it but it's a shame that my job is now just a job and not an opportunity to hang out with my mates as well. I'm just going to keep to myself now and just use my breaks to get some peace and quiet. Overall I'm actually kind of enjoying this gig. Fundraising makes for a little different vibe to most call centres it seems. There's no dress code (there's one girl who wears crop tops and mini dresses), I get radio in my headset between calls, I get to climb all over my chair all day, the people are fairly laid back, I really enjoy pitching my charity, I get to silently laugh at old racist people and getting a PDD feels amazing. The worst thing is the somewhat misogynistic company culture. Every Friday we have a shouty bloke list off successes and the like and then he ends with a laddy call-and-response bit that's real offensive. One girl I knew ended up quitting because of the culture but she taped this call-and-response thing on her phone and sent it to her temp agency and the charity she'd been calling for on Wednesday. This may well be connected to all the people getting fired on Thursday.
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Oct 4, 2014 21:58
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Rarity posted:Well it's outbound cold calls so I don't get any of that. Just lots of people slamming the phone down on me I enjoyed Outbound Sales quite a bit more then Inbound Tech Support when I was working at a call centre. Worst people can do is yell and hang up. The downside was there was a lot more pressure in sales as far as numbers go, but the earning potiential was 10 times any other job there.
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Oct 5, 2014 13:40
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I somehow found a way to cope for awhile and while I didn't enjoy the job, I was getting to do way more floor support and training new hires. Of course this didn't come with a pay raise but it's time off the phones and time doing what I actually enjoy. And then we went to all hands on deck and I started developing what I have a sneaking suspicion may be honest to god depression. I'm going to be setting up an appointment wih my doctor to find out. In the meantime, it's getting harder and harder to feel safe here. Our centre has three lines of business. Let's call them 1, 2 and 3. Line 1 started shutting down and retraining the agents they saw as acceptable for line 2 and 3. Not long after, we got word that line 3 was going down too. I'm in line 2. Line 2 has a new training class set up for November. I've noticed the centre starting to cut costs on lighting, changing what was an enviable benefits package (we didn't pay a premium or pay into it at all) to one we had to pay into aaaand cut down what our benefits covered. The OM has admitted that without the two other lines bringing in money, costs would have to be cut and things have to be changed. We are moving to shift bidding (ugh horrified for this) and there has been a general crackdown on metrics and aux adherence and absenteeism all while our call volume is starting to slow, due to another centre opening in another city that does the same inbound tech for the company as we do. The possibility of line 2 going down has been on everybody's lips especially after June when we were getting VTO every day and had 10 - 20 minutes between calls. I'm doubtful because of all the new hires but at the same time, Line 1 was hiring and training up to four months before they started going down. It's interesting to note that the nearly abandoned mall that our call centre is in May end up being purchased by a local post secondary institution. We've been reassured that we have a lease until 2016 but I'm not so sure. On top of that we sometimes have potential clients come through. Generally we never know about it. In September we had one and the whole centre went to overhaul mode. Cleaned desks, shampooed carpets, repainting the walls, and basically getting to hundreds of way overdue maintenance things. I guess what I'm trying to ask with that giant word salad, is has anybody seen this sort of thing happen in their centers past or present? Is this indicative of a centre possibly going downhill for the worse? Also sorry about the giant post. I haven't posted to this thread in a hella long time.
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Oct 7, 2014 16:17
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I hope you're looking for another job
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Oct 7, 2014 16:36
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Get your resume polished up and start looking for another job. That place is likely circling the drain.
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Oct 7, 2014 16:45
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Armacham posted:I hope you're looking for another job Nocheez posted:Get your resume polished up and start looking for another job. That place is likely circling the drain. I am! I've got a contact in another call centre a few cities away (I'd prefer not to go into another one but this one sounds less soul sucking) and I'm able to drive on my own now so possibilities have been looking up. I'm planning on using my paid vacation time to get resumes prettied up and sent out and I'm also planning on going back to school since my previous degree and post graduate aren't as helpful as id thought. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this place is on it's last legs.
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Oct 7, 2014 16:52
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Yeah, it sounds like that place is hosed. They'll tell you everything is great right up until they hit the point at which they're legally required to give you notice that they're closing.
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Oct 7, 2014 17:43
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Fil5000 posted:Yeah, it sounds like that place is hosed. They'll tell you everything is great right up until they hit the point at which they're legally required to give you notice that they're closing. I noticed that sort if thing with line 1 and even with line 3. Obviously it's hard to get a straight answer with the usual rumor mill but my god it's been a wild ride these last few months.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:10
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cuntvalet posted:I noticed that sort if thing with line 1 and even with line 3. Obviously it's hard to get a straight answer with the usual rumor mill but my god it's been a wild ride these last few months. There's nothing in it for them in giving you a straight answer at all in this case - if they're honest with you then you gently caress off earlier than they were planning for and that last bit of revenue they were going to squeeze from you goes down the pan. Plus they probably still have some hope they can salvage some part of some contract somewhere that they'll need staff for.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:39
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