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My stress toy is chewing gum. I have about six packs of sugar-free chewing gum in my desk, and everyone knows to ask me for a stick or two. Today was actually a good day at my insurance claims call center. I was a little annoyed by these callers who were from a religious volunteer group. They were at this old man's house, and were offering to fix all of his storm damage for free. This sounded really cool. The old man hadn't really heard of the organization and was wanting to talk it over with his property adjuster. The head volunteer seemed to grab the phone from him and hung up while I was trying to transfer her to a licensed adjuster that could talk to the homeowner about how this would affect reimbursement and stuff. :\ I figure that every day here is another day of experience in the office, and something that will make me better prepared when I graduate with my master's (or doctorate, depending on how the economy looks...) and desperately need some kind of work to pay student loans.
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Apr 9, 2011 00:42
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I don't know how much longer I can do this... I feel sick to my stomach when I think about going to work. My current company pays really well for an entry level call center job--I get paid over $35,000 per year with benefits and I have more than two weeks of PTO. I've been trying to get out, but I had over 20 interviews earlier this year and I never got a call back or anything. Then I was dumb and cut my hair really short (I'm a woman), and I think it looks kind of goofy and awful, so my interviews are probably going to be even worse now. I'm taking the GRE this Thursday, but I know I'm not ready, and unfortunately it's my last chance to take it before they release a new version with more difficult math questions next month. I just feel like I'm stuck here forever. I don't feel like I need anything particularly high paying, or anything in a specific field. I just want a job around people that aren't nuts. I'd like co-workers that: - don't think they're psychonauts for watching Inception drunk and alone - who aren't obviously one hair away from quitting, all the time, and who can find things to talk about besides how much they hate this place - who don't assume I'm a shut-in just because my sparse facebook profile* isn't full of drunk pictures of me. Holy poo poo, none of these people loving understand professionalism. - would not make comments on my loving weight gain. Maybe I'm taking this too personally, but it just pisses me off because I've gained about 15 pounds while working here, despite starting a work-out regimen of five days a week and cutting back on fast food and cutting down my portions and cutting sodas from my diet. All of my co-workers eat two meals of fried food a day every work day, and the only snacks or treats we ever get at work are fatty stuff like chips or ice cream--DESPITE VIRTUALLY EVERYONE BITCHING ABOUT THE GENERAL CALL CENTER WEIGHT GAIN--so it kind of pisses me off when my manager will pass out awful food, then invite herself into a conversation about my diet. - more on managers: I've gotten like three toys or trinkets with the company name on them since I began work here. gently caress that. I want a bonus, or maybe an hour of PTO so I can leave early some day. It blows my mind that despite how depressed I am, I've already received a raise and they're having me participate in off-phone projects. My boss did talk about promoting me (I haven't brought it up, because I didn't think it was an option), but she hasn't brought it to the table since, and apparently every drat customer service rep in the company thinks they're on track to some adjuster position or something, so I just think it's pointless to get hopeful about it. I don't know, we're having coaching time this week, so maybe I'll bring it up then. I just feel really incredibly hopeless. I'm sick of being told I'm not passionate about customer service when a secretary for someone who makes four times as much as me calls in just wanting to see if a check has been mailed, and I don't spend like two minutes asking for her name and making smalltalk about her day. I'm sick of my boss telling me I need to take more initiative when I spend about three minutes of personal time for a bathroom break--especially since I had to complete a stupid twenty minute ergonomics training that said I needed two minutes away from the computer every hour anyway, but apparently that will kill my rta scores. I'm sick of having to cater to douchebags that don't think I'm a person. I'm just sick of pretending to care, and it's made worse by the fact that I don't know when I'm going to get out, and if I do get out, my only other option might be another call center. I'm really thinking of asking to work only 35 hours a week, but I know that's an awful idea. I just hear about other call centers where people will work four eight-hour days, and then a fifth four-hour day, and I think I'd be much less burned out if I could just do that. * See, on my first week of training, one of my assistant trainers was this goddamn nut who treats the office like her social life, and she became obsessed with finding and adding everyone on Facebook. Lets call her Betty. There is something *wrong* with Betty. I actually wouldn't mind working at an office where we had barbeques or whatever that people go to, and I've had drinks with co-workers and so on, but this lady actually gets angry if you don't want your whole life to revolve around her. I got lunch during a workday with someone who Betty designated as her best friend or something, while Betty had taken a week of vacation to hang out with her Internet boyfriend who flew in from out of the country. This friend mentioned later to Betty that the two of us had had lunch together, and Betty threw a screaming, raging fit about dare we exclude her, and we didn't know that she was too busy, and it was so rude of us not to call and invite her, etc. I knew she was loving nuts from the start, honestly. I lied and told her that I'd deleted my Facebook while job hunting, and she looked completely baffled. She just stared at me. Then later, while I was in the breakroom, I was talking to another co-worker about Facebook and Twitter, and she overheard us, and she literally got in my face and said "Are you sure you don't have Facebook?" I ended up just making a fake one for work because why the gently caress not. Another person, the 35-year old who was bragging about watching Inception drunk, used it to tell me he's in school for chemical engineering "once (he) passes college algebra" and to ask me out, ughghghghghghgh. legsarerequired fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Jul 10, 2011 |
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Jul 10, 2011 16:20
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Fil5000 posted:I have made probably one of the best friends I've ever had when I was working phones, and that was probably the only thing that kept me from leaving untilI got a ton of off phone duties and eventual promotion. At my office, most of the people sit close to their supervisors. There are some weird people who have to sit far away due to the layout of the office--like, a new hire might be sitting at an empty cubicle of someone who recently quit. I don't know, there are a couple of people at my call center who I talk to during time between calls, but as for the others, they just seem to have different priorities than me--maybe they have kids outside of work, or they think it's funny to joke about how they "gave up" a long time ago, or they're like that crazy lady who has absolutely no sense of personal boundaries--just poo poo like that that really turns me off. I have been told by veterans of other call centers that the work environment here is relatively negative though... Maybe I'll be happier if I just try to be a little friendlier to people.
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Jul 10, 2011 20:40
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So I'm curious--what are the salaries and benefits for the other people here, if you all are comfortable sharing? I make approx $35,000 per year with benefits and about 20-25 days of PTO (I bought an extra five days, so I don't remember exactly how much time off I get). The other call center I know about pays $10 an hour and doesn't offer paid time off, so I get the feeling that I have a pretty good deal for the type of work I'm doing... Devyl posted:Welp, found out yesterday that I now have to wear a uniform of sorts for work. They're ordering us polos and we have to wear khakis or black pants with them. In a call center. That sees no one but fellow employees. I just keep being reminded of this commercial. My job has a similar dress code. We used to wear jeans on Fridays, but someone complained that denim was too unprofessional and now we have to wear business clothes every day.
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Jul 14, 2011 02:12
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Bovine Delight posted:$8/hr for a call center seems low. I know all the call centers nearby pay at least $12/hr, most around $13-$15. I've wondered about this myself. I have a few friends who work at a tech support call center that pays about $8-9/hour. There's tons of reviews on glassdoor.com complaining about the pay, but I notice that this call center also has a very liberal dress code (i.e., jeans are okay, facial piercings and unnatural hair colors are okay, ripped clothing is okay) and it seems a little easier for employees to move from entry-level roles after they've stuck around for a while. I've also heard really liberal things about the work environment--they have a gym onsite, offer free lunch to employees, etc. I also notice that while employees might work unusual hours and shifts, they're guaranteed two consecutive days off during the week. My call center initially paid me about $35.2k for entry level customer service calls, but I've only heard of two people ever moving on from an entry-level position taking phone calls, even though most of the people that work there have been with the company for at least five years... We also have to wear slacks, blouses, closed-toe shoes and the like, since we share an office building with professionals who don't do call center work. Most of the employees also have split days off. I've been looking through job listings, and I really do wonder if the high pay is to compensate for us adhering to a stricter dress code and a less flexible schedule than what I've heard about most call centers.
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Jul 19, 2011 18:46
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Huh, so apparently my call center might be hiring people soon for off-phone work. The two openings are overnights, but I don't really care--I'm just sick of answering phones, and maybe this would at least be able to get me a day job at some point in anything besides customer service. The job duty would pretty much be to predict call volume and ensure the center was staffed to handle the calls. My manager has been talking about introducing me to other departments, so I think I would have her vouching for me. I also know that this department hires from customer service sometimes. Has anyone made that transition, and is there anything in particular that I should emphasize in the interview for this type of position?
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Jul 19, 2011 23:52
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I have two programs for looking up clients, a program for the phone, a claim reporting program, a claim directory software, e-mail, internal messaging program, two spreadsheets with phone numbers, an employee phone number directory and two billing directory softwares. I also sometimes have another browser window running for playing around on the internet between calls. My office used to have a policy that all of these programs had to be up and running by the beginning of the shift each day, but they got really paranoid about lawsuits recently and started insisting that we can't even stand near our desks until the beginning of shift. EDIT: In other news, my potential manager seems to like me, and I might not have much competition for this position because the hours are pretty varied. I'm not looking forward to working overnights, but I honestly just want experience in anything off of the phones. legsarerequired fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Jul 29, 2011 |
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Jul 29, 2011 18:36
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Ugly In The Morning posted:gently caress. Is there any way to shake this? It feels loving awful. Aw, dude.  What I do to combat this type of feeling is plan something special, like maybe a small daytrip. I don't know how your financial situation is, but do you think you might be able to take a small daytrip to a part of the city that you haven't seen, or even another city, just to get a break from your everyday surroundings? Maybe even visit a part of town you haven't been to before? Or even just call in sick with food poisoning, eat the verbal warning you get or whatever, and just enjoy a long weekend?I had a phase in February where I was calling in sick, taking lots of personal time, etc and just generally feeling burned out, so I used some money in my savings to plan a trip to Boston. Other times I've just planned roadtrips to farms in the suburbs, found something weird and a little out of the way that I want to visit, etc. I don't know how your financial situation is, but adding things to your weekly schedule that aren't *work* can help too, like volunteering... I usually cheer myself up by thinking of what a breeze a non-call center job will be if I can keep my hopes up while working at a place like this. Also, you are far from alone in being over-qualified from call center work, if it makes you feel better at all. Almost every new hire in my company has at least a bachelors degree. :\ The guy in the cubicle next to me has a master's in public health or something similar, and the guy next to him is working on his second master's in something related to corporate communications.
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Aug 4, 2011 15:47
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I made a fake work-only Facebook for my job, because one of my supervisors was incredibly adamant about adding everyone in my training class for some unfathomable reason. I initially lied and told her I didn't have a profile, but she overheard me talking about Facebook to a co-worker and asked me to add her. I just made up a profile that just has pictures from my vacations and stuff that I never log in on. There are some people who I get along with that I'd like to add on my personal profile, but in the past I've had issues with co-workers taking it personally that they were not added or whatever and then acting passive-aggressive in the office, so I'm just going to keep everyone on the professional profile until I eventually quit. My co-workers seem to have added managers and other employees onto their personal profiles, and they constantly complain about their jobs. I haven't heard about any consequences or disciplinary actions, although I still wouldn't do it... I don't think I have anything incriminating in my personal profiles, but I just like being able to speak semi-freely without worrying about someone reporting me. :\
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Aug 7, 2011 23:27
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I just can't bring myself to act over-sympathetic to people who are just trying to bully me, so I just become really dry and apologetic. I'll probably get in trouble if any of these calls are recorded since my center is really big on acting really enthusiastic and empathetic. Another thing I hate is when people think they can call me out or whatever. I was on the phone with some lady for 40 minutes because she was convinced I was hiding some information from her. All I needed to do was give her a phone number to a specific person and transfer her, but she was convinced I was trying to give her the run-around or something. After 40 minutes of dealing with her asking over and over again why I couldn't get to this piece of information, with slightly different wording each time, and lots of "I just don't understand why you can't look this up for me," she finally wrote down this person's phone number--after I'd offered it multiple times--and said she'd just call back later when I offered to transfer her. This would have been a five minute call at the most if she had just let me transfer her. Then yesterday, there was a guy who called with a really, really unusual question about what was covered on his insurance policy. There's a department that normally handles general questions about policies, and I told him I'd get him to someone that could help him since I didn't have the training to deal with his situation. He was the worst jerk about wanting to know why I couldn't just answer his question. When I finally was able to put him on hold to get in touch with the other department that normally takes those types of questions, that department didn't know what to do with his particular circumstances. So I got back to him, apologized and told him he'd have to talk to a specific type of professional, and he gave the most condescending lecture about how I'd misled him and how I didn't have the training to understand his predicament (no poo poo, I'd been telling him this from the beginning), and he hung up. Also, people who call with noisy backgrounds and get angry when I ask them to repeat things. Or people who have a name that sounds similar to a popular name, and who get indignant when I ask "Is it alright if I call you (name that I thought I heard)?" I actually have a name with multiple possible spellings that sounds a lot like a bunch of popular female names, so I have no idea why some people get so drat exasperated just because I didn't hear their name quite right in their noisy environment. I actually feel like I prefer the angry, pissed off callers more than the ones that are just quietly exasperated and condescending. I think my boss is starting to sense that I'm a little burned out, and he's offered to listen to me whenever I'm about to lose it, but I'm afraid to take him up on that offer just because it seems like such a bad idea from a professional standpoint... I'd much rather just save it for a dumb Internet board.
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Aug 10, 2011 05:06
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ratbert90 posted:And I once failed a survey with the reasoning being that I was amazing, wonderful, polite and helpful, but the manager the guy talked to at the Verizon store 3 weeks ago sucked. I always wonder about this. I feel really nervous when customers start off a call by saying that they've been transferred a bunch, or have had some negative experiences, because they might talk about that instead of my performance in the survey. I think the only time I failed a survey was with this old man who was just angry at EVERYTHING. The caller ID filled in an incorrect number for his house phone. When I read it back to him, he got really upset that it was the wrong number, and demanded to know why the phone had misread his house number. Me: Ah... Well, if you were transferred from elsewhere... Him: NO, I called you directly. Me: Well, sometimes the system misreads the numbers. Him: This is YOUR COMPANY'S phone system, you should understand HOW IT WORKS. He was pretty much an rear end for the rest of the call. He was my only loud, rude customer for that quarter, so I'm mostly confident that failed survey came from him.
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Aug 14, 2011 02:48
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:I wish it were like that, but instead it's all completely subjective junk like 30% for whether you show "empathy." See, here's what I don't like. I understand why they have us over-apologize and act over-interested with customers who have never called in before, but I sometimes get calls from people who know the routine and just want to get through the call as quickly as possible (think secretaries, other companies, etc). I can sense these people actually getting annoyed if I take too long with niceties, and it just ticks me off that I'm going to have to endure a lecture about engaging the customer just because I tried to get through the call as quickly as I could with them. I think my manager senses that I'm getting burned out... She warned me about getting repetitive and formulaic during calls (as if certain customers care), and told me to talk to her if I felt burned out. I don't want to take that opportunity though, because I think I would just be complaining about something really frivolous that she can't really change.
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Aug 24, 2011 06:56
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Fizzle posted:"MAY I speak with <name>?" will avoid this issue Oh lord, people like this. I cannot stand people who get call me out over minor grammar errors in speech. Also, old guys who call me "sweetie" a bunch of times and ask me to "say it pretty" when I give them policy information and give me unnecessary information about their dating lives. Gross. I'm sure I would be allowed to disconnect from someone who was being blatantly vulgar, but I really hate how much we let our customers get away with.
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Aug 25, 2011 18:03
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What's everyone's favorite snacks? I've been bringing fruit, carrots and those low-calorie grain bars to work, but I'm hoping to find something that I could eat more quickly (or more quietly) during calls. Regarding rude states--If I were not familiar with American stereotypes, I would have guessed that Boston and Pennsylvania (no specific city here, just the whole state) would be the states with the worst reputation as far as rudeness goes. Maybe something is skewing my impression (I've definitely started to dread any Massachusetts area code), but I've endured so many angry, rude, nasty, condescending conversations with those callers. But somehow, it's really rare that a caller from two of the infamous states that I hear about--New York and New Jersey--will yell at me or be really rude. The pacific northwest and the south tend to have a lot of polite callers, though. Harminoff posted:I had to explain to him for 10+ minutes how time zones work. Baffled his mind. Wonderful. Just like the time I had to explain to someone that April comes after February.
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Aug 30, 2011 19:16
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Tiggum posted:I don't understand how you can do this. Is there a lot of time spent not talking during the call? How do you manage to eat and talk on the phone at the same time? I take inbound calls in customer service. I can't do it on every call, but if I want an energy boost I can usually get in a snack during these following scenarios: - The customer has to put down their phone for a minute (someone at the door, call on the other line, etc) - I'm transferring someone and on hold - Someone is just... rambling. Just going on and on and on and on, and nothing I've tried to say or explain will get them off their derail.
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Aug 31, 2011 18:50
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Bovril Delight posted:This poo poo will absolutely get you fired for call avoidance and is easy as gently caress to track, fyi. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I have done this before when I'm really just burned out, but I try to only do it sparingly.
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Sep 3, 2011 03:01
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ZeroDays posted:Why is everyone so much slower? Usually statistical outliers means there's a problem, either with you, or everyone else. I doubt anyone at my center wants to get fired, but there's just no incentive to excel. Promotions seem to be very political and rare. Raises can be hard to come by, and the culture of the management doesn't really allow for much discussion about that kind of thing. The work just burns you out. My call center does give out cash incentives every three months to people who stay on track, though.
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Sep 4, 2011 02:20
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I'm in a weird situation. Somehow, I'm getting time off the phone to work on a company wide project with managers in departments outside of the call center. Everyone seems to think that I work in a different department than customer service. I corrected them each time this department was mentioned. I just feel so weird about it. I'm hoping this might one day translate into them seeing I'm not just some slacker and getting promoted as an administrative assistant or something, but some of the employees also act a little reviled by folks who work in customer service. All I can do is dress extra-nice on the days that I actually interact or see any of these people (or get seen by them), and do my best to put on the most professional front possible, I suppose. legsarerequired fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Sep 7, 2011 |
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Sep 7, 2011 19:19
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OH GOD, the BATHROOMS. It's really incredibly awful at my company, and I'm saying that as a woman. In the women's restroom, we had people regularly pissing all over the seat, people leaving blood on seats, people just being ridiculously gross. It's gotten better, but I just don't understand why anyone would do that.fret logic posted:Glad to hear some of you enjoy your jobs somewhat, I didn't want to feel like a weirdo for enjoying mine some. I'm gonna have to be here for a few more years anyway to finish up school so, it can't start being soulcrushing. It's weird, but I actually like my job a little bit too. It can be incredibly frustrating, but I do like hearing about people's bizarre questions and the pay is much better than many of my other friends' jobs (keep in mind, I'm a 2010 grad that's friends with a lot of 2010 liberal arts major graduates, haha). I get overtime and about three weeks of PTO, so I've been getting in tons of travel. If you have an opportunity to get off the phones, you should absolutely take it. It's better for your resume.
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Sep 8, 2011 18:07
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I have to say, I'd be much more tolerant of my job if I had the option of working from home instead of having two 45-minute commutes a day five days a week. The catch is that I would have to work really odd hours, and I'm not sure if it would be worth giving up my nights so I could be free all day. Although I guess that would make it easier to do job interviews and class...
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Sep 9, 2011 06:38
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Loving Life Partner posted:I do drink a lot more water, probably because of all the talking and whatnot. I started drinking way more water, too, but I quit drinking caffeine and soda, since I can't take bathroom breaks at work. I keep some Capri Suns at my desk in case I need some sugar or if I want to drink something sweet. And for snacks, I'm starting to eat salad or trail mix-type of stuff--nuts, yogurt chips, sunflower seeds. I'm actually starting to lose weight, so this makes me pretty happy.
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Sep 21, 2011 22:02
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Loving Life Partner posted:Yeah, they talked about "the call center 10" that everyone puts on from sitting all day and snacking, but it's not hard to control yourself. I actually gained weight when I first started, but I think it was more because I was depressed and let myself eat a ton of crap than anything else. The main thing I observe is people snacking because they're bored or because someone handed them free food, or people over-indulging on fast food, junk food, sodas. I started losing weight when I started bringing my own lunch and snacks from home, and I also started chewing gum instead of snacking whenever possible. My co-workers tell me I'm kind of ridiculous for keeping a ton of gum, healthy snacks and juice in my desk, but I don't really care as long as I'm losing weight. :\ Sometimes I think about how incredibly depressing this job is, and I wonder if I'm going to be much better at handling stress at future jobs than I would have been without this experience.
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Sep 22, 2011 03:51
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AA is for Quitters posted:good work environment There is a tech support call center in my city that's supposed to have a really good workplace environment. They have happy hours, free lunches for employees, a few treadmills the whole office can use, and there's virtually no dress code. I feel tempted on some days, but the pay there is barely half of what I'm getting right now, and multiple reviews on various websites say that the organization is really incredibly poorly run (i.e., some managers on the call center floor are married to HR staff). My job really isn't that bad--I've gotten a chance to work with people in other departments on some projects and the pay seems to be much better than other call centers and entry-level work. I just miss flex time.
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Sep 24, 2011 23:54
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I really love volunteering for newsletters and company projects. All of my friends with regular jobs cannot stand meetings at all, but I get really excited when I think about getting an hour or two off of the phones. In fact, a couple of Fridays ago, I managed to fill an entire afternoon with meetings.
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Sep 27, 2011 23:46
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I found out today that my call center lets this one employee work four 9-hour shifts and one 4-hour shift every week. I also feel pretty sure that I could work from home if I talked to my manager about it. I'm really considering doing that, since the work-at-home regulations at my company are really lax--you just need a cable connection and a place to put your company-issued laptop. I don't think it's the job that I have a problem with as much as the environment, and driving an hour to and from work every day. I might have to work really bad hours because of the change, but it might be nice to to do this stuff from home. I have definitely become so much more polite to folks at call centers since getting this job. I also make a point of having all of my information (policy numbers, account numbers, etc) in front of me when I have to call in somewhere for help. It just annoys me so much when I have to deal with the 20th person who doesn't have their stuff in front of them.
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Oct 1, 2011 00:02
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JackRabbitStorm posted:I get in trouble for looking at SA constantly when I get screen capped. I once got in trouble for looking at an article on stumptuous.com that had the word "gently caress" in the title. We aren't allowed to look at any websites at my company, but everyone checks their e-mail or reads the news anyway.
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Oct 6, 2011 00:45
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Not us! We're supposed to be trying to convince them to buy more stuff during lulls in troubleshooting. Hmm, my managers are semi-lax about Internet usage during off-time (as long as it's just tame stuff like checking e-mail, the news, etc), but I'm pretty sure that people at my center have been fired for using the Internet during phone calls.
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Oct 6, 2011 22:42
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froglet posted:Also, we have a new guy. He's a bit... off. Such as how he acts really unusually towards the girls in tech support. Ugh, that's so awful. :\ Does anyone else feel somewhat annoyed when friends with regular jobs complain about how boring their day was, specifically to folks that have lovely jobs? My roommate bitches non-stop about how he does homework and watches movies at his job all day because there somehow isn't any work for him to do. Once I came home after a day of non-stop awful customers, and he started with his "boohoohoo I got high in the office bathroom and finished watching the new season of Breaking Bad at work today" routine, and it was so incredibly obnoxious that I pretty much called him out for bitching to me, of all people, about a job where you're left alone all day without any supervision. EDIT: I can understand how that sucks, but I'm just saying that I don't understand why he complains to me, of all of his friends, about this type of problem. legsarerequired fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Oct 7, 2011 |
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Oct 7, 2011 07:30
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froglet posted:I doubt he realises that in your eyes such a job would be awesome. I know I'd slowly go mad if my job had that much downtime, but that's just me. Maybe you just need to tell him 'look, please don't tell me how dull your job is, especially considering a lot of the time I have to deal with terrible people' because he doesn't realise him letting off some steam makes him sound like a prat and is alienating himself from you. "Oh, it must be so hard to pick up the phone and talk to people all day! Poor you!"
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Oct 7, 2011 23:50
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Loving Life Partner posted:I'm still servicing customers to the best of my ability, but I'd rather turn and bullshit and groan with my equally burnt out cubicle mate than have good stats. This is me.
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Oct 11, 2011 03:38
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Tiggum posted:The ones I hate most are the people who try to answer questions I haven't finished asking yet. It annoys me at work and in any other context. If you don't wait for me to finish you're probably not going to give me a useful answer so I'm just going to have to ask again. Your stupid attempt to save time has actually made this take longer. Can't stand that either. Really, the only thing keeping me at my job is the ridiculous amount of PTO that we get. I counted it up, and I think I get about 200 hours of PTO a year (I can't remember how much I carried over from last year, but it's either 200 or a little bit more). I really, really love traveling, and I'm just totally dreading planning my trips around school or a different job when I get out. It would probably be easier to do weekend trips at a regular gig, but I could only do one or two big vacations a year. It's kind of silly, but I really care a lot about seeing more of world right now, and I would definitely say the amount of time off we get is a huge deal to me.
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Oct 11, 2011 19:15
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I just discovered the Awful android app, and it makes reading the forums so much easier than browsing SA on my phone's browser. I think they have an app for iphone too. Whoever got in trouble for browsing SA at work should give this a shot.
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Oct 12, 2011 02:24
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:It doesn't work. Nope, no it doesn't. Folks who just want to scream usually just tell me "Well, obviously YOU can't help me" or "I DUNNO, WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO TO FIX THIS?!"
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Oct 20, 2011 07:09
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I volunteer for every single focus group and office project that comes my way, and as a result I get at least one hour off the phone each week. I'll get about 3-5 hours off on a good week. I'm also interviewing for promotions, so that also takes out extra time. This week so far, I was only on the phone for about 18 hours out of three days!
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Oct 27, 2011 01:44
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I just checked my numbers for the month and I've been taking way too much personal time. I'm just so burned out.
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Nov 2, 2011 14:12
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On the bright side, I've become a lot nicer to people working in the service industry. I never was the type to yell or freak out anyway, but these days I make sure to fill out surveys and be extra-nice. I also appreciate that my center offers 25 days of paid vacation per year. I burned through all of mine and only have about four days left due to all the traveling I've done, but I suppose I always have wanted to travel. The thing I hate the most is the look that people give me when I explain to them that I work in customer service. I'm interviewing for a promotion and people in other departments get a very specific look on their faces when I say I'm in customer service...
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Nov 10, 2011 16:26
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Anyone over the age of 80 should not be allowed to use a phone. So many rambly stories, so many quietly condescending people.
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Nov 12, 2011 18:21
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Because of stories like the above, I am really incredibly polite to customer service representatives when I speak to them on the phone. Once when I was talking to someone in a call center about my car loan, I prefaced it with "I work in a call center, so I promise I won't yell at you if I hear something that I don't expect." The lady on the other end actually giggled a little bit, even though I was completely serious! There was a point where I couldn't watch a movie with a customer service scene without getting chills. I had a job interview go surprisingly well today. I know that I probably won't get it because there's tons of people with more experience than me who are job hunting, but I couldn't stop myself from day dreaming about quitting. Apparently when you quit, you get to fill out a questionnaire for hr about the things that you hated about the work environment. If it's some generic thing with a 200-character limit, I'm saving the hr generalist's e-mail and venting about everything that I hated there, even though it's likely that it will be worthless.
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Nov 17, 2011 23:22
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Fil5000 posted:Please note that these exit interview things only carry anything approaching weight if you were a good (by their definition) employee - if they have at any point decided you are a troublemaker, rabble rouser or lazy git, they will dismiss your negative opinions as the result of your reaction to being "properly managed". That's pretty much what I would expect. It's not like they would have any incentive to even read them unless I pointed out something that could lead to a lawsuit.
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Nov 17, 2011 23:53
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 23:29 |
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KOMI posted:Received a call from the Government today. I got the position! I wasn't so lucky. I was half an hour late to work today because of an interview I'd scheduled for early morning (there was no other time that they would meet with me). They told me it was between me and one other candidate, and I got an e-mail a couple of hours ago saying I didn't get it. I hate how difficult this job makes it to do interviews. If I had a regular office job, I could probably sneak out early every once in a while. I know it isn't feasible at every office, but it would be easier if I didn't have a computer monitoring my every move. Then again, I also get a day off during the week, so I guess that makes interviewing a little easier. EDIT: Also, I'm aware I have the option of calling in sick, but keep in mind I've had 20 interviews over the past year. Sometimes people will call me in just to tell me I'm overqualified, based on things on my resume that I e-mailed in. I couldn't call in sick for every interview at the rate I'm going without losing my current job.
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Nov 19, 2011 01:13
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