One of my resolutions for 2008 was that I wasn't going to gripe and cry about my job at the Fitzsimmons cell phone call center. I kept that vow in 2008...and thankfully that year is over, so let me tell you about the latest B.S. and get your input.
Around 5 p.m. the calls start coming in hard and fast, and we've had up to 33 calls holding in a single cue lately. The calls we take last anywhere from 15 minutes to sometimes even an hour, so after three or four of those in a row you have to hit the "unavailable" button and give your brain a few seconds to reset.
So last week I hit the "unavailable" button for all of about 11 seconds to recoil from the onslaught. As I was doing that I accessed TIME magazine, the only outside Web page I can get, to get news of the outside world. Just as I did this, suddenly a manager was over my shoulder. "What you got goin' on, Art?," she asked, staring at the screen. Reading fucking TIME magazine! You wanna read along with me? I'll say the big words slow for you. (I didn't actually say this.) "I need you to go in available fuh me." You should've been here 11 seconds ago, I was. (I
did say this).
Later that night, at 11:09 p.m., I was finishing up a procedure for a customer. This same manager says, "What time do you leave, Art?" Eleven.
Why, do you want to walk me out to the parking lot (yes, I said this)
? Then she comes to my cubicle -- and by the way, this woman isn't even
my manager! "What you workin' on?" Finishing up the changes to this customer's account. "But the customer is not on the phone." Right, and what are the circumstances where we do this? When the customer calls in on their phone but needs the number changed,
we have to hang up with them and finish the changes, then call them back, right? So no, I'm not hanging around after my shift for the joy of it.
Perhaps you suspect I'm some wayward case they know they have to watch. To the contrary, my statistics are excellent in all objective categories all the way across the board. In fact the whole call center is doing well, so why they're suddenly hanging on everyone's shoulder...well, my co-workers and I have our theory, which we'll get to in a minute.
Since this woman isn't my manager and really has no pull whatsoever, when I clocked out I went to her cubicle and told her in a quaky voice, "O-okay, I'm s-signed out now, because my schedule says I'm supposed to go home now, okay? So I'm gonna g-go home." Yes, I'm being a sarcastic bastard, but when people are being stupid with me I'm stupid back.
That same week, I met with my manager. We finished the meeting late, and he said to sign back in and go to break. So I did. The next thing I know this messenger thing we have pops up on my screen. It's the guy in the Manager Helper program, a trainee and glorified gofer. "Are you going to break late, or are you just now coming back from break?" What the hell is this guy doing questioning my schedule? My manager is just 30 yards away and he knows my schedule. I didn't even respond to this Helper dipshit. He's trying a little too hard.
Here's another one. My manager, for some reason, couldn't work his weekly meeting with me in all in one session, so he made two sessions. He enters these things into your schedule through a computer interface that the scheduling desk and all the managers have access to, which then e-mails you that you've been scheduled.
The next day the area manager, my manager's manager, sends me an e-mail and says, "Did you meet with William yesterday, or did you sign yourself out in meeting?," with my name highlighted on some spreadsheet she has. She's essentially asking me if I'm stupid enough to sign myself out and begin flailing my cock at my desk. I replied no, I met with William, and forwarded all three of the e-mails I had gotten from the scheduling computer to her. Of course she could've checked either of the two scheduling systems this was registered in, but instead she decided to take her accusatory tone directly to me.
This behavior hasn't been reserved just for me. The girl across from me was rewarded with Employee of the Month yesterday, but finished the day literally in tears just the same, because some other manager had busted in on her headset and threatened to write her up for some silly perceived infraction, when she was just trying to help a customer. Six people got fired last week, one of whom had been there eight years.
Why would this be going on? Are we just terrible employees and they're cleaning house? No, everyone notices that it's people who've been there 5+ years who are getting the ass-kicking. By this point some are clearing $30,000 a year, you see, and they have a training class coming in who are rumored to be making just $8 an hour! There we union folks go again, with our greed, expecting a subsistence-level paycheck and costing the company money. So rather than lay us off and pay severance or unemployment benefits, they're going to trump up cases to say we "weren't following directions" or some such bullshit to save a few dollars and move us out the door.
"With the recession going on, shouldn't you just be glad to have a job?" Glad to have a job, not glad to have the job that I have, how's that?
