Nadia D (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ladynadiad) wrote2008-09-19 02:57 am
ladynadiad) wrote2008-09-19 02:57 am
A rather long winded work rant
First off, let me warn right now, this will be rather long winded, but I'll kindly put it behind a cut for those who don't want to read the massive wall of text.
Okay, let me say first of all, for some working in a call center isn't a bad deal. It sounds really easy to most and when I describe some of it beyond the dealing with idiots, most people want my job.
At this moment, I wouldn't advise it unless you are a serious masochist.
Basically as some may know, I haven't really loved my schedule since pretty much when I started. No matter what I'm given, there is a serious room for griping. To give an idea, here are the schedules I've worked this go around:
First schedule: Sunday 10:30am to 7:30 pm, first break at noon, lunch at 2:30 pm, last break at 6pm. Rest of the days 1pm to 10pm, first break at 2:30pm, lunch at 6pm, last break at 8:30pm, off Friday and Saturdays
Let me explain one thing for anyone who hasn't worked in a call center. Schedules are pretty much set in stone unless the company decides it's needs require something else and then it can change at the drop of a dime. But if you request something else, it will take forever if not get denied. Also, those times I listed are when I have to take those, if I don't, a stat that is important lowers. Basically I have to be on the phones for 90% or higher of the time I'm scheduled to be. Those times I listed for breaks and lunches are the only times I'm scheduled off the phone. So if I have to use the bathroom, it hurts me in more than just the joy of holding it in.
So my major gripe here was the lunch. I ask to get this fixed because by 6pm I'm starving, it never gets fixed.
But the holidays come around and they need more people on Fridays and Saturdays, with less than a week's notice my days off shift to Wednesday and Thursday making this schedule completely horrible (or so I thought, realize they make things worse with every schedule I get).
I deal with this for as long as I can and eventually my attendance gets really bad. I literally am begging my supervisor to at least fix the Sunday to match the rest of my schedule, I keep getting denied. Eventually after begging I was able to get a schedule that was to go to a new agent.
It sounds great, 3pm to midnight, weekends off. Solves the problem with Sundays and they can't make my lunch any worse, right?
Wrong, it goes to the following: First break at 4:45, lunch at 8:30, last break at 10:45. What the hell sense does that make? By the time 8:30 rolls around, I'm starving, the break room is out of utensils and plates, it's dark outside. It just generally sucks.
I request an earlier lunch because even the supervisors agree this sucks (they even overlook my tendency to take an extra break at 6:30 as long as my compliance stays good). It gets denied because this is only suuposed to be a temporary schedule until the shift bid goes into effect.
Okay, I deal, at the time they were right, we were supposed to receive new schedules in a week and it go into effect in two weeks (this was on September 7th).
Then on top of this, for accepting the schedule I did, I got moved to the queue I hate. Instead of dealing with potentially smarter dealers, I deal with retarded customers who got transferred by lazy and stupid agents because something is broken. Oh lovely. I get stuff like this:
Me:
Customer: Can I speak with someone who knows what they are doing?
Me: Um, excuse me?
Yeah, bad way to get yourself helped. I only said my opening and I'm being insulted already. To anyone still reading, this is not the way to get your problem solved, this is a way to get even the nicest person to want to release the call or disconnect your account (actually, if I wanted to be really mean, I would suspend it, no one checks for those, that bitch would have been calling back forever).
So yeah, now I'm dealing with idiots and on top of that I have to do so for a three hour stretch where I'm starving and needing a cigarette or the bathroom very badly. My patience goes to zero at this point.
So I wait patiently for the schedules to be released from the shift bid. August 22nd comes around when we are supposed to get them. We get a "We're sorry, but they were messed up and we sent them back. The new schedules are being pushed back to the 14th now"
I wasn't pleased, but what choice do I really have now?
A few weeks go by, I get the same answer, my new schedule is screwed up and was sent back, they won't go into effect until the 21st now.
Oh, but here's the fun part, that very night they get entered into where we can look at our schedule online, so I find out just what sort of crap they give me.
Sunday: 11am to 10pm, first break at 3:15, lunch at 6pm, last break at 8:30pm (what the hell is this garbage?)
Monday: off
Tuesday: 12pm to 11am, don't recall anything besides lunch at 4pm
Wednesday: off
Thursday: 1pm to midnight, don't recall much besides lunch at 5pm
Friday: 12pm to 11am, lunch at 6pm, don't recall breaks.
Saturday: off
Now, to explain this better, when they announced this we were informed and signed a paper stating that our new schedules would be based off our rankings in the call center which would then be based off stats.
My ranking was 16 out of 57 agents in my department.
Now, let's give the fun part, here's what #17 who is a good friend of mine got, 11am to 10pm Monday-Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday off.
Okay, so these schedules are supposed to be based on stats but the person below me gets a good schedule and I get complete trash? What the hell?
I send an email to my supervisor since she informed me mine was screwed up to see if that was valid. She told me "don't worry about it, it will be fixed."
I tell her they better remove it from my schedule so I'm not responsible for working this trash or quite honestly, I'll quit first. She says don't worry until it comes closer to that time and it's not fixed yet.
Okay, it's now the 19th and it's still not fixed. I spoke with the call center manager, he gave me an answer I honestly didn't like one bit basically saying that the problem with my schedule wasn't the fact that it didn't reflect my standing, no it was something else.
So basically no guarantee I'm not going to get complete trash. I can't even get them to give me someone ranked way lower's schedule that I could deal with for now.
So basically I've been lied to. Our stats mean nothing is the impression I got from that conversation. So since there are people almost never signed into the phones who still get paid like I do, why should I be a good agent and be on the phones? Why should I care about the rest of my stats if people who don't care get good schedules?
Hell, why do I bother working there, it's obvious that the good agents aren't wanted, or else they wouldn't have lied to us. The #1 ranked agent didn't get anything remotely resembling what she asked for. She worked her butt off to get that ranking because her availability is limited, her schedule didn't even fit her availability. And she was told "oh, we were pooled in with another call center, you were actually ranked #5 and there were only 4 schedules of your first choice"
But yet someone ranked in the 50s out of 57 got her first choice.
And they won't acknowledge that they fucked up badly. I have yet to find anyone at any ranking who has a worse schedule than I do. Someone in the 50s has a similarly bad one, but that's it. Everyone I have spoken with either has complete trash that is slightly better than my trash, or something decent but not really what they wanted (because basically very few requested 10 hour shifts, everyone got one). Most of the high ranked people I spoke with are searching for new jobs. I don't doubt that within a month half of my contract or more will have quit or gotten fired. Basically right now we are being punished because a bunch of people quit over their schedules being changed, or were fired for dumb reasons usually involving attendance (in some cases, they shouldn't have been fired, but they were so pissed they didn't bother fighting it). Seriously, every day someone else walks or is fired, today it was a friend of mine from my training class. Makes me wonder who it will be tomorrow. At this rate, next week it will be me.
And the other department hasn't even gotten their yet, but many have started searching for new jobs when they heard what my department got.
On top of that, people are being passed up for promotions they qualify for and not even being granted an interview for them, instead they are being given a rejection letter right off.
And we still have to deal with retarded customers and retarded policies, but now add to it retarded co-workers and retarded supervisors who are outright lying to me.
Add to this that many supervisors even have up and quit. Only two supervisors who were there when I started remain. All the rest have quit (except for one who got promoted, her replacement quit though). One quit just last week, and they just replaced my last supervisor who quit in July along with the other two who quit around then.
Seriously, at this point I don't care what I end up doing, I can't put up with this shit anymore. I'm being treated like garbage, lied to and really feel like I'm not wanted there.
And the best part is my supervisor isn't going to be there until Tuesday. Well, like that really matters, I'll already have had to work the worst day of this piece of garbage schedule.
And this doesn't even get into other gripes like one weekend where I almost got fired because they mixed up my attendance record with someone else's who they messed up on anyhow (she has since quit though).
I already decided, if I show up on Sunday, I don't care what anyone says, I'm taking my lunch at 4pm. I'm not waiting 7 hours to be able to eat when we can't have decent food at our desks (only hard candy is permitted, though I get away with peanuts, again because the supervisor gives me some leeway because of my shitty lunch). No thanks, the five and a half hours has already been hurting me enough.
And well, if anyone read that long rant, thanks for doing so though it was more so I could rant to something/someone besides my co-workers who are just as irate as I am. But if you didn't, the summary basically is, work is giving me a ton of stress and I need to find a new job so I can quit this one.
Anyone got ideas of what I should consider for a new field of work? I have a useless bachelor's degree in psychology and years of experience in customer service both in retail and call center work. I have plenty of experience with computers, just not the right certifications to get something in the field (or the right experience).
However, I live in basically the equivalent of hell where most of the jobs will be in the medical field, retail, customer service, office work, or manual labor that may or may not require certain types of experience, but pays very well. A lot of jobs also require being bilingual in Spanish, which I am not. There is one call center here I haven't worked at yet that was recommended to me and I may go apply on Monday (it deals with insurance, just not sure if it would be sales or not). I've also had a recommendation to try for a government job or stuff like office work on the oilfields, or a dispatcher. Any other ideas?
Okay, let me say first of all, for some working in a call center isn't a bad deal. It sounds really easy to most and when I describe some of it beyond the dealing with idiots, most people want my job.
At this moment, I wouldn't advise it unless you are a serious masochist.
Basically as some may know, I haven't really loved my schedule since pretty much when I started. No matter what I'm given, there is a serious room for griping. To give an idea, here are the schedules I've worked this go around:
First schedule: Sunday 10:30am to 7:30 pm, first break at noon, lunch at 2:30 pm, last break at 6pm. Rest of the days 1pm to 10pm, first break at 2:30pm, lunch at 6pm, last break at 8:30pm, off Friday and Saturdays
Let me explain one thing for anyone who hasn't worked in a call center. Schedules are pretty much set in stone unless the company decides it's needs require something else and then it can change at the drop of a dime. But if you request something else, it will take forever if not get denied. Also, those times I listed are when I have to take those, if I don't, a stat that is important lowers. Basically I have to be on the phones for 90% or higher of the time I'm scheduled to be. Those times I listed for breaks and lunches are the only times I'm scheduled off the phone. So if I have to use the bathroom, it hurts me in more than just the joy of holding it in.
So my major gripe here was the lunch. I ask to get this fixed because by 6pm I'm starving, it never gets fixed.
But the holidays come around and they need more people on Fridays and Saturdays, with less than a week's notice my days off shift to Wednesday and Thursday making this schedule completely horrible (or so I thought, realize they make things worse with every schedule I get).
I deal with this for as long as I can and eventually my attendance gets really bad. I literally am begging my supervisor to at least fix the Sunday to match the rest of my schedule, I keep getting denied. Eventually after begging I was able to get a schedule that was to go to a new agent.
It sounds great, 3pm to midnight, weekends off. Solves the problem with Sundays and they can't make my lunch any worse, right?
Wrong, it goes to the following: First break at 4:45, lunch at 8:30, last break at 10:45. What the hell sense does that make? By the time 8:30 rolls around, I'm starving, the break room is out of utensils and plates, it's dark outside. It just generally sucks.
I request an earlier lunch because even the supervisors agree this sucks (they even overlook my tendency to take an extra break at 6:30 as long as my compliance stays good). It gets denied because this is only suuposed to be a temporary schedule until the shift bid goes into effect.
Okay, I deal, at the time they were right, we were supposed to receive new schedules in a week and it go into effect in two weeks (this was on September 7th).
Then on top of this, for accepting the schedule I did, I got moved to the queue I hate. Instead of dealing with potentially smarter dealers, I deal with retarded customers who got transferred by lazy and stupid agents because something is broken. Oh lovely. I get stuff like this:
Me:
Customer: Can I speak with someone who knows what they are doing?
Me: Um, excuse me?
Yeah, bad way to get yourself helped. I only said my opening and I'm being insulted already. To anyone still reading, this is not the way to get your problem solved, this is a way to get even the nicest person to want to release the call or disconnect your account (actually, if I wanted to be really mean, I would suspend it, no one checks for those, that bitch would have been calling back forever).
So yeah, now I'm dealing with idiots and on top of that I have to do so for a three hour stretch where I'm starving and needing a cigarette or the bathroom very badly. My patience goes to zero at this point.
So I wait patiently for the schedules to be released from the shift bid. August 22nd comes around when we are supposed to get them. We get a "We're sorry, but they were messed up and we sent them back. The new schedules are being pushed back to the 14th now"
I wasn't pleased, but what choice do I really have now?
A few weeks go by, I get the same answer, my new schedule is screwed up and was sent back, they won't go into effect until the 21st now.
Oh, but here's the fun part, that very night they get entered into where we can look at our schedule online, so I find out just what sort of crap they give me.
Sunday: 11am to 10pm, first break at 3:15, lunch at 6pm, last break at 8:30pm (what the hell is this garbage?)
Monday: off
Tuesday: 12pm to 11am, don't recall anything besides lunch at 4pm
Wednesday: off
Thursday: 1pm to midnight, don't recall much besides lunch at 5pm
Friday: 12pm to 11am, lunch at 6pm, don't recall breaks.
Saturday: off
Now, to explain this better, when they announced this we were informed and signed a paper stating that our new schedules would be based off our rankings in the call center which would then be based off stats.
My ranking was 16 out of 57 agents in my department.
Now, let's give the fun part, here's what #17 who is a good friend of mine got, 11am to 10pm Monday-Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday off.
Okay, so these schedules are supposed to be based on stats but the person below me gets a good schedule and I get complete trash? What the hell?
I send an email to my supervisor since she informed me mine was screwed up to see if that was valid. She told me "don't worry about it, it will be fixed."
I tell her they better remove it from my schedule so I'm not responsible for working this trash or quite honestly, I'll quit first. She says don't worry until it comes closer to that time and it's not fixed yet.
Okay, it's now the 19th and it's still not fixed. I spoke with the call center manager, he gave me an answer I honestly didn't like one bit basically saying that the problem with my schedule wasn't the fact that it didn't reflect my standing, no it was something else.
So basically no guarantee I'm not going to get complete trash. I can't even get them to give me someone ranked way lower's schedule that I could deal with for now.
So basically I've been lied to. Our stats mean nothing is the impression I got from that conversation. So since there are people almost never signed into the phones who still get paid like I do, why should I be a good agent and be on the phones? Why should I care about the rest of my stats if people who don't care get good schedules?
Hell, why do I bother working there, it's obvious that the good agents aren't wanted, or else they wouldn't have lied to us. The #1 ranked agent didn't get anything remotely resembling what she asked for. She worked her butt off to get that ranking because her availability is limited, her schedule didn't even fit her availability. And she was told "oh, we were pooled in with another call center, you were actually ranked #5 and there were only 4 schedules of your first choice"
But yet someone ranked in the 50s out of 57 got her first choice.
And they won't acknowledge that they fucked up badly. I have yet to find anyone at any ranking who has a worse schedule than I do. Someone in the 50s has a similarly bad one, but that's it. Everyone I have spoken with either has complete trash that is slightly better than my trash, or something decent but not really what they wanted (because basically very few requested 10 hour shifts, everyone got one). Most of the high ranked people I spoke with are searching for new jobs. I don't doubt that within a month half of my contract or more will have quit or gotten fired. Basically right now we are being punished because a bunch of people quit over their schedules being changed, or were fired for dumb reasons usually involving attendance (in some cases, they shouldn't have been fired, but they were so pissed they didn't bother fighting it). Seriously, every day someone else walks or is fired, today it was a friend of mine from my training class. Makes me wonder who it will be tomorrow. At this rate, next week it will be me.
And the other department hasn't even gotten their yet, but many have started searching for new jobs when they heard what my department got.
On top of that, people are being passed up for promotions they qualify for and not even being granted an interview for them, instead they are being given a rejection letter right off.
And we still have to deal with retarded customers and retarded policies, but now add to it retarded co-workers and retarded supervisors who are outright lying to me.
Add to this that many supervisors even have up and quit. Only two supervisors who were there when I started remain. All the rest have quit (except for one who got promoted, her replacement quit though). One quit just last week, and they just replaced my last supervisor who quit in July along with the other two who quit around then.
Seriously, at this point I don't care what I end up doing, I can't put up with this shit anymore. I'm being treated like garbage, lied to and really feel like I'm not wanted there.
And the best part is my supervisor isn't going to be there until Tuesday. Well, like that really matters, I'll already have had to work the worst day of this piece of garbage schedule.
And this doesn't even get into other gripes like one weekend where I almost got fired because they mixed up my attendance record with someone else's who they messed up on anyhow (she has since quit though).
I already decided, if I show up on Sunday, I don't care what anyone says, I'm taking my lunch at 4pm. I'm not waiting 7 hours to be able to eat when we can't have decent food at our desks (only hard candy is permitted, though I get away with peanuts, again because the supervisor gives me some leeway because of my shitty lunch). No thanks, the five and a half hours has already been hurting me enough.
And well, if anyone read that long rant, thanks for doing so though it was more so I could rant to something/someone besides my co-workers who are just as irate as I am. But if you didn't, the summary basically is, work is giving me a ton of stress and I need to find a new job so I can quit this one.
Anyone got ideas of what I should consider for a new field of work? I have a useless bachelor's degree in psychology and years of experience in customer service both in retail and call center work. I have plenty of experience with computers, just not the right certifications to get something in the field (or the right experience).
However, I live in basically the equivalent of hell where most of the jobs will be in the medical field, retail, customer service, office work, or manual labor that may or may not require certain types of experience, but pays very well. A lot of jobs also require being bilingual in Spanish, which I am not. There is one call center here I haven't worked at yet that was recommended to me and I may go apply on Monday (it deals with insurance, just not sure if it would be sales or not). I've also had a recommendation to try for a government job or stuff like office work on the oilfields, or a dispatcher. Any other ideas?