Tag: Jobs

Winston Gets Sent To The Manager’s Office

Winston
Why is there a swing set in front of the manager’s office?

Every employee of any company dreads it. Just like when you were a kid and they had the principal’s office. Except instead of threatening to call your parents, they threaten to take away your paycheck. Yes, these are the fears of being sent to the manager’s office.

I was getting bitched out by some toothless hillbilly piece of shit who couldn’t count past six if it were on a Busch light can, so basically, just a typical day. On my extremely limited and time-monitored break, some of my fellow long-suffering employees were talking about someone who just got canned after being with the company for 12 years. Now in a call center, 12 years is like 100 fucking years. Considering the normal (smart) employee lasts weeks or months, that’s a big deal. So the gossip continued and I went back to work like normal. After my shift finally ended, I heard about some more people that seemed to be randomly fired. And then some more. Considering the constant hurt for employees and the high volume of idiot callers, this was seeming pretty weird. We all gossiped about our job security and those that were now free from Telescreen, and I left to join the real world, away from the evil dungeon known as Super Department.

The next day, I was back at it, this time helping some dumbass who could barely speak English add up a bill. Then up popped a chat from one of the supervisors who told me to go to the regional manager’s office. Now I’d been in the department manager’s office a few times, like in Don’t Get Mad And Leave, but never the regional manger’s. Once the failed math lesson was over, I slowly made my way to the office of the call-center regional manager, someone I had only seen at a distance after so many years of working in Super Department. It was like the fucking Wizard of Oz or something, except the she was a weird-looking chick and not a midget.

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The Email Collection: Volume 5

Winston
“Hold on, I’m just reading our monthly email usage.”

Wow, it’s been almost a year since we’ve ridiculed ESP email addresses. I dare say this is long overdue. You know the old saying: Give an ESP an email account and they won’t know how to use it. Teach an ESP how to create an email account and they’ll make it something really fucking stupid.

poopoo@wordpress.com: What in the fuck is the point of this? Why would anyone in their right mind have the word “poo” in an email address? On second thought, why is “poo” in there twice? Sometimes I can’t even begin to rationalize the stupidity I encounter.

wellhung@wordpress.com: Well I think congratulations are in order. No, what am I thinking, this must be the email of a framing business, right? A nail manufacturing plant? Either way, I’m sorry Mr. Well Hung, but you didn’t get the job. Something about that email address really didn’t say “team player” or “problem solver.”

missiethang@wordpress.com:  What the fuck does that even mean?

mikewagnersmom@wordpress.com: Everyone was wondering who Mike Wagner’s mom was. They especially wanted to know when an email came in. So Mike’s mom created an email account accordingly. Let us be clear that her name heeds no importance whatsoever. We just need to know that she’s Mike Wagner’s mom.

grimreaper2006@wordpress.com:  No way I’m answering an email from the Grim Reaper, even if that asshole can’t figure out how to turn on the TV.

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Who Said You Could Go To The Bathroom?

Winston13 Comments
Who needs a newspaper when you can chat?

In light of Telescreen being recently named one of the worst companies to work for (no shit), I thought I’d get back to the “Job Security” category of ESP, and focus on what it’s like to work at a call center. At at normal job, you have work to do, and you have the day to complete it. You can chat about the NFL game at the water cooler, go out to Chipotle and snag a burrito, or arrive five minutes late if there’s goddamn traffic. If you have more shit to do, you stay a little later, or work through lunch. If you get tired, you snag a cup of coffee over in the break room. You’re responsible for yourself and your job, and the company trusts you to complete your tasks. How fucking enlightened.

Oh how different a call center is from the real world. At Telescreen, time is money, and the employees are expected to work every second of their shift. Every…fucking…second. Call centers are all about statistics, and everything about the employees day is monitored: When they walk in the door, when they log into the computer, when they take calls, how many calls they take, when they go on break, how long the break was, how long the calls are, when they log out, etc. It’s 1984 in the worst sense, and the monitoring is enlisted because Telescreen doesn’t trust any of the employees to do their jobs.

The employees are expected to start taking calls before or right when the shift starts. Not a minute after, literally, and no excuse will get an employee out of being marked late. The whole eight hour shift is monitored to ensure the employee takes calls the entire time, and don’t sneak away to do anything other than work. This obviously is physically and psychologically draining, as getting screamed at for eight hours nonstop isn’t ideal for anyone.

The employees get a lunch break that’s exactly 30 minutes, as well as two other 15 minute breaks, and you guessed it, there’s no wiggle room in the length of the breaks. In the meantime, they take calls one after another, no downtime between calls, no time to breathe, just frantic work. What do they do if they have to stretch their legs, take a leak, or check the mountain of emails in their inboxes? The short answer is…they don’t.

I have had a few problems with this myself in the past. We are supposed to go into our “break aux” on our 1984-esque monitoring toolbar anytime we need to do anything other than take calls. I say, fuck that, because break-time is exteremely precious yell-free time. So when I have to go to take a leak, I get up and take a leak. Seems simple enough to me, I mean, what kind of place won’t let the employees go to the bathroom? Well…

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