An eBay customer support agent who quit after being written up for failing to explain four minutes of inactivity on his computer to his manager’s satisfaction has lost his claim for constructive dismissal.
“Anything over 60 seconds is considered work avoidance.”
I used to work in a call center just like this. I’m fairly certain many call centers operate this exact way.
They track you to the literal second. The calls are automatically piped to your phone, so as soon as one call ends the next one is in your ear immediately. So basically if it is busy you get 8 consecutive hours of customers in your ear, with the only downtime being your breaks and however much time they deem sufficient for using the restroom. If you get an irate customer and need a second to breathe, you better not need any time to piss that day. It is hell.
I don’t know many jobs where there is 0 time for bullshitting or standing around a water cooler. I made it 6 months before I thought I was going to go insane.
A lot of WFH call center jobs go a step further, demanding that bathroom use only occurs during your 30 minute lunch or your break if your state labor laws require you actually get one.
Clocking in every day to not be allowed to stand for 8 solid hours like
call center job is still the only job i ever walked out on. that place was an employee mill though. i only last a few months and hardly anyone from my training class was still around. and the next call was right after the last one hung up, no time to do notes or anything. and god forbid you have dead air. when we had a customer complete a survey for our call, it was rated 5 to 1, best to work. Got a 5? You get a point. I think getting a 4 was zero points, and anything below was minus 1 point. That shit is the only reason ill fill out a survey for a support line i needed to call, as long as they weren’t totally horrible or did what they could, i rate them a 5.
I try to be as nice as possible whenever I get through to a call center person, but also didn’t tie them up unless they choose to be tied up. Had a ton of actually nice conversations with call center people even when the reason I’m calling is because I got fucked by the company they’re answering for.
i worked at a large cable company call center and we had to put people on hold to go run to the bathroom because there was no way to stop the incoming calls unless it was your proscribed break time and you had to keep all calls under 5 minutes or you “failed” the call. If you failed a certain number of calls in a week you’d find your badge didn’t open the door one day when you came to work and that was the end of your job.
There were other criteria too, like having to try to upsell on every call nomatter how angry the person on the other end was who just waited 2 hours on hold to try to get their internet or tv service working again.
“Anything over 60 seconds is considered work avoidance.”
I used to work in a call center just like this. I’m fairly certain many call centers operate this exact way.
They track you to the literal second. The calls are automatically piped to your phone, so as soon as one call ends the next one is in your ear immediately. So basically if it is busy you get 8 consecutive hours of customers in your ear, with the only downtime being your breaks and however much time they deem sufficient for using the restroom. If you get an irate customer and need a second to breathe, you better not need any time to piss that day. It is hell.
I don’t know many jobs where there is 0 time for bullshitting or standing around a water cooler. I made it 6 months before I thought I was going to go insane.
Same, and because my breaks and meal time were plotted out by the computer, I would be starving and stressed
Probably the closest I ever came to hurting myself
I literally laughed when they fired me for not giving a shit anymore
A lot of WFH call center jobs go a step further, demanding that bathroom use only occurs during your 30 minute lunch or your break if your state labor laws require you actually get one.
Clocking in every day to not be allowed to stand for 8 solid hours like
call center job is still the only job i ever walked out on. that place was an employee mill though. i only last a few months and hardly anyone from my training class was still around. and the next call was right after the last one hung up, no time to do notes or anything. and god forbid you have dead air. when we had a customer complete a survey for our call, it was rated 5 to 1, best to work. Got a 5? You get a point. I think getting a 4 was zero points, and anything below was minus 1 point. That shit is the only reason ill fill out a survey for a support line i needed to call, as long as they weren’t totally horrible or did what they could, i rate them a 5.
CS is probably the worst job I’ve ever had. It was worse because I’m bilingual so I got significantly more calls
I try to be as nice as possible whenever I get through to a call center person, but also didn’t tie them up unless they choose to be tied up. Had a ton of actually nice conversations with call center people even when the reason I’m calling is because I got fucked by the company they’re answering for.
i worked at a large cable company call center and we had to put people on hold to go run to the bathroom because there was no way to stop the incoming calls unless it was your proscribed break time and you had to keep all calls under 5 minutes or you “failed” the call. If you failed a certain number of calls in a week you’d find your badge didn’t open the door one day when you came to work and that was the end of your job. There were other criteria too, like having to try to upsell on every call nomatter how angry the person on the other end was who just waited 2 hours on hold to try to get their internet or tv service working again.