I Would Rather Clean Porta-Potties Than Work in a Call Center

I had the unfortunate experience of working as a customer service representative in a call center for one of the larger cell phone companies in America. This was the worst job that I have ever had!

I realize that customer service in any form is a thankless job but people are even more rude on the phones because they feel more anonymous. They don't have to look you in the face when they're yelling at you. And please don't think that you can hang up on someone who's being obnoxious, that will get you fired. While this person is screaming at you, you have to remain calm and even cheery. Oh, and while the customer is yelling at you in one ear, the supervisor is yelling in the other. You have to turn calls over in a certain amount of time. You are scored on your call resolution time and your "quality" combined. The quality scores are a huge joke. They rate you on less than 1% of your calls per month.

I would take on average 1100 calls per month and only 6 calls per month were scored. Then at the end of each month we would get a report card stating whether we passed or failed. Yeah, I said a report card, like you're in grade school and you get called up to the teacher's desk to go over your grades. Your job is dependent on these "grades". If that isn't bad enough, they only score calls that are under 5 minutes. In that 5 minutes you better hit all the marks that they have set forth. Mind you these marks don't mean anything to the customer but the company seems to think that that is what sets them apart. Do you really want to call in to tech support when your cell phone isn't working and have the service person ask you how your day is going? And if that person asks you this and you're really mad about your phone not getting service or not working, isn't that just an invite to let loose on that person about what a terrible company you're working for and what crappy phones they have. Never mind that all the major cell phone companies all use the same phone manufacturers.

Part of your scores each month are also based on how much time you were available to take calls. This took into consideration things like you weren't going over your breaks or you weren't taking yourself off the phone to do credits. There were times that you had to do a credit and you'd have to look back several months and maybe even call the store where the customer started their service. You were suppose to do all of this with the customer on the line. "Dead air" was a big no-no so you're suppose to be chatting with this person while you're trying to figure a credit. The credits are all gone over with a fine toothed comb and that is also part of your grade. So while you're chit-chatting with that customer don't make any mistakes!

I never got to take a full 15 minute break because I take a prescribed diuretic for blood pressure, so my break time was all in 3 minute increments to run to the bathroom. Believe me, you need that break time to decompress. Pity the person who had a disagreeable colon!

Which leads me to porta-potties. OK, I haven't done this as a job yet so some may disagree that cleaning portable potties is a worse job then working in a call center. The way I see it, you go in with a big hose and hit a switch on the truck to suck the potty out. Then you spray out the little cubicle with clean water and a sanitizing chemical. I've watched this being done at a local park. If there are any people around they're generally happy that the potty is now clean. Then you drive off to the next set of potties. Even if people are unhappy that perhaps the potty wasn't clean before you got there, they generally know not to complain to you, you're just the service person, not the decision maker. People calling in to call centers seem to think that the person they're talking to on the phone has the ability to change company policy. Believe me, the person that you're yelling at on the phone has less access to the top brass of the company than the person sucking out those potties.