I'm not really sure why I'm ranting about this now, in this blog of all places, but I figured I may as well post it here since the original thread on AR15.com got archived. Anyway, it's not exactly the thing you want to put in your resume or cover letter, but it got a few comments over on ARF and I was glad that I was able to bring a few smiles to them after reading my story. The thread was titled What's the worst job you've ever had, and here is my story:
I used to worked at a call center for major Canadian
airline, specifically their loyalty program. It was the worst job I've ever
had, bar none. I remember there were times when I was at my desk in that God
forsaken place, I often wondered if perhaps my colleagues and I were actually
dead, and that we were in hell. Because of our proximity to YVR, the theory
that a plane had crashed and killed us all wouldn't be a huge stretch of the
imagination, and we were living out eternity in that hell hole.
We were tethered to our computer for the entire shift,
hundreds of us at any given time. Every second not on a call was accounted for,
every time you got up to the washroom, someone was aware of it, you're breaks
were counted to the second.
There was a console with about half a dozen supervisors in
it monitoring the staff's activities. We called it the watch tower. If you
didn't take a call within a few minutes, your name would be highlighted on one
of their screens. If it continued, you would see one of the supervisors stand
up, and if you still didn't take a call, you would see one of the supervisors
detach and make their way to your station. If your stats were no good, you were
offered more training, passive aggressive conditioning to get you to take more
calls. You're sitting in the chair opposite of your dirt bag of a supervisor
(think Office Space) every month, reviewing your performance, smiling the whole
time while giving you suggestions on how to do better.
We were abused by clients, and we were abused by our
supervisors. The clients would be yelling and screaming because they couldn't
use their points to book a flight, and our supervisors were always pushing us
to make bookings when there was hardly any inventory to book. I would say that
in any given 8 hr shift, I would take 75-100 calls, and had a booking success
rate of about 15-20%. The rest of the calls were $hit and I guarantee you the
client would be channeling all of their hatred toward you because they weren’t
able to use their points to book a flight one year in advance. The company was telling customers that they
could use their points for all these wonderful destinations, but in reality, we
had less than 10% of the flight to give away to folks with points.
We had a "quiet room" in the building. It was a
room within a room, and inside that room was a taste of heaven. It was pitch
black inside, and the only noise you could detect was the faint hum of the
ventilation system. There were two or three couches inside (I've only seen the
room lit a handful of times, so I don't clearly recall) where staff would take
turns and rest. To get to this room, you would go through the locker room, open
one door, enter a chamber, close the door behind you, and open the door to the
quiet room. Once inside, you literally could not see anything. There was no ambient light whatsoever, and it
was the same as if you closed your eyes. You just had to feel your way to
one of the couches and hope no one was occupying it.
The darkness was like pure joy, as if happiness was something tangible that you could wrap yourself with. When I lay on that couch, curled up in the fetal position, I couldn't get over how happy I was. I felt myself smile in the darkness because I was not at my station taking calls.
The darkness was like pure joy, as if happiness was something tangible that you could wrap yourself with. When I lay on that couch, curled up in the fetal position, I couldn't get over how happy I was. I felt myself smile in the darkness because I was not at my station taking calls.
However, breaks in the quiet room could be demoralizing as
well. We all knew that happiness would eventually end and we would have to go
back to our phones and computers. My body clock was so conditioned that I was
able to close my eyes, lose consciousness (at least I felt I did), only to wake
up like a bolt after exactly 12 minutes. It left just enough time to get up,
get back to my desk and log in again. The instant I sat back down and my desk, I was
already looking forward my next break and race back to the quiet room and begin
the cycle again.
In my 7 years in that hellhole, I saw at least one or two
people die per year for some sort of illness. I saw people rapidly age in that
call center, with my own friends and family commenting on how haggard I looked
after only a few short years of working there. I still have nightmares about
the place.
A few years after I left, I got a job where I had access to
certain information regarding social services and medical leave. I was shocked
to see that at least once a week one of my old colleagues would come in to apply
for medical benefits, more specifically for stress leave. When I worked there, I
knew that people occasionally took stress leave from that place, but not to
that magnitude. Every week, I'd see
someone new come in, and they looked as though they had just escaped from
Auschwitz.
I still bump into some of my old colleagues from time to
time, and the first thing they notice or comment on is how happy I seem to be
now. The first thing I notice is the hopelessness in their eyes, their souls
have long since left their bodies, and they have the appearance of a person who
already has one foot in the grave.
This job, like a scar on my soul, is a constant reminder
that things could always be worse. I've excelled at every job I've had since
then, I get paid a lot more, and even joined the military as a reservist on top
of my day job. I think the only reason I enjoyed my basic training (and every
job I’ve ever had since the airline, come to think of it) while everyone else
was miserable was because I'd experienced firsthand what hell was actually
like.
