Because I've returned to college, I am much more broke than the rest of my friends. They of course are not getting up between 7.30 and 9, depending on mood, taking time over making coffee, cutting fruit, listening to BBC Radio 4 before writing about space and time, walking in the woods of Meanwood Ridge.
I'll be returning to a full time job in February. Not because I want to but for the same reason I have always taken a job - because I have to. I have debts, and rent to pay, food to eat, things to buy to make me secure. This makes me no different than most people I know. It's just I'm trying to do it without focussing on it, but instead while focussing on this thesis.
Call Centres
In order to pay my way, I have (like many people again) worked in call centres. They have usually been centres which are there to satisfy an image or as a buffer. The nature of call centres would seem to be about efficiency and convenience, but all those I ever worked in have turned out to be at least slightly charlatan. People just disappear in them, both the employees and the customers. What's left is only their voices: the detached voices of the employees, the trapped voices of the callers.
The reason I think is the natural but dehumanising screen that is thrown up between caller and called. No matter how much one tries, one will never see those people as fully human. No, that's not exactly it - one will never feel like it matters what one does with them or that they care what they do to you. It couldn't - if it really mattered, they wouldn't put it in the hands of distant, interchangeable and otherwise-inaccessible people who one never sees. Physical abuse is replaced by psychological abuse.
There are explicitly bad things about call centres, like acoustic shock, a condition caused by sudden loud noises in the headsets people must wear all day. Although it's not reported here (but I've read it somewhere, so. let's just assume it for now), one condition from it seems to be that people stop hearing certain kinds of noises. It was hinted - in this possibly-imaginary- research - that the failure to hear is partly psychological: we don't hear abuse properly. I'm not sure; I can't find the report - it might just be a mechanical condition you suffer from, like tinnitus.
But it isn't helped by the environment. From that quote above: '"Call centres have been shown to be highly stressful work environments and we are pretty sure that plays a major part in acoustic shock."
What is wearing in call centres is the day to day exposure to complete strangers who
i) Remain strangers,
ii) Feel helpless and alienated by the mode of communication (and you are helpless to remove that),
iii) Who consider you from the beginning to the end of your conversation as only another voice from the ghastly corporate ether. You consider them a pressure pushing on your chest.
iv) Never enjoy speaking to you (unless they're desperately lonely) .....that's.....bad.
And most importantly the feeling that you're a buffer, a decoy for those who the company doesn't want to take seriously. 'My heater's broken' - 'right, we'll get on it'. Bing - gone. Imagine if you wanted to pay for something in a shop and the staff kept saying 'I'll be just with you', then vanished.
Little book of calm's bad advice
The little book of calm suggests that, if you want to remain calm, instead of queueing at the bank/gas company/post office, call, or email, instead. This. Is. The. Single. Worst. Advice. I have. Ever. Heard.
If you queue physically at a place, you will see how long you have left to go. You will also see how many tellers there are: 'twelve people? And four counters. Right.' You will even see and maybe guess how long the people in the queue are likely to be: 'That guy has only an envelope. That woman has her kid pulling on her arm. That guy is sorting through his pockets looking for something, etc...'
If you call, you will either hear a robot voice say: you are the [number] in the queue or no robot voice. That's it - you won't know how many tellers are open, so you won't know how fast the queue is moving. Now, maybe they'll tell you that too - but you can't judge for yourself. You're helpless. And you certainly can't judge the other customers. There may be one person taking calls, and one person in the queue before you, but that person may be confusing, evasive, and watching tv. They may be on for an hour. And you can't even say, if you are at all assertive, 'hey! Stop wasting the staff's time' if you think they are.
There's nothing you can do about the situation because you don't know what it is.
It's as if, going to the bank, you were stopped at the closed door and told: 'Hi, you're very important to us. You're the eighth person in the queue. But I'm afraid you'll have to wait out here and not see what's going on inside.'
Wouldn't you even want to look, to figure out if it's worth it?
Little book of calm? Little book of crap.
Next time, take a walk and queue. It's good for you.
(Of course, none of this applies to people living out in the middle of nowhere. But you know what, you hear birds when you wake up in the morning and can see the stars. So you don't need to avoid that much social stress. Or, to put it another, to hell with you!)
....It would be nice not to return to work in a call centre. It would be nice to see people who are shouting at me...
I'll be returning to a full time job in February. Not because I want to but for the same reason I have always taken a job - because I have to. I have debts, and rent to pay, food to eat, things to buy to make me secure. This makes me no different than most people I know. It's just I'm trying to do it without focussing on it, but instead while focussing on this thesis.
Call Centres
In order to pay my way, I have (like many people again) worked in call centres. They have usually been centres which are there to satisfy an image or as a buffer. The nature of call centres would seem to be about efficiency and convenience, but all those I ever worked in have turned out to be at least slightly charlatan. People just disappear in them, both the employees and the customers. What's left is only their voices: the detached voices of the employees, the trapped voices of the callers.
The reason I think is the natural but dehumanising screen that is thrown up between caller and called. No matter how much one tries, one will never see those people as fully human. No, that's not exactly it - one will never feel like it matters what one does with them or that they care what they do to you. It couldn't - if it really mattered, they wouldn't put it in the hands of distant, interchangeable and otherwise-inaccessible people who one never sees. Physical abuse is replaced by psychological abuse.
There are explicitly bad things about call centres, like acoustic shock, a condition caused by sudden loud noises in the headsets people must wear all day. Although it's not reported here (but I've read it somewhere, so. let's just assume it for now), one condition from it seems to be that people stop hearing certain kinds of noises. It was hinted - in this possibly-imaginary- research - that the failure to hear is partly psychological: we don't hear abuse properly. I'm not sure; I can't find the report - it might just be a mechanical condition you suffer from, like tinnitus.
But it isn't helped by the environment. From that quote above: '"Call centres have been shown to be highly stressful work environments and we are pretty sure that plays a major part in acoustic shock."
What is wearing in call centres is the day to day exposure to complete strangers who
i) Remain strangers,
ii) Feel helpless and alienated by the mode of communication (and you are helpless to remove that),
iii) Who consider you from the beginning to the end of your conversation as only another voice from the ghastly corporate ether. You consider them a pressure pushing on your chest.
iv) Never enjoy speaking to you (unless they're desperately lonely) .....that's.....bad.
And most importantly the feeling that you're a buffer, a decoy for those who the company doesn't want to take seriously. 'My heater's broken' - 'right, we'll get on it'. Bing - gone. Imagine if you wanted to pay for something in a shop and the staff kept saying 'I'll be just with you', then vanished.
Little book of calm's bad advice
The little book of calm suggests that, if you want to remain calm, instead of queueing at the bank/gas company/post office, call, or email, instead. This. Is. The. Single. Worst. Advice. I have. Ever. Heard.
If you queue physically at a place, you will see how long you have left to go. You will also see how many tellers there are: 'twelve people? And four counters. Right.' You will even see and maybe guess how long the people in the queue are likely to be: 'That guy has only an envelope. That woman has her kid pulling on her arm. That guy is sorting through his pockets looking for something, etc...'
If you call, you will either hear a robot voice say: you are the [number] in the queue or no robot voice. That's it - you won't know how many tellers are open, so you won't know how fast the queue is moving. Now, maybe they'll tell you that too - but you can't judge for yourself. You're helpless. And you certainly can't judge the other customers. There may be one person taking calls, and one person in the queue before you, but that person may be confusing, evasive, and watching tv. They may be on for an hour. And you can't even say, if you are at all assertive, 'hey! Stop wasting the staff's time' if you think they are.
There's nothing you can do about the situation because you don't know what it is.
It's as if, going to the bank, you were stopped at the closed door and told: 'Hi, you're very important to us. You're the eighth person in the queue. But I'm afraid you'll have to wait out here and not see what's going on inside.'
Wouldn't you even want to look, to figure out if it's worth it?
Little book of calm? Little book of crap.
Next time, take a walk and queue. It's good for you.
(Of course, none of this applies to people living out in the middle of nowhere. But you know what, you hear birds when you wake up in the morning and can see the stars. So you don't need to avoid that much social stress. Or, to put it another, to hell with you!)
....It would be nice not to return to work in a call centre. It would be nice to see people who are shouting at me...
No comments:
Post a Comment