Unfiltered Story #301959

In my mid-twenties, I had to work in telephone customer service for a satelite tv company. When I started, I was told that the job was strictly customer service and technical support, which was fine by me, but when I started, it turned out that a big part of the job was upselling services and just straight up sales – something I was not comfortable with *at all*.

However, Swedish unemployment benefits being what they are, I was not allowed to turn down this paid job offer, despite being in the middle of unpaid training for a job that would have fit me a lot better at the time. So, good-bye kitchen, hello call-center hell.

I was in trouble from the beginning. From a customer perspective, I’m *good* at customer service because I’m a problem solver and I like to help people. I had no problem learning the system, and passed my initial training with flying colours.

However, this company’s idea of customer service was that when a customer’s crappy satelite box broke (even within the warranty), I was supposed to sell them a new crappy satellite box instead of offering to get the old one repaired. We were also supposed to ‘take responsibility for our own tickets’, which meant that that we were supposed to make the customer happy, while we had no actual power to fix anything at all, and it was extremely frowned upon from management to ask a co-worker or manager for help, because that would bring up call times.

From week one of working there, my call times were too high, my sales were too low, and all my managers disliked me because I had the gall to ask for help when I needed it.

I didn’t realize how much they disliked me, until the day when I had just started my lunch break and was waiting for my lunchbox to heat up in the microwave and one of my managers came up to me and asked me if I could step in and man the phones a little longer, because we were swamped.

At this point, I had already been called into the head managers’ office once and been yelled at because I had misunderstood a complicated invoice and there had been been no manager around to ask for help so I’d tried to solve the problem to the best of my very limited ability.

I was still within my trial period and could not afford to be fired, because then I would be facing three months without unemployment benefits. I could literally not refuse, so I put my lukewarm lunchbox back in the fridge and went back to my desk.

Once there, I was starting to get a little suspicious. Yes, there were a lot more calls than usual coming in, but it wasn’t exactly *swamped*. However, I noticed that I seemed to be the only person in my section working, but whatever, this was a country-wide callcenter. So I kept taking calls and doing my job, and a while later later, one of my co-workers came back from lunch and logged back on and said:

Co-worker: “That was really nice, wasn’t it?”

Me: *confused* “Sorry, what was nice?”

Co-worker: “The way the managers cleared everyone’s schedules so we could all have pizza together. What kind did you get?”

Me: “Pizza? I didn’t get any pizza. I had to cut my break short because there was to much to do. I’ve been here taking calls when I should have had my lunch break forty minutes ago.”

Co-worker: “Really? They said there would be pizza for everyone. Hey, take your break now, maybe they saved some slices for you.”

I logged out and took my break and went to the kitchen to find a lot of empty pizza boxes but no leftover pizza, and a manager clearing away the empty boxes.

Manager: Hey, (my name) what are you doing out here?

Me: Um… taking my lunch break? One of the managers asked me to cut it short to answer the phones while the rest of you had… pizza… I guess. So I’d like to have my break now.

Manager: Oh, you were too late for the pizza? That’s a pity. But you were scheduled to have your lunch from 12 to 12:30 and if you missed it that’s on you.

Me: I was literally told by a manager that I had to skip my scheduled lunch break and go back to work. Apparently so the rest of you could have pizza. Can I have my lunch break now, please? I’ve been here since eight o’clock and I’m pretty hungry.

Manager: You know the rules, (my name). You have to take your scheduled lunch break or you’ll lose it.

Me: But I was told not to take it. What am I supposed to do here? Work the entire day without a break?

Manager: You need to take your scheduled breaks. Now, get on the phone before head office flags us.

I got back to my desk to find several missed calls from head office quality control about how I’d been marked as ‘idle’ for too long. ‘

That was just the beginning of it. I lasted three months at that place before I had a complete nervous breakdown (in the middle of a staff meeting about how much they cared about their employees at that) and after that was heavily encouraged to hand in my notice so that the record would show that I had quit out of my own free will.

(I’m still suffering the financial consequences of quitting this job, even fifteen years after this occured, and I still get completely terrified every time a manager tells me they need to talk to me, because I’m terrified that I’ll be fired for not picking up my phone when I’m not in my office.)