When I worked in a call centre, the supervisor was weird. She insisted on having the window wide open at all times, even in the middle of winter!

She’d also go on and on about auditioning for Pop Idol. After she overheard me humming to myself before my shift started, she forced me to sing in front of everyone.

Ultimately, she ended up getting fired for fraud.

Right out of college, I had a boss that was into experimenting with new ways of working. He always had some new plan he was trying out.

One such experiment had to do with efficiently onboarding new hires to entry-level positions. One summer, he hired three new college graduates for three instances of a particular role. Each grad was given a different onboarding methodology to see what was most effective.

[Grad #1] was given a week of very intensive training. They were micromanaged down to the smallest detail and trained on any particular issue. They just had every possible piece of information thrown at them as quickly as possible

[Grad #2] was given little formal training but shadowed a more senior employee for about a month. They were glued to their mentor’s hip for the whole month and were to observe and learn.

[Grad #3] was told, “Good luck.”

Can you guess who [Grad #3] was?

I technically got up to speed faster than my two counterparts, though at the expense of a couple of messed-up tasks.

Honestly, the best way would probably have been to just give some hypothetical examples, as the system was relatively intuitive and most issues could be figured out with a little common sense.

This is my favorite funny workplace story. I used to sit opposite a colleague who was very polite and always friendly and proper. One time, she was in a call with the on-site technician of some location, discussing getting in contact with one of their users, a lady of Asian descent, to check if she still had some issue.

The lady in question was called [User] Fu. But, hearing only my colleague’s end of the call (and not paying particular attention, anyway, as I had other stuff to do,) I did not know that. What I DID hear was that this always polite colleague of mine told someone on the phone, in a conversational tone:

Colleague: “So, then, eff you.”

Maybe you can imagine my shock at hearing this colleague, apparently, swear at someone on the phone. From the incredulous look I shot her, she realized in an instant what her spelling of the end user’s last name sounded like, and two things happened.

She became redder than a lobster, and she started laughing so hard that she actually had to mute the phone (somehow managing to tell the user she needed to “update her notes for a moment” without bursting).

This was not helped by the fact that, realizing the actual situation and seeing her shade of red, I myself couldn’t stop giggling.

This story got told to new colleagues several times during the time we worked together.

I used to work in an outbound IT call center. We were being trained to take over the support of our employer’s Belgian clients. We had a colleague from the previous team there to show us the ropes and answer any queries we had.

I got a call from a bank saying their Internet was down. I found no procedure for this, so I asked our liaison what to do. After some searching, he gave me the network provider’s number, and I called it.

Me: “Hello, I’m [My Name] from [Company]. I would like to report that one of [Bank]’s locations has no Internet connection.”

Representative: “Hello! Okay, I will need to gather some information. Can you please give me the location’s address?”

Me: “Sure, it’s [address].”

Representative: “Okay, and since when do they have no access?”

Me: “Since maybe half an hour ago.”

Representative: “Okay, and… [My Name], is that you?”

Me: “Yes, I am.”

Representative: “And I am [Representative], sitting behind you!”

And, sure enough, I was talking to a colleague in my own team, two rows behind me.

Apparently, the number our liaison found for the bank’s “network provider” was, in fact, our support number, given TO THE LOCATIONS to call in case they had issues.

For a time, in an in- and outbound IT call center, I used to share a “desk island” — four triangular desks forming a rhombus shape, basically sitting face to face with each other, divided by low panels — with three colleagues. Two of them are involved in this story; following the old trope, let’s call them Alice and Bob.

One time, as I got up to go to our kitchen, both colleagues had just begun a call and I heard the following conversation.

Bob: “Hello, my name is Bob, and I am calling you from [Company].”

Alice: “Hello, Bob, how are you?”

Bob: “I’m fine, thank you. How are you doing?”

Alice: “Thank you. I’m doing good.”

For a moment, I just stood there, thinking, “Have they really called each other?”

Of course, it turned out that no, Alice had simply called someone who had the same name as Bob, and their conversations started with JUST the right delay that their generic greeting questions and answers were in PERFECT sync.

I told them afterward, and we all had a good laugh about it.