This person didn't mince words when describing their “worst job I've ever worked.” It's a common sentiment among call center workers: people seem to either adore the job and stay for years, or loathe it and leave ASAP. Some people don't mind the grueling work of dealing with upset individuals who need their problems solved yesterday. These workers have patience and the ability to stay calm under pressure. This person found that it was hard to fake sympathy for people who were extremely upset, s…

This customer decided to throw a huge fit at the exact the wrong time. Not that there's a right time for a customer to throw a fit… Unless you're a literal toddler or baby, no one is going to care about your hissy fit. You've got to “use your words,” as they say to children. When you're an adult, you're expected to act like one, yet so many adults just have total meltdowns when they're faced with issues that require them to talk to customer service reps. Customer service reps should get a lot o…

This call center worker is fed up. You can just tell that they've absolutely had enough of their job by the way they're talking to customers. Although this story doesn't come from the r/AmItheA****** subreddit, people on the interwebs had some strong opinions about this story. U/tharealmouse shared a tale that happened while they were working at a call center and had to deal with an impolite customer. Why was that customer not being polite? She didn't want to talk to someone on the phone (under…

Anyone working in a customer-facing position should get the medal of freedom for keeping their cool despite having to confront numerous Karen customers per day. However, as you'll see with some of these stories , sometimes keeping your cool is impossible to help these customers out, calm them down, or even just get them off the phone. One of these call center stories sparked a core embarrassing story from back in my intern days. My job that summer involved answering and returning phone calls co…

Why do new managers always feel like they have something to prove?

Most of us try our best to be polite at work, but sometimes those silly, childish customers have a bit of sass coming for them.

When you work at a call center, every day is different. You never know who's going to pick up the phone and call you that day. Will you get the super polite Gen X-er in need of genuine support, the Karen who thinks she knows best (even though she's the one who called in the first place), or the boomer who takes 45 minutes to explain they need help with something they could have easily Googled? Sometimes, the lines are dead, and you can goof around with your coworkers, and sometimes, you can't...

Working at a call center that deals with computer support can be pretty tough. You get calls from all sorts of people throughout the day, and this employee has the stories to prove it. Once a customer gets transferred from customer support to him, his job in tech support allows him to access a customer's computer remotely to provide assistance on whatever they need. The guy who does this job has seen it all - from older customers who took 40 minutes just to set up a Gmail account to entitled cu…

Cool as a cucumber

Be very very careful with anonymous surveys… you never really know if they're actually anonymous or not! In some workplaces, HR will send around anonymous surveys every now and then. They can address mundane topics, like asking if people want more employee events, and trying to take the temperature on morale. Other times these surveys are directly asking how leadership is doing, and those feel risky to answer. Even if the results come through a third-party service, it can't be that hard to figu…

Are you an employee at a job that works you to the bone with lousy pay? Then maybe you could benefit from this beautiful thing called “malicious compliance”—check it out!

This story takes place during the 2008 financial crisis, but it's still a good lesson, nonetheless. And with today's volatile market, it's worth taking some notes from this man who lost over $500k, partially due to his representative's mistake and partially due to his own ignorance. This man wanted his money from his retirement account to be moved to a more stable market. Well, his rep misunderstood him and only placed his new contributions into a stable fund instead of moving all of his money.

This call center worker has a really great idea for dealing with their most irritating customers . When you work in a call center, you deal with people from every walk of life, from youngsters to oldsters, from people who have worked customer service jobs before, to those who want their every whim catered to. People aren't calling for a friendly chat, either: they're usually having difficulties and want their issues fixed as quickly as humanly possible. These people are already at their whits'…

The longest most of us ever work is 10 or 12 hours in a day, but this person had to work many more than that. In some jobs, people technically work a schedule of one week on, one week off. If you're a home nursing aid, that might be necessary for you to properly care for your client. But it's not like you're literally working 100% of the time. You still have breaks to eat meals or make phone calls, and you sleep at night while your patient is also asleep. No one would make their employee work s…

This call center boss is really tired of metrics. At many companies, it's clear that leadership values the numbers over their customers and employees. The numbers don't lie, after all, but just looking at the numbers in a vacuum isn't always enough. This place is a great example of that. Some higher-ups who have probably never even talked to their employees looked at their call times. They decided that the calls were taking too long. Why that would be an issue at a call center is beyond me. I m…

Working the phones in any job is not usually a very good time, but working the phones for insurance claims seems to be notorious for getting the worst of the Karen and male-Karen customers…