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…

Enjoying life's little pleasures on the company dime is always more enjoyable than paying for them yourself. In fact, getting lost in the sauce over the freebies at work is a rite of passage for most employees. If your company has a weekly haul of snacks brought in every week, you'll likely be scarfing down your weight in honey roasted peanuts, while chugging the cold brew like it's water.

One business decided to let their customer support chat staff man the phones without any training… what could go wrong? This story is about the help desk workers who specialize in using the chat feature. Instead of calling up a company, these days, a lot of places will let you instant message with an employee instead. This feature is incredibly convenient. You can get help with your issue while you're at work without having to get up and make a long, drawn out call. You can also get help while…

It must take a lot for a call center rep to call a conversation their “best call ever.” These call center workers deal with cranky customers all day long, 40 hours per week, and that's basically their entire job.

This woman told a whopper of a lie, but she wasn't expecting to be called out . Customers learn their behaviors by reinforcement. While it might seem obvious to you to be pleasant to the person on the other end of a phone call , not everyone acts that way. Some folks have been conditioned to believe that the louder and more demanding they act towards customer service reps, the faster their problem will be solved. In reality, as call center workers will tell you, this is almost never the case. M…

Working in a call center is a pretty thankless gig. Constantly dealing with less-than-kind customers who are frustrated at your company's refusal to help them with their problem with your product—which to be fair, is a known issue that the company has deemed to be too expensive to resolve. So, now you're bearing the brunt of that frustration on a daily basis because your wage for 20 years still costs far less than paying R&D to fix the issue.

Have you ever worked in a call center? If you have, you are stronger than I, good person. I salute you! That is a hard job. Sure, maybe they're sitting most of the day, but the kinds of people call center employees have to deal with phone call after phone call is just mind blowing. That takes some real patience and true inner strength. We're talking phone calls from people who are insulting your intelligence for literally no reason! The entitlement that seeps through the phone from these caller…

If you don't understand how extremely draining and annoying it is to be a customer service phone representative, then maybe it's time you take a good look in the mirror. Perhaps you're the Karen? This job requires you to sit on the phone all day long and listen to people complain, mostly entitled people demanding things they don't even pay for, and you're expected to keep your cool the entire time and be “helpful.” You think the service industry attracts super Karens, these call centers are bur…

This dude clearly didn't listen to the automated message telling customers they'll be recorded during the phone call . He paid the price for that mishap! Working in a call center is a grueling job for lots of people. Just look in the comments, or at some of the many posts to r/talesfromcallcenters, and you can get a peek into the life of a call center rep. Basically, these employees clock in and take dozens or even hundreds of calls per day. Depending on their place of business, they're probabl…