This is a really long rant. I really needed to get all of this out. Sorry if it’s a bit rambling.
I quit my job at a call center and I can honestly say it was the most depressing and stressful job I have ever had.
You are expected to know everything about the place as soon as the very brief training program ends. This expectation means that they have an excuse to make you feel uncomfortable asking for help. Some employees and managers even seem to enjoy it.
Turnover is extremely high and remote working means that they do a great job hiding it. I only found out about the turnover rate after I left the company. When you’re first hired, they do a great job making it seem like this is a happy and positive place to work. It’s all lies.
There is also a culture of bullying. You are expected to take verbal abuse and bullying when on calls with clients. This is probably one of the reasons for their high turnover. Employees will often berate you in front of other employees for not knowing how to do something that you either haven’t come across before or haven’t come across for a long while. In other words, they insult your intelligence.
Also, managers don’t look after their employees properly and are extremely fake. They pretend to be nice people.
They aren’t nice people.
You are expected to take this abuse on a daily basis and still be able to carry out your job in a professional manner. Certain clients — who are known to be extremely rude and aggressive — are kept on as customers because the company prioritize profits over employees. You are treated like a robot. Like you are not allowed to be upset about anything. Forced to carry on being polite and courteous to clients as they berate you on the phone.
Client issues not immediately resolvable on the phone must be worked offline. But you’re never allowed to come out of the call queue to finish the work, which means that everything backs up and issues are left unresolved. Sometimes you are able to put the client on hold. But a lot of times clients will hang up. Which causes the next call to immediately come in. Which means you have to stop what you were doing for one client, and start working on another. This mess just creates more stress and more angry customers, and results in more abuse and bullying.
They prioritize the number of calls answered over the mental health of their employees.
I had one particular call that was so bad that I ran into the bathroom crying. Another employee noticed and tried to comfort me. One of my managers also saw this and they told me to go right back on calls.
I even tried to bring this up to another manager in the hopes that some change might be made. I was told to just take the bullying because “It’s not personal” and “Maybe they’ve just had a bad day and they’re taking it out on you.”
And did I mention that I had multiple managers at the same?!
There was also a lot of nepotism within this company. One particular employee only got the job because their relatives worked in the same department, and everyone knew it. This employee received special treatment from managers. They would even come off calls to have conversations with the manager and spent a lot of time slacking off. Anyone else who wasn’t one of the managers favorites would be told off for doing this.
There was also a culture of underhanded, backstabbing behavior between certain employees and managers. Even in cases of minor disagreements, people would escalate straight to a manager instead of speaking to the person directly. There were also certain employees that would suck up to the manager and be get better treatment.
Managers also picked favorites. Once blessed with this status, you would automatically win any disagreement without the manager listening to the other side of the situation.
During one meeting, I was told I was a horrible person by my manager because I was being grumpy, and I almost burst into tears. I was trying to explain to them that the reason I was grumpy sometimes was because of my worsening mental health caused by the toxic environment we all were working in. I don’t think my manager believed me. In this same meeting, I was also told that I shouldn’t be asking for help from anyone. That asking for help is being “entitled”.
After that meeting I decided to leave the company for good. The bullying and favoritism had just gotten to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore.
This company had a severe impact on my mental health. To the point I was having anxiety attacks and I started engaging in self destructive behavior. I was struggling to sleep and had constant nightmares. I even thought about suicide at one point. I ended up in a really dark place that I wouldn’t wish on anybody.
The constant fear of bullying and severe stress caused me to become physically ill a lot more than I usually would be. Coughs, colds etc.
I can not in good conscience recommend working in a call center. It is one of the most toxic and depressing places to work. I learned the hard way that no amount of money is worth destroying your mental health.