I'm old, by reddit standards. I've had many jobs. Some good, some bad. But I have what I think is an interesting story to share.
One of my jobs was as a customer service rep for a large 3 letter phone company with an & in its name. Inbound calls only.
First story: we had a corporate meeting with a dude who was there to “help us explain” to customers why they were raising activation fee for a new phone (for existing customers) from $25 to $35. He gave a 45 minute presentation on the new iPhone that was coming out and why people were going to be buying lots of them. At the end, he asked if anyone had any questions. I had a question.
“The new phone seems cool. But why are we charging people more to 'activate' it?”
“Because we can, quite frankly. It's a very popular phone” was his word for word answer.
Next story: I got a call from a woman who was desperate, crying. Long conversation with her, but the gist was – she was calling to have her and her “wife's” phone turned back on (I only use quotations because at the time gay marriage wasn't legal yet) because 'we' had suspended it.
Why was it suspended? Her wife was a Marine, currently deployed to Iraq, which at the time was very much a war zone. Nightly calls between her and her wife were being charged fucking unconscionable rates. Just for the basic reassurance that her wife was, in fact, still alive. Reviewing her bill, she had given this company over $1500 in the last 3 weeks, and informed me that their savings was depleted.
I told her that I was going to fix it. At least all of it that was within my power. I explained that my calls are monitored, but only calls that are between 7 and 11 minutes long. So I could fix it, but we were going to have to chat for a bit, waste some time, so that the company would never hear the call because it was too long. Because I was about to do some things that would get me fired if they overheard. So I got to hear their love story while I worked the system (it was lovely.) End result, I backdated a plan that credited her account enough to give her the next 6 months for free (what she had already paid.)
If you've read this far: the system sucks. But if you can work well within the system while you have to, you can make it suck less for many, many people like you before you find your way to rise above it.
Fuck the company, love their victims when you can.