Late last year I took a job at a local 'call center.' I was repeatedly, specifically asking about the job, was it sales, was it outbound calling, which I won't do. No, they explained, it's “retention,” you get incoming customer calls and help them modify their internet, cable TV, hardline phone, mobile phone details. Sure, you might try and get them a package they want so they don't cancel, you might offer to sell them a mobile phone package, but it's not direct sales. It was fairly complex to learn because the software/system is a PITA and often doesn't work for no apparent reason and takes forever.
But it went ok, and the customers are my favorite part, even when they're mad. We've all been there. I do everything I can to make them happy or at least feel better and maybe get a chuckle before they hang up with me. My coworkers are awesome, the 3-midnight shift I chose because I have a day-gig a couple months once a year I wanted to keep worked great for me, and they pay $15/hr which in my po-dunk town is a lot. We talked about how happy we were about it, our stats were good, our supervisor was good, it's all good, right?
Near the end of April, we come to work one day, and they tell us wellp, now the job is Mon-Fri not Sun-Thurs, also it's 8-5 not the four different shifts we had before, it's $10-12/hr instead of $12-15/hr, oh yeah and your whole job you loved is gone.
Now the computer will dial about 800 cell phone numbers a day for you and in response, you click in this different software to say it's an answering machine or it's a fax or there's no sound or it's a business or whatever. And of those 800 calls, maybe 60 are humans. 50 of those hang up on you the moment you say, “Hi, my name is ___, how you doing today?” because they know it's a sales call. Of the remaining ten, most hang up by second sentence, one might fuck with you just because they hate you for bothering them, and there might be 3-5 who listen to what you are offering and say, “Thanks, but I'm not interested.”
So all my interview “Are you SURE this isn't outbound sales?” reassurance was BS. Would have been nice to know before taking the job and becoming rather dependent on it.
Alright that sucks but it turns out the primary job focus is harassing those tiny few people who were NOT rude to you. Most of them seem elderly, or just kind. I'm like, THEY SAID THEY WEREN'T INTERESTED! No, you have to get them to say NO three times. Nobody says no three times, they will hang up prior to that! I say. Yes they will. But of those 3-5 humans who are ever so briefly kind to you, there might be one or two who are elderly, or not very bright, or by some miracle, already absolutely wanted what you're selling at this very moment. And THOSE people you MIGHT be able to sell something to. The rest of the income you're making your corp is from handling as human what AI apparently can't do very well on determining the nature/state of those phone numbers.
I was so upset the first day this changed, when lunch came I literally got up and walked outside in 12 degree F weather, oblivious and forgetting my coat right next to me, and went home, and called in with an excuse. I went back the next day, and worked on improving my attitude and doing well at the new job. I had immediately, same day we were told, applied for leave of absence for the day gig I had (that would have been no issue were I still working nights) and the top manager said that was fine. Sitting there using the mouse and a drop-down box to classify phone number results is not a hard job, though it's obnoxious, but I did not expect to sell anything. (Miraculously, a little bit, I did. Once.) But I hated the work so much I could hardly stand it. More importantly, the pay drop is just not workable, I could barely survive on what I had before.
So the VP comes in to talk to everyone and mentions in passing how this is a good 'campaign' to 'start learning sales on.' And I realize suddenly:
It was all a grift. It was all bait & switch. Nobody wants to do sales calling. So this big growing corp sets up a call center, in some town where as the VP tactlessly put it, “$12+/hr really means something to people,” (yes we're desperate), and they recruit for the retention job. And they were always clear the goal was to get X# of people and they said maybe once they had 'enough' they would offer work from home, part time or flexible shifts, and so on, and so everyone was looking forward to that. Instead, the very week they made that number, they completely switched the whole center to a totally different job…. because a different, new call center somewhere else, was now using retention to suck in wide-eyed believers like me to a job they were willing to try and would actually like.
So the big manager had a relative in the center helping everyone learn the new stuff, and she's sitting by me at one point talking and I ask her, so is this how it works, the plan? After some months doing this, losing the expected massive attrition to people quitting, gradually building up a few more to some larger number, then they'll shift us to something even MORE 'outbound sales' oriented? And this girl, her face is like a five year old's it was 100% clear that yes, this is how it works, and that would be the future.
I talked to my annual day-gig boss about how I needed another job, and to keep me from looking/finding one in a way that made me unavailable to them, they offered to pay me for the month between then and when I began. It's barely enough to survive frugally on to be honest but it was enough given how urgently I wanted out. So I requested my leave of absence begin start of March instead, the top manager said sure that was fine, and I will frantically hope to find a job by start of June, or soon after — I'm assuming they will let me come back 6/1 at least so I can feed the rescue pets till I find something else.
But I am still so pissed off about it. They NEVER gave any indication that the entire nature of the job — let alone the days, the hours, and the lower pay! — were likely to happen or were part of the plan. The whole thing is a standard corporate process and it's devious as hell. And in small nowhere areas like where I live, it was pretty damn exciting for about 175 people that they could make somewhat decent money doing a decent job. Now everyone I know who worked there is gone. I drive by and see hardly any employee cars compared to what it used to be. And I feel like to a great degree they took advantage of us because we were in a small city and desperate for jobs. Like you can just do that to people, to a lot of people, plan it in advance, because what are they gonna do. Maybe it's a completely different job/pay/schedule but hey since they're not unemployed they aren't laid off and can't file for unemployment. Great plan, guys.
The sad thing is I genuinely liked the client-company we were working for, and I genuinely liked the work, and I genuinely like working with the customers, and the day before all that went down, the list of employee stats went up and I was #16 of >150 so that's not awesome but it's not bad at all. Somewhere out there, that company is paying people to do this job, but I guess since they're obviously paying it 'via' corps that do subcontracting, I will not be doing it anymore. That was a lot of training/time to put into someone who was good at the job and liked it, to just throw it all away.
So they can harass elderly people who aren't savvy enough to hang up immediately, and piss off a ton of other people every day.