This is another classic story of pulling yourself from the bootstraps, tech progress, and the utter disregard of people who try to make a decent living.
For the past three years, I've was living the dream: answering calls at a call center while pursuing my degree by night. My glamorous $16/hour gig involved helping folks for various clients and other thrilling inquiries. But today the dream is dead. Over 150 of us, an entire fleet of call center agents, got tossed aside like yesterday's trash.
Why, you ask? Because our CEO decided to invest in some hot shot AI start up which outperforms us mere mortals.
I should have seen this over a month ago, when I scoring some quality calls. I spent over three hours grading these calls, not recognizing names or voices, but each call was exceeding quality standards. When I told my call center manager this, he let me in on the dirty little secret. It was all AI. I didn't think much of it at the time, because, hey, it's just a computer, right?
Well, imagine my surprise today when the very computers I graded were now putting me out of a job. The irony is thicker than my CEO's wallet.
So here I am, jobless and unsure of my next step, while an AI start up basks in the glow of a successful corporate takeover. If we don't put the brakes on this AI invasion, we might as well kiss our call center jobs goodbye.
Yes, I'm getting severance.
I have a job for the next six weeks as they get the fancy machines installed.