My first post on here, long time reader and had to share something that happened to me back in 2003 when I was living in Orlando. I was between jobs, and working with a few Temp agencies. I got a 1 day job working, what they called, a receptionist position. I show up and it's a very stereotypical “call center pit”. My job was to sit in the raised cubicle over-looking the 12 callers and monitor them. I didn't have to answer phones or anything, just sit there, observe, and document anytime I saw one of the callers doing anything other than making calls for more than 10 seconds. They gave me a printed out sheet of paper in a 2×6 grid and I just made a tick mark for every violation I saw. There were 8 managers over these 12 callers. They did absolutely nothing all day. One would come by every hour or so and check my observations. At one point they called me into their conference room and they had pizza, cupcakes, cookies and offered me some. Being broke and starving, I of course partook, but there was SO MUCH food there, I asked if they were going to give some to the employees, and they just laughed. I went back to my raised cubicle, and at one point observed this one dude just break down crying. he asked for a smoke break and the manager berated him about when his break was, and he had to sit there for another hour. The manager told me to make a tick for every 10 seconds this guy wasn't working. He cried for probably 5 minutes, managed to gather himself, and went back to work.
The whole day went like this. Managers sneakily calling me back to their conference room, making fun of the employees, chowing down on food, etc. At the end of the day they fired the 2 people who had the most tick marks, one was the dude who broke down. The job paid $12 an hour (more than I had ever made), and I worked a full 8 hour shift. I felt so shitty afterwards. I got a call the next day from the Temp agency telling me the place liked me so much, they wanted to offer me a position on their management team. I declined. The pay at that time would have changed my life, but I couldn't do it.