1/18/05 05:03 pm
Yeehah for quitting jobs!
So, the last couple weeks at work have been really shitty. I'm allergic to my bosses perfume and it gives me these wicked headaches and once it made me so sick I missed a day of work! To top it all off, they don't let me go home with these headaches. I approached my boss and told her that I'm very allergic to her perfume and what it does, she told me that she doesn't wear much (a point that everyone in the office disagreed on) to deal with it and try to avoid her. Well, this is nearly impossible in a tiny call center environment, especially in the winter closed up window months.
Well, I guess today it went too far. I was spending all day trying not to quit, just to perservere with this bitch of a headache and make it home. Well, I guess I wasn't being the jolliest person on the phone and one lady critisized me for not wishing her good luck. (I take lottery ticket sales, among other things) Not being in the mood for criticism/being an innate smart ass, I asked her if she “would like a sincere one or an insincere one” and she took affront to that and told me that she works for the other two lotteries that this call center puts on and didn't like the lack of customer service that I was giving and she was going to call my supervisor to complain. To this I replied “Ok” and she said “Aren't you going to apologize?” getting slightly more upset. I love my response.. “*big sigh* Would it do any good?”. That sorta pissed her off more and she complained at me for a little while longer before I let her go.
Half an hour later, when I'm sitting with my head on my desk, trying to hide in the sparse shade my cubicle provided, my supervisor walks up to me and says “Ken I need to see you in the Boardroom right now”. Heh, I walked into the boardroom and said “Karen called back didn't she”. My supervisor raised her eyes and said “You know what this is about then?” suprised.
“Of course, I was an asshole to a customer, she said she works for the other lotteries so I assume that she called and complained about my lack of customer service and rudeness.”
“Umm yeah, she said that you know how to do the call but completely lacked in Customer Service and she wants you pulled from Canadian Cancer Society and CNIB lotteries, you're just heart and stroke now”
Well.. CCS and CNIB were my favourites, they're the easiest
“Haha, that's funny, I'm the primary person for CNIB, ah well, screw it, I quit. Do you want someone to escort me to my locker?”
This suprised the hell out of her and she said that they can trust me for that. So, I cleaned out my locker, shook all of my supervisors hands, said it was a pleasure to work with them (and it really was) and left. Everyone was shocked, and I guess disappointed. I can say without arrogance that I was probably one of the better employees that they had there, I did my job, did it well and looked for other ways to help out, taking responsability for helping people out (not my job) and learning about all of the types of calls that this call center took. By the end I could take calls from every project except for one, and that one wasn't running. There were over 10 different things that I could take calls on. Most people only took calls on two.
All for only $8.50 an hour.
Ah well, their loss, it was a fun job before it came with brutal headaches every day. I guess sometimes you just can't take anymore. I had too many years of putting up with bullshit and shitty stressful jobs. I made a promise to myself a couple years ago to only stay with jobs that made me happy. Sure it's led to a LOT of poverty, but it's helped me be generally happier.