Blocking any memory of my call centre jobs from my subconscious is something I’ve learnt is best for my mental health. Unfortunately, like painfully saccharin sweet TV dating game shows, these memories unwantedly bob to the surface and cause severe mental trauma.
I’ve always admired the tact of call centre trainers who promise through gritted teeth that there’s room to move up in the organisation. Eventually. One trainer at a call centre I worked at made the mistake of beginning a sentence with ‘Well, you may be at the very bottom of the organisation…’ Some of the new staff looked around uncomfortably, as if the pay packet hadn’t already given them some indication of their role in the company’s pecking order. One man who was sitting behind me had previously been boasting about how he’d had years and years of call centre experience didn’t look quite so impressive to the rest of the group. It may have been early alzeheimers kicking in, but when he loudly proclaimed a few hours later that he actually normally specialised in business planning and this was job just a ‘break from the norm’, I harboured suspicion.
My most vivid memory of working in a call centre is quite literally counting down until 15 minutes past each hour. This would be my cue to rise from my seat (usually forgetting to remove my headset beforehand and nearly resulting in involuntary body piercing) and drift listlessly to the toilets on the far side of the building. I then commenced to spend far more time than necessary in said toilets in an attempt to reduce the number of angry customers yelling at me each day.
It’s little avoidance tricks like that which help you survive a call centre career (presuming, of course, you’re working in one of the 90% of call centres which are run terribly and are horrible places to work at). Lunch breaks aren’t so much a time for you and your friends to gather in the team room and laugh over a few sandwiches as much as a torrid group therapy session of the day’s worst customers.
Personally, the best trick that used to work for me was the daily hot chocolate run. Around 10.30am each day, myself and a handful of other cubicle rats would sneak downstairs to a nearby coffee shop, purposefully loitering as we purchased hot chocolates to go. The tepid beverages served to us were further evidence of how desperate we were to escape the terror of the call centre.
I dropped the hot chocolate habit once I moved to Sydney – there’s only one job I haven’t enjoyed since working here, but that gravitated around having a superior who gratified himself by pointing out minute errors I’d made every day. Interestingly, the more mistakes I made, the longer he drew out his words. As an experiment to satisfy my curiosity, one day I deliberately fucked things up as much as possible. The sounds coming out of his mouth sounded like a groaning Datsun 180B struggling to remove itself from a patch of mud.
Yet on Thursday at work I was compelled to rise from behind my desk in search of hot chocolate, after noticing one of my co-workers drifting about with a polystyrene cup. It suddenly stuck me how long it had been since I’d regularly consumed hot drinks at work. I quickly elected to rise from my site, exit the office and beeline towards the nearest cafe in search of a hot dairy delight.
My drink was quickly purchased and I cradled it between my hands, feeling its warmth promise me a precious few minutes of chocolatey goodness. Unfortunately, I didn’t consider that the hot chocolate I’d just bought may well be very different from the hot chocolates I used to buy.
Due to the lukewarm temperature of the drinks I’d previously bought, it was no problem ripping the lid off the cup and gulping it down. This hot chocolate was different – it was served as the name suggested: hot. Scaldingly hot.
Naturally, I failed to consider this. A few steps outside the cafe and I’d washed nearly half the cup down my throat. This was swiftly followed by a womanly scream, choking and tongue movements which anyone could have easily taken offense to.
An older man quickly rushed to my aid from nowhere. ‘Are you alright?’ he panicked.
I tried to answer him, but my tongue felt like it had been melted away. Undergoing slight panic, I attempted to motion with my hands what had just happened. He appeared to think that I was pointing at something behind him, and turned his head to find only a delivery van unloading a vat of vinegar for the cafe.
‘I don’t understand,’ the man spoke. Suddenly, it seemed ridiculous that anyone could even possibly use that much vinegar, and I began laughing. Once I did this, my throat contorted painfully – it felt as if strips of flesh had been ripped away by the molten lava-strength hot chocolate.
Trying to calm down, I said ‘I’ve got a really hot hot chocolate’. Unfortunately, this degenerated into more spluttering mid-sentence, and came out sounding like ‘I really HATE MY JOB.’
‘Don’t worry,’ the man shook his head. ‘You’ve got it easy. I have to deliver vinegar all day.’