Throwing the survey callers off their script
This was an old favourite of my Dads which I have stolen and seems to work quite well.

*Brrrring Brrrring*

Me: Hello
Survey Person: Hello, is that Bill?
Me: It is
SP: Hi, my name is %SP% and I'm calling from %Survey Company%, can I ask you a few questions?
Me: Sure but can I take your billing address first please?
SP: Pardon?
Me: As a consultant my opinions and experience are of value to my clients, therefore it wouldn't be fair to provide them to your company for free so if you could give me your billing address so I can send you an invoice once we're done I'd be happy to answer all your questions.
SP: Err, um, *Click*
(bill, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 15:45, 2 replies)

"Your call may be recorded"
I lost a watch whilst at a gig a few years ago. Some fucker walked away with a nice little vintage Heuer military chronograph.

I had insured seperately on my home insurance because at the time I was travelling to and from Napoli quite a lot and the camorra liked to zoom up on scooters and snatch things of unsuspecting foreigners.

When I tried to claim they stated I had not asked for said insurance. I wrote a letter to the MD and asked for a copy of the telephone conversation that I had when "not" requesting the additional cover.

They couldn't provide it and sent me a cheque for £850 "without prejudice". My premiums were unaffected as the claim was never processed.
( shitkicker, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 15:43, 8 replies)

Pea-roastage
…I had to pull a late one at work to replace a shitload of network hardware that was getting a bit twitchy after 5 solid years of use – an operation which would render the entire company network inoperable for about 2 hours. I planned to get a start 30mins after the traditional end of the business day. Simple and painless.

Of course, I sent no less than three emails warning my company’s users about this, giving them literally days’ notice and a reminder the very day of the planned presto-chango action. Taking the lack of enquiries as a sign that everyone had gotten the message, I took the site offline as planned and began taking stuff to bits. Not more than 10 minutes after I had gotten started, I got a call on my mobile from a manager in one of our branch offices, a stroppy menopausal bint whose offensive mouth was a known fact – the conversation went like this:

ME: Good ev…
MSB: It’s not working!

I’d already guessed what was going on but her rudeness from the offset got my back up, so I decided to give her enough rope to hang herself. Non-geeks often fail to realise that IT folk are like waiters - woe betide you if you piss us off, and you won't know of our retribution until its too late. We have much more power than most people realise. So anyway:

ME: I’m dandy, thanks for asking – what can I do for you?
MSB: I’ve already told you – {idiot voice} I-T-S N-O-T W-O-R-K-I-N-G!
ME: {stroppy bint’s name}, you know that I’m responsible for a good few systems here – I’m going to need some specifics.
MSB: There's nothing specific about it - {more idiot voice} N-O-T-H-I-N-G I-S W-O-R-K-I-N-G! We’ve got no database, no email, no nothing – what are you going to do about it? I'll tell you now, whatever you do you’ll have to do it quick!
ME: Tell me, did you get the emails I’ve been sending about planned network downtime the past few days?
MSB: {incredulously} I never read those! My time's too valuable to waste on that jargonny stuff!
ME: I see. Okay, for one, I’m most definitely not a sympathetic ear to the view that my emails aren’t worth reading and two, if you or indeed anyone else in your office had bothered to read even one of the emails, you’d now be with the rest of the company in knowing that the network is going to be offline – ENTIRELY – for a couple of hours starting about fifteen minutes ago.
MSB: That’s not good enough! I can’t finish this with no network – you’ll have to bring it back now!
ME: I’m sorry, that’s not possible. You see, as I stated in the email, I’m replacing a number of pieces of network hardware tonight and I’ve already half-dismantled what was in there to start with – I mean to go ahead and replace the parts as planned.
MSB: {muttered profanities} I can’t believe this! {my boss’ name} is going to face some stern words tomorrow, and you can take that to the bank!
ME: That’s your perogative, of course, but remember that in this case your problem is in fact your own fault for ignoring official instructions. You see, I don’t send emails with high importance simply to remind you that I exist – I send them when I feel there’s something you need to know. {my boss’ name} will most probably tell you the same.
MSB: {impatient sigh} Okay, so when’s it going to be back on? I need to get this done before 6pm, y’know.
ME: Also included in the emails were the timescales for this, but since you, er, missed them, I’ll clue you up. I originally expected to be done by 7:30 for 8, but it may take a little longer now.
MSB: {more muttered profanities and cant-believe-this'es} Oh, and why’s that then?
ME: Because of the time I’m wasting on this call. With that in mind, is there anything else I can help you with?
MSB: Oh, fuck off {click}.
ME: My sentiments exactly - bye then.

She did call my boss the next day, recommending that I be disciplined for my attitude, and naturally my boss collared me about it. I detailed our telephone conversation and my boss agreed both that she was being a needlessly stroppy and abusive cunt and that she deserved everything she got for ignoring my emails in any case. I even got to sit by and overhear the conversation where my boss told her exactly that, though he was slightly more diplomatic about the stroppy cunt part. She must have gotten arsey with him too because he added that if she kept better track of her work deadlines, she wouldn't find herself in such situations. Silent applause from me for the coup de gras there.

Eventually, she pissed off one person too many with her obnoxious tone and got shown the door. A few people have missed her since, but I'm not one of them.
(Lord Chode, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 15:27, 6 replies)

Never Trust Official Statistics
Due to my wife’s inability to say no to people I returned home one day to find out she had signed our household to a consumer feedback list. This basically meant that every month or so we would get a call from someone in a call centre taking info on our spending habits, views of what we had bought and other inane questions.

What my wife neglected to tell the poor unsuspecting callers was that I am a bit odd and will like to bugger up statistics wherever possible. After my first conversation I had ‘bought’

7 x Afro Combs (I always seem to lose them when trying to get the right look on my hair)
2 x William Shatner Albums
4 x pairs of tights (unsure of colour I just know that they won’t obscure my vision yet made me look unrecognisable to any staff member on next week’s bank job)
3 x Copies of Roy Walkers Autobiography (Does he even have one?)

I have to commend the staff who took these calls, they were happy to oblige my stupid purchases. My guess is that the bosses who monitored all the results were getting similar replies from other participants and started asking for barcodes for any electronically related purchases. Little did they know I had i) too much spare time on my hands ii) Proper copies of a number of shitty DVDs and albums given to me by my friends.

Thanks to my CD collection I happily registered that I had bought the best of Harry Secombe on CD and Saint and Greavsie’s footy trivia DVD and a quick email to my mates got me a list of crappy albums and their matching barcode (Told you I had too much time on my hands). I also seem to get regular updates from mates who are out shopping and see something terrible and will text me the info to ise next time I get a call regarding my shopping habits

Never trust any statistics, even when they are done by an official company they usually have someone like me on the panel telling them that their favourite ice cream is tartar sauce flavour and my preferred meat is tribble.
(mon bison powered by magnets, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 15:18, 2 replies)

I'm reminded by davywavy below
It was a recruitment company called The Restaurant People, and when I was of work and looking for a job, they called me at all times of the day or night to see if I was available as a silver-service waiter. As it happens, I'm a terrible waiter and I was looking for a job as a web developer anyway. Long after I'd found work, they continued to bombard me with daily emails, calls, letters, subscriptions, surveys and even "Restaurant People" magazines. Every time I asked them to remove me from their database, but it was like cutting hydra heads.

So with a bit of arcane web-fu and a lot of Googling, I found the personal mobile phone number of their Data Protection Officer*. Every time I received an email, I called her. Every time they called me, I called her right back. It took about two weeks before she managed to get her shit together and properly remove me from their database.

*I just love the fact that a Data Protection Officer had put their personal mobile number on the internet.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 15:07, 2 replies)

I used to work in a well-known mortgage brokers
The days were long and boring. I hated every minute. Except for outbound days.

Outbounds is where you're calling clients who have asked for a call-back. Most of the time they are at work so you get their answering machine. Some of my time-passers were:

Transferring the call to another dept - which I knew would be busy. So the customer gets a 5 minute hold music message and maybe even a "Hello? Hello?!"

"Good Afternoon Mr. [insert name]. This is Doctor Smith calling from [insert local area] General Hospital. We have the results of your GUM test. If you'd like to give us a call back on 0845 [insert random numbers]"
(likeajackhammer, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 14:38, Reply)

Don't bother ringing the BNP hotline.
It's impossible to get through to them.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 14:32, 5 replies)

I've been there.
It's been me. That voice at the other end of the phone. The person who rang you during your lunch, or just when your boss was away and you were about to start looking for naked ladies on the internet. "Hi, can I talk to..."

I'd graduated in a recession with a bunch of debt, and I was too proud to scrounge off the state and so took the only job I could find; full on, never hang up, cold-call telesales. It was a company which relied upon graduates being a bit naive and not really knowing what real working life is actually like, so they'd work you until you quit. The average member of staff lasted less than three months. I managed a year and a half, and in that time my team of six went through eighteen other people.
I never enjoyed it, but I was in a real financial hole and thought that I had no other choice but to carry on. Eventually, one morning I was talking to my flinty-eyed boss and I realised that I'd rather not get paid than make her another penny, so I walked out and was surprised how quickly I got a proper job.

When the cold-callers ring, generally they're people like I was then - desperate, and a bit ignorant and easily bullied by their bank or their boss. It isn't their fault, not really. Don't give them hell, because all you'll do is make their crap life just that little bit worse. There's something else you can do. Take it to management.
The thing is that my time in telesales hell taught me some useful skills. I'm a whizz at datamining and I'm really, really good at getting to talk to the people I want to talk to - and the people I tend to want to talk to these days are senior managers in cold-call telesales companies.

It's not my job to talk to them. I'm just a bit of a crusader.

Take Toucan Telecoms, for instance. A few years ago, before they got taken out by Pipex, they never stopped ringing me at home to try and get me to transfer my telephone line to them. The first couple of times I politely but firmly declined to the poor chaps on the other end of the line, but after the third of fourth call, I asked to be removed from their database. After they ignored the request and kept right on ringing, I started to get serious.
I dug out the name of their MD (hard to find, but everything is on Google eventually), and rang him. I lied my way past receptionists and secretaries and flat refused to talk to customer services. In the end, I got to talk to him.

"Hallo, this is [name removed] speaking"
"Hi, name, my name is Davy. Nice day, isn't it?"
"It is, Davy, what can I do for you?"
"I'm looking out of the window at the sunshine and thinking 'what a great day!', so I thought I'd ring you up and chat about it."
"Eh?"
"I think there's some clouds on the horizon, though. Might be rain later."
"Davy, can I do anything for you?"
"Well, now you mention it, yes. You see, about three weeks ago I asked your people to take my name off your database and stop ringing me, and they've ignored me and just carried right on ringing. So, here I am, ringing you. I just thought I'd ring you up and waste your time and every time one of your people rings me, I'll do it again. I got past your receptionist and secretary, and I'm really good at getting put through. Your people ring me? I'll ring you. And I will get put through. Every time. I'm pretty good at cold calling."

It was fun, and on the plus side they never rang me again.
(davywavy, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 14:18, 1 reply)

The Viagra hotline was busy.
They said "your call is impotent to us."
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 14:04, 2 replies)

the sex line was busy.
They told me "please hold."
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 14:02, 3 replies)

Might not quite be on-topic
As part of my job I record IVR prompts for companies, 'press 1 for this press 2 for that,' that kind of thing.

I did one for the national immigration advice line not that long ago which went something like, 'Welcome to the national immigration advice line. Please note that we cannot offer any advice on this line.'

Good eh?!
(beer, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 13:39, 5 replies)

I'll call him Pete, for that was his name, and this is absolutely true..
Many moons ago I was on a late shift answering calls to give home insurance quotes. The nature of the shift patterns meant that from time to time, two or three of the team of twelve were on a "split shift" - something like 9am-1pm then 5pm-9pm. By 8pm one evening it was just myself and Pete, who had decided to spend his spare four hours that afternoon smoking a LOT of weed. His eyes were redder than monkey's arse and he was slumped so far down in his office chair I thought he was going to fall off altogether. Very amusing, especially when I overheard him say "you think that's too cheap madam? You want the computer to confirm it for you? Ok - hold the line please."
At that point he beckoned me over, giggling like a loon, then stood up, regained his compusure and took the call off hold. The then put on a "robot" voice and said" your buildings insurance policy will be £85.45 per year and your contents will be £121 exactly". He then gave it a few moments and said in his normal, stoned drawl; "would you like to go ahead withat that then Madam?"
She bought it. Bless her, and bless special old stoned Pete.
( BobbyParadise, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 13:34, Reply)

Some roastage of an old Pea;
Whilst working as a home insurance quote monkey I had the misfortune to deal with some astonishingly stupid members of the public, e.g:

Me: Has your property ever suffered from subsidence?
Posh old woman: Certainly not! This is a very respectable area!

Me: Is your house detached, semi-detached or terraced?
Scouser: Errrm - I don't understand
Me: (explained the difference)
Scouser: Hold on mate, I'll pop outside and have a look

Me: Is your title Mrs, Miss or Ms?
Young woman: I don't know. What is it when you're not married?

And these people are allowed to vote. Fuck me.
( BobbyParadise, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 13:02, 1 reply)

A friend of mine
got incredibly drunk and gave away her cherry...

...to a coachload of footie supporters on the M25.

Apparently it hurt like bejesus, but not as much as when it was the coach drivers turn to poke about in her innards. The coach crashed, flipped over five or six times, and my friend lost the use of both her legs in the twisted metal.

She turned up at the call centre where she work a few months later, hobbling round on some crutches, and was called into her manager's office.

"I'm sorry, but we're gonna have to let you go. We don't feel you live up to the ethos of the company anymore."

My friend started ranting and threatened to twat the manager round the mush with a crutch, but all he did is cough politely and point up at the company logo behind his desk.

My friend used to work for Virgin Mobile.
( SpankyHanky, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 12:52, Reply)

How BT ruined my friend's marriage
Back in the days of yore, circa the mid-nineties before mobile phones became ubiquitous, my friend got married like the child bride that she was. Fast forward a few months to the lovely country cottage that her and her new husband were renovating. He went off to work and she was busy peeling wallpaper or the suchlike, when the phone rang. It was the BT call centre.

"Hello," they said. "We're phoning about your billing. We'd like to offer you the chance to put together a Friends and Family list for discounts on your calls."
"Great idea," replied my friend.
"Based on frequency of calls we suggest this number as part of your list," responded BT, giving details.
"Yes, that's my mate's number, but I never call her that much," replied my friend.

No. But it turns out that her husband did. And that's how she found out he was having an affair. And that's how she kicked him out and got a divorce. And that's how BT ruined her marriage (which, she concedes, was a good thing in the long run).
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 12:18, 4 replies)

Every time I ring b3ta
they put me in the cue.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 12:08, 5 replies)

Call centres, the bane of my (working) life
I have to call EDF in a few moments to arrange for the installation of a number of electric meters at a property we are refurbishing. Sounds simple doesn't it? I'll be lucky if I'm off the phone in half an hours time after going through the standard press 1 for this and 2 for that, and then when I do finally get through to someone I'll inevitably get transferred around a couple of times, before being told to 'take down this number and call it'

Anyway, can't wait.
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 11:31, 7 replies)

I used to work in a call centre,
phoning the great British public to see if they were interested in the goods my company sold. A lot like Yo Sushi, a conveyor belt ran through the office, where a variety of products were placed, and they would slowly go past you. Oh we had everything in stock, from leather walking stick covers, and bottles of tea tree oil, to tins of Stagg Chilli and tubs of stickle bricks.

We were each given a phonebook, and when you had dialled a number at random, the product going past your face as you pressed the last digit was the item you tried to sell.

“Rhubarb Rhubarb” you would have to say once you heard a dialling tone.

When the customer answered, the flaps on the small hole on the base of your chair opened and slowly a metal spike worked its way up. At around 10 seconds you could feel the cold sharp metal probing at the fabric of your Bermuda shorts. If you had not closed a sale within a minute, the spike would have inserted the full length of its sharp glistening metal love length into your rusty sheriff’s badge, and then it would withdraw slowly. Then a buzzer would go off, and a Vietnamese supervisor would come over, throw you a towel, and slap you in the face once shouting “MOW!”

Now I’m not much of a salesman, but there is nothing like the motivation gained when you have a metal spike trying to find a way into your rectum, a Vietnamese man slapping you shouting “MOW!” and, if you failed to get a sale for the entire shift, you had the indignity of wearing the ‘fish hat’ the next day. The fish hat was merely a fish draped over the head. Not much fun when you have to lower your head to read phone numbers – it always fell off. Plus there was always a supervisor on hand to grass you up if your fish hat fell off.

“Fish hat fall off error” He would say into a radio, and within minutes one of the Vietnamese supervisors would be over, and he would place it back on your head whilst quoting from the film ‘Airplane’ presumably to try to make you laugh and perform another fish hat fall off error. If that didn’t work, he always had a red nose and a car horn in his pocket. Everyone knows that nobody can fail to raise a smile at the parp of a car horn, Then when the eyes turn to the source of the sound, and there is a small Asian fellow with a red nose striking a ‘Tadaaaaa!’ pose, well that’s it, your laughing your arse off.

A second fish hat fall off error would incur a loss of a day’s pay, and if you had children, if you ever bought them an ice cream, a ninja would appear from nowhere and slap it out of their hand. You never knew when it was coming, but somewhere along the line, you would be about a quid down, and have a crying child to deal with.

You get used to anything. When I started the job, I was rubbish, hardly shifted a thing, and had a right sore arse and fishy hair to boot.

I tried allsorts to get my act together and make a sale. I tried softly softly, the Morphy Richards, and the Canadian method of pressure selling, but nothing worked. Until I stumbled upon the book.

‘Chris Eyebrow’s guide to high pressure sales and rectal trauma avoidance’

It was like this book was written just for me. I pored over its contents. It spewed forth wise words of wisely worded wisdoms from someone who is worldly wise and full of wisdom. It told me how to draw the punter in, make him an offer he thought was too good to turn down, and close the sale before he changed his mind. Also, the chapter about lining your pants with a steel plate was pretty good too.

I managed to get a pretty good sales record. My best day was when I shifted 5 pallets of peg holders – which were used cracked and split Walls Ice cream tubs – to a senile old bint in Bradford. I wore the Badger hat that day and I was very proud. It fell off once and was gently placed back on my head by a white cottoned gloved Vietnamese supervisor who bowed before returning to his corner.

I had to leave recently though, to pursue a lifelong dream of working in 100w light bulb sales. Things are looking up!
(Spaff_Quaffer Wise fwom your gwave., Mon 7 Sep 2009, 11:15, 8 replies)

Hatches, matches and dispatches
It takes a great deal of tact and care to handle newspaper births, deaths and marriages notices. Especially the deaths.

A pity then that most of these calls are handled by internal call centres staffed by ... well, people who can't get a better job.

Thus a notice appeared in a paper I once worked for announcing the death of a much-loved old lady "after a long illness crazily borne".

"Crazily"? "Courageously", perhaps?

Fucking illiterate muppets.
( calgacus Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 10:52, 4 replies)

for your own convenience
for security and training purposes, calls may be monitored or recorded.

It also allows them to laugh at you later and pass it around to the IT department who will make a nice Christmas presentation of the very best.
(cornishbob is going to hell on, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 10:40, 3 replies)

telephone monkeys
I have the pleasure of never having worked as a phone jockey, but have worked for years in the IT dept. of a number of call centres leaving me with numerous tales of incompetence etc

Working for a small company brokering mortgages, a huge global company starts sniffing around looking to buy us but sets us quite high targets to prove our worth.
The boss puts every number back on the dialler, TPS numbers, people who have threatened to kill us all if we ever call again and also the customers who have recently remortgaged in the last 6 months+
We reach the target easily, it was frankly amazing how many people who were on the TPS still signed up for remortgaging and the number who had cleared their debts with a remortgage but 6 months later were up shit creek again.

And yes, they were a significant contributor to our current fucked up 120% mortgage lending induced cock up of an economy
(cornishbob is going to hell on, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 10:38, Reply)

Not sure whether this has been posted as yet but...
An actual cold call made by a BT employee....(sound required)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj2oXMdZ4sk


Apologies if its been done already.
(frightfullybored, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 10:38, 4 replies)

I rang these graphic designers
to complain about a typeface they'd designed for me.

But the Qs were too long.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 10:29, 4 replies)

I interviewed Courtney Love over the phone.
I wanted to talk about Nirvana, but I spent hours on Hole.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 10:17, Reply)

Make cash by
getting an 0845 number and have a second phone line fitted. Redirect the 0845 number to your new phone number. Then use that whenever you sign up to anything that requires your number. In fact, fill in as many customer research forms on the internet as you can possibly find and tick/untick the box that says you want to share your number with every Tom, Dick and Harry.

Have a spare computer connected to the line to act as an answering machine with a lengthy greeting. Have a script run an audio file consisting of some umming and ahhing along with a few 'tell me more' and 'could you repeat that' style comments. You may need to delete the recordings every so often or you'll end up filling the hard disk with inane recordings of call-centre staff steadily getting more and more exasperated.

Hopefully, call centres will start calling the 0845 number, and your answering machine set-up should keep them on the line long enough for you to make a small but satisfying profit for beer money etc.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 10:16, 4 replies)

Fucking with zee workforce
Customer: “Gut-en-taag, you sell zee bespoke indemnity insurance, yes? I vud like a quote for zee cover, pleeze.”

Dave: “No problem, Sir. What are you looking to insure?”

Customer: “Aie am making zee documen-tarry feelm.”

Dave: “OK, I think we can sort that out for you. I’ll need to take some details first and will have to run it past an underwriter. Can I take your name, please, Sir?”

Customer: “Hitler.”

Dave: “...........”

Customer: “Clarence Hitler – no relation. I get zat all zee time. Ho! Ho!”

Dave: “And what’s the documentary about, Sir?” (Best professional voice)

Customer: “It is zee science. I am attempting to breed zee gorilla with zee homo sapien.”

Dave: “......................... I’m sorry, could you repeat that, please?”

Customer: “I have found zee lady named Sarah Shields, she is letting me film her az she makes the love with zee gorilla. It is dangerous, but she iz very willing. And zee camera crew have zee extream close up lenz for zee shot of zee money.”

Dave: “Sarah Shields? What....? Who is this?”

- CLICK!!! -

I knew Dave was by himself in the call centre and would answer the call because I’d left him there on his sweeny about half an hour earlier when my shift finished. I always enjoyed messing with his head on account of him being far too handsome and witty for his own good. And his girlfriend, Sarah Shields, was a real hotty, the lucky, jammy bastard.

As I turned away from the payphone in the boozer next to work I noticed a bloke stood behind me waiting to use the phone. He was looking a little aghast.

“Don’t worry, mate – I’m not really German.” I said.
( SpankyHanky, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 10:09, 4 replies)

Was once seconded to a call centre.
I went for a job once for a big IT Outsourcing company, mentioning no names but it sounds a bit like EDS based in Sheffield. We were working for the Employment Service Contract.

I was a young'un at the time, needing to move forward from my first job straight out of college as a Desktop Techy for a pretty nice building contractors firm. It was a good job, awesome staff and really getting into proper hands on I.T stuff from building servers, fixing printers.

Moving to a huge organisation was certiantly a shock. I was promised to be working with the industries best I.T people, working for a huge I.T company. First I spent 9 months travelling around the country on the trains (because i didnt drive) visiting Job Centres all over the place to help them go live with their new systems. Then they put me in First Line Support as they needed everyone in there.

First Line was basically their call centre. We could fix nothing at first line and had to literally just log calls, give incident reference numbers and pass onto Second Line support.

I was naturally irate, I was surrounded by people who didnt know anything about computers, and were just admin staff. So had various meetings with managers to say that I was wasted, and was told that if I was to shine on first line, then they'd get me promoted.

So I managed to wangle the local admin passwords of all the PCs in the employment service, which enabled me to make scripts to quickly fix the most recurring problems, and viola I was fixing stuff and not even passing to second line. People were well happy to be getting things fixed on their first phone call. And just running a script off wasnt making the call take any longer either!

Next minute I'm hauled into the office, and asked about them. I explained how I'm closing calls on first line. They told me to delete them. Seems im treadding on peoples toes. Great... so how do I shine then?

After that, I started the piss taking, spending most of my time on recruitment agency sites, talking to recruitment agencies using works phones speaking loudly, voicing salary details and stuff.. Which had me back in the office again and a verbal warning issued. Seemed i'd blurted out my salary and those around me were on 5k less than what I am and had been there years! Oops :) They were not happy!! Ah well their loss!

I was stuck there for some months, then just like busses, I had two job offers. I chose to head off to Leeds to work for a well known building society there doing much more hands on I.T stuff. I was quite suprised how all the managers at the call centre were congratulating me when I put my notice in. They knew I was wasted there.

The amusing thing is, and I should have had the bottle to do this. Is that some of the people who worked at that call centre, quit. Then set themselves up their own company and went back to the call centre contracting on £50 per hour!

Sorry for lack of funny , but I found it definately an experience. Call centres are literally just there to sort out the easy stuff and take messages. People who work in them are usually people straight from college or Admin staff. Theyre not TV, Phone or IT Experts what so ever. If you get lumbered in one and have skills.. then get out!
(Miggyman, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 7:59, Reply)

I work in one.
Yeah, boo, hiss.
And apologies for forgetting who this was, but massive kudos to whoever said to just take a minute to think about the person on the other side for a minute.
Once you've been inconvenienced by this guy/gal and hung up after whatever period of time (I usually find people get bored/pressured after roughly 53 seconds), just remember that this person will now be reeling from yet another rejection, and is now starting the whole process again, sounding as cheerful as if someone had poured a glass of happy into their pants.
It gets better.
I work in officially the worst type of call centre.
Lies to get names.
Follow-up calls.
Cold calls.
Selling to people who have never even heard of your company, let alone deal with it before.
Now, don't get me wrong, I believe in our product, if I didn't then I would consider it the final straw and be out of there faster than OJ, but this in itself is a double-edged sword, as finding myself consistently lying about it, giving people limited info on the same script many times an hour, then expect them to spend X amount of money on it is just utter crap.
I dealt with a woman on Friday, lovely sounding, thick Indian accent, sounded interested in what I had to say, got all the way through my pitch (in half the speed, admittedly, understanding English was not one of her strong points - a little bit of a stumbling point for a customer services and purchasing manager, but I digress) as far as agreeing a sale, giving her the product reference numbers, dates of delivery etc, when she says 'hold on, I'm not buying anything am I?' - to which I remain as calm as possible, but find myself going on an inner tirade for the next 5 minutes which the BNP would be proud of.
Yes, that's right, my job has made me about 10% more racist.
Then I had to pick up the phone and do it all over again.
FML.
I have sold.
It's good commission.
But it is just utter horseshit.
Save me please.
(Chaos_Theory makes epic electro, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 5:59, Reply)

A friend and I
Invented a game where we brainstorm a long list of 1-800 numbers that sound like they could potentially be sex lines, eg. 1-800 HAIR SEX; 1-800 ASS ROMP; 1-800 HUGE TIT, etc.

Ninety-five percent of the time these do indeed lead to sex lines (I have a theory that the phone sex companies may purchase a large number of 1-800 numbers that contain words like 'sex', regardless of the remaining digits). However, the remainder of the time one gets connected to a call center of some sort with no dirty phone love connections, and this is where the challenge begins.

Once an actual human voice comes in on the other end, the player must offer this poor cubicle-bound call-center laborer something to the effect of "Hi how are you? I was trying to reach 1-800-NO SCROTE (or whatever). Have I called the right number?" And continue to negotiate as long as possible.

Anyway, in case you decide to try this game I will give you a hint. As I recall, 1-800 POPE SEX is a member of the magic 5% that reaches a call center.
( the prick of misery pierced my foot on a spiiiike on, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 2:34, Reply)