Paid thumb-twiddling
During the phase between leaving university and actually figuring out what I wanted to do for a living (which lasted approximately two years), I put in a shortish stint at a call centre in Perivale. Those familiar with West London will know that the tourist attractions of Perivale are its moderately reliable Tube station, its deliciously breathable air and its plentiful supply of roads. The office building housing the call centre was so remote it even had its own supermarket on site.

Anyway, I got hired by a Japanese electronics giant to man the phones during a marketing campaign they'd just launched for a new laptop associated with various business solutions. By "just launched", I mean "launched on the same day they overoptimistically hired the telesales team". There was thus a delay of around two weeks during which the customer base received, digested and got around to dealing with the marketing materials.

During these two weeks we received not one single call. Surfing the internet for SFW material got stultifyingly tedious by about the fourth day. We couldn't even indulge in the sole interesting pastime any of us could think of (going to the pub at lunchtime for a swift pint or five) because we had to take lunch in shifts "just in case someone does call". Add a ban on personal e-mails to the equation and you have a great recipe for how to drive someone stir crazy.

A couple of weeks after that things did pick up and customers actually started calling, but top management decided that things were going a bit too slowly and that we were to start cold-calling people. It was at this point that I left, since that wasn't part of the original agreement.

On the plus side there was a very cute American guy on the team and for a while there was some serious chemistry between us, so much so that I was very tempted to find out what it was like to sleep with another bloke, but in the end the combination of me not having my own place at the time and just being a bit shy meant that I chickened out.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Fri 4 Sep 2009, 13:36, 4 replies)

STOP PRESS
Call centres turn staff gay.
(Corbo, Fri 4 Sep 2009, 13:44, closed)

I click...
...for your description of Perivale.
(ThomsonsPier consumes, Fri 4 Sep 2009, 15:40, closed)

Awwww.
That's a shame. Gotta take a chance on things sometimes mate :p
(Scritty Bakerman., Fri 4 Sep 2009, 22:28, closed)

Don't worry...
...I made up for it later ;-).
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Mon 7 Sep 2009, 16:22, closed)