Human Robot

Life in a Call Centre becomes a psychological trauma. It kills your dreams and your motivation.

If you are currently working in a call centre environment, as I did 2 yrs ago you can consider yourself as being a robot, a robot is a person who works mechanically without original thought, especially one who responds automatically to the commands of others. As a call centre agent, you are hooked up to a phone and a computer that never stops ringing and clicking for the majority of your life. Time is everything for you that is military clocking-in, monitored toilet break, strict call length. You are also at the receiving end of all negative ramifications from decisions made by untouchable figures at the top of the company, they say don’t take it personally when a caller unload on you, remember when a customer is angry, you have to remember they are never angry with you, they’re angry at the situation, they’re angry about something that was out of their control. You just happen to be on the receiving end and you can’t take it personally. How can you not take it personally after all we are all human, but working at a call centre you have to become a robot it is a requirement that management fails to add to the job requirements.

Once you enter the call centre environment prepare yourself to become a living human robot with an open mind and be able to adapt to change very quickly or else you are out the door, your entire life will become unpredictable hence you have to continuously adapt to a constant change in your scheduled work hours, your schedule break and lunch to your work target. You never really know what is expected of you; because it’s always changing very quickly I must say. Management will inform you that these are the criteria … then you meet them, and then no, wait, we’ve got these criteria so you’ve got to change that and try to meet the second which is different from the first lot ... you never know what is expected of you. This is quite depressing and you never know where you are, you will never feel stable.

 like a robot you have no say in the decision-making process, the decision is made then passed done to you, through your team leaders who have little or no say in representing your concern you will hear them say “will pass it on to the managers” little you know that it ends there or you would hear” if you don’t like it you can always leave there are other people out there who want the job.”