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Daily discussion thread: ๐พ Tuesday, May 14, 2024
(aussie.zone)
5am.
The art:
The artist:
@Gibsonisafluffybutt @Seagoon_ Lovely post-modern art piece by Gibson ๐ธ
@Seagoon_ Overheard in the office...
Colleague one: "As you are aware, we've decided to postpone <event> until August or September. Can you change the dates on the website please?"
Colleague two: "No, I was not aware, thanks for letting me know. When was the decision made? I'll update the website."
Colleague one: "I am very sorry, I thought you were aware."
The "Manager" strikes again.
I have an interview for another volunteer position this Friday. I can't believe I'm finally leaving call centres behind, and I'm actually on the path to something I want to do. For so long I've been forcing myself into jobs that ruin me, and then I wonder why I fail.
I won't fail at this.
I've worked in call centres for 10-12 years, electricity, tax collection, salary packaging/sacrifice, and a small business that did home services. All sucked in their own unique ways. The only way to move "up" is to be toxic as fuck and throw your coworkers under the bus, which I couldn't do. The abuse from management, the abuse from callers, caused me to abuse myself.
So done, 0/10, do not reccomend. Taking calls all day is a form of torture.
Gonna be doing animal care instead, cert III, and then I'll move up to the cert IV in veterinary nursing. It'll be hard, but I won't be on the phones; I'll be doing something that has been my dream.
I worked for an ISP help desk for years. I loved it.
I think my experience was a bit different to most phone work though. All the calls were initiated by customers. Even when I was calling outbound, it was as a follow up to someone who wanted to speak to me. Also, we were helping people, so they'd be happy and grateful at the end of the call.
Finally, it was the 90's - the Internet users were far more technical than the average person today. I could walk most callers through their computer/modem settings pretty easily.
There might still be phone work out there that doesn't crush your soul. I don't think it's the work itself that's awful, rather the setting they do that work in and your coworkers/employer that are the problem.
I wish it was just coworkers/management
I've had customers scream at me, threaten to unalive themselves or me, threaten to shoot me, masturbate on calls, speak to me like I was a phone sex worker, call me every name under the sun, tell me I'm a bad person and I should unalive myself, and threaten their own children.
Had some spout qanon stuff, and scream about 5g causing cancer while using their mobile to conduct the call. Scream that lefties are ruining the country.
Had people tell me that land tax is stupid and not know what it goes towards (roads, infrastructure, schools, were my answer), that it was just funding trans people to abuse children ๐. Scream about having to sell their investment properties (not my fault). Some spoke down to me, or call me racist names because they though I was an immigrant (I'm not, not that it makes it okay).
Threaten to find me and rape me, wanted me to tell them my last name, tell them my home address, call me queer slurs. Ask me out, ask me to talk dirty to them, and demand I do something against company policy.
All this because I was just doing my job, or I was "taking too long", or I told them they had to pay xyz bill, or tell them it would take X time for payment to be received/refund to land. Never told anyone my political leanings, never provoked them. I think you lucked out, because these days people have gotten worse and worse.
So by the end, I was a (middle) manager of the staff on the phones. I had the power to "fire" customers. I would not have hesitated to close the account of a customer, making them get a new Internet Provider/email address for any of this. Our people were worthy of respect and our customers knew it. Or they weren't our customers any longer.
@Nath @StudChud Nath, it's great you had a good job experience.
But not all call centre jobs are like that.
Many call centres are micro-micromanaged.
Adherence to work hours. Conformance to schedule. Call handling time. Calls per worked hour.
There's often caller feedback forms, and those irrational or malicious customers basically decide if you keep your job.
The calls are recorded, and your team leader or dedicated contact centre staff listen in randomly.
In many commercial organisations, there's a mandate to upsell or cross-sell, even if it's an angry customer who wants to close their accounts.
In those cases, you also get judged on the average value of products you sell, and the percentage of calls you upsell on.
You have already angry people who have just been on hold for up to an hour, and have been transferred across different departments and teams.
And there are some men who are either creepy or misogynistic when dealing with women over the phone. And yes, clearly it's a small minority of men. But that small minority exists, and they're shitty.
So tech question Tuesday.... You know this 3g turn off thing? My MIL has a Moto G8 plus (which the specs say supports LTE), but Optus keep sending her emails through her account saying that it will not be supported going forward ... They list her phone specifically as one that will not be supported...so VoLTE is a different spec than LTE?
@calhoon2005 @Seagoon_ Sort of.
Basically, when the first 4G and 4G LTE networks were first being rolled out, the technology to make voice calls over 4G networks wasn't quite ready yet. So the earliest 4G phones dropped back to 3G for calls, but used faster 4G networks for internet and data.
Eventually, the telcos rolled out a technology upgrade that allowed calls to be made on 4G LTE mobile networks, called VoLTE (voice over LTE).
But it only worked on newer 4G/4G LTE phones that supported VoLTE for calls. Older models still dropped back to 3G for voice calls
Sounds to me like your MIL has an older 4G LTE phone that still falls back to 3G for calls, instead of making them over the 4G LTE network.
If that's the case, she'll no longer be able to make calls with that phone once Optus 3G shuts down.
Time for an upgrade.
Nothing like some midnight floor mopping because you put it off all day and have an apartment inspection tomorrow while you'll be in the office and you hate having people in your apartment while you're not there but you have to go to work because you have to present a demonstration to the executive leadership team.
Meeeeeanwhile, I'm seriously considering moving out and just going to stay with my folks for a while. It's not about money (although it would be nice to save a bunch of money quickly) it's more about how unhealthy it is for me to sit alone in this shoebox. Plus I'll have to house/dog sit for them for their upcoming US trip this year anyway.
Then once I've saved a bigger chunk of dough I'll finally bite the bullet and buy something. Likely right before the housing bubble finally bursts after 30 years of people saying it's going to but never does.
Good night and good luck for tomorrow.
this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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