2007/07/13 23:47
Nineteen
Meaningless summer jobs are all well and good when you don't need to pay for anything, but sooner or later you become responsible for bills and have to enter the soul-crushing workforce.
So in January of 1997, I accepted a position as a technical support representative for America Online. It was my first real job, taken in order to save toward moving out of my parents' house and into on-campus housing. And it sucked.
All work sucks to some degree, of course. But working on the phones for AOL, in the midst of its strongest customer push as personal computers and the Internet began to hit stride, stands as the worst job I have ever had. It's not just that the service caters to clueless unemployed housebound types -- retirees, soccer moms, thirteen-year-olds named Jason who are learning to cyber -- and I was required to support these people. It's that the company treats its employees like disposable silverware.
I learned quickly -- when most of my training class was gone within three months -- that call centers expect a very high employee turnover rate. But rather than attempting to hold onto the quality employees while allowing the chaff to fall as it will, AOL presumes that all of its staffers will eventually wash out and therefore are not worth wasting precious company funds that could be better used to buy Steve Case a new BMW. We were indentured servants tethered by telephone cords for eight hours a day, our bathroom and food breaks tightly monitored by the Lucent boxes. (I believe it is no coincidence that "Lucent" and "Lojack" both begin with "L" and have six letters.)
The worst part was adhering to call times. Company-wide, we were required to keep our calls to an average of less than six minutes. Often, that's not even enough time for your clueless housefrau to describe the problem. But worse, my supervisor (who uncannily resembled Hootie of Blowfish fame) expected us to have a team average of five minutes or less.
"Give them one solution and hang up," he preached. "If it doesn't work, they can call back."
Right. We're supposed to answer a call from some poor schmuck who's been on hold for an hour and a half, tell him to reboot and if it doesn't work to call us back? I'm sorry, Hootie, but even if I'm getting paid to do it that way I have to say it's not very good service.
The final straw was when AOL partnered with some telemarketing company, to redirect our inbound traffic post-call to a representative who would then offer a savings program membership. So now after I failed to solve the caller's problem, I was expected to sell them a coupon club card. It felt dirty -- I was prostituting myself for my own paycheck.
So I stopped doing it. All of it. I stopped pushing the savings club, I stopped hanging up after one solution, I stopped watching the call time clock. And I started solving technical issues for my callers.
Every day, I had more e-mails from customers, singing my praises for fixing their connectivity problems and getting them back online. I forwarded them all to my supervisor. Shockingly, none made the company newsletter.
It took about two months before I got it. Hootie didn't care about my "Raving Fans." He cared about that little clock on the Lucent box, the one that showed my average call time was seven minutes and forty-three seconds. He cared about the counter that showed I hadn't forwarded anyone to the savings plan since October.
He offered me an option, sort of. Either I could quit or he would fire me. Well, you should have seen the laundry list of reasons I gave in my resignation letter. I'd just been waiting for the opening, I realized, and even though it meant I wouldn't be able to pay for my dorm anymore, I was better off without it. My integrity comes before my job, then, now, and evermore.
So in January of 1997, I accepted a position as a technical support representative for America Online. It was my first real job, taken in order to save toward moving out of my parents' house and into on-campus housing. And it sucked.
All work sucks to some degree, of course. But working on the phones for AOL, in the midst of its strongest customer push as personal computers and the Internet began to hit stride, stands as the worst job I have ever had. It's not just that the service caters to clueless unemployed housebound types -- retirees, soccer moms, thirteen-year-olds named Jason who are learning to cyber -- and I was required to support these people. It's that the company treats its employees like disposable silverware.
I learned quickly -- when most of my training class was gone within three months -- that call centers expect a very high employee turnover rate. But rather than attempting to hold onto the quality employees while allowing the chaff to fall as it will, AOL presumes that all of its staffers will eventually wash out and therefore are not worth wasting precious company funds that could be better used to buy Steve Case a new BMW. We were indentured servants tethered by telephone cords for eight hours a day, our bathroom and food breaks tightly monitored by the Lucent boxes. (I believe it is no coincidence that "Lucent" and "Lojack" both begin with "L" and have six letters.)
The worst part was adhering to call times. Company-wide, we were required to keep our calls to an average of less than six minutes. Often, that's not even enough time for your clueless housefrau to describe the problem. But worse, my supervisor (who uncannily resembled Hootie of Blowfish fame) expected us to have a team average of five minutes or less.
"Give them one solution and hang up," he preached. "If it doesn't work, they can call back."
Right. We're supposed to answer a call from some poor schmuck who's been on hold for an hour and a half, tell him to reboot and if it doesn't work to call us back? I'm sorry, Hootie, but even if I'm getting paid to do it that way I have to say it's not very good service.
The final straw was when AOL partnered with some telemarketing company, to redirect our inbound traffic post-call to a representative who would then offer a savings program membership. So now after I failed to solve the caller's problem, I was expected to sell them a coupon club card. It felt dirty -- I was prostituting myself for my own paycheck.
So I stopped doing it. All of it. I stopped pushing the savings club, I stopped hanging up after one solution, I stopped watching the call time clock. And I started solving technical issues for my callers.
Every day, I had more e-mails from customers, singing my praises for fixing their connectivity problems and getting them back online. I forwarded them all to my supervisor. Shockingly, none made the company newsletter.
It took about two months before I got it. Hootie didn't care about my "Raving Fans." He cared about that little clock on the Lucent box, the one that showed my average call time was seven minutes and forty-three seconds. He cared about the counter that showed I hadn't forwarded anyone to the savings plan since October.
He offered me an option, sort of. Either I could quit or he would fire me. Well, you should have seen the laundry list of reasons I gave in my resignation letter. I'd just been waiting for the opening, I realized, and even though it meant I wouldn't be able to pay for my dorm anymore, I was better off without it. My integrity comes before my job, then, now, and evermore.
