- It's 7:00 a.m. in Pacific Bell's Internet call center.
A scent of dirty socks and day-old pizza hangs in the air. Agents log into
their phones, boot up their computers. The large cube-divided room is dimly
lit, cozy like a bar, or maybe a funeral parlor. This early there's time
to surf the Web, e-mail a friend, tear open a package of Pop Tarts and
relish the quiet. Across the aisle from me Rick arranges the plastic toy
men on the top off his monitor. Behind me Justin plays FreeCell. Latrice
paints her nails and blows on them. Tinny laughter from a portable radio
at her desk makes her smile and shake her head.
-
- In the middle of the room sits the Hotcube. The Hotcubist
today is George. It's his job to monitor our calls, watch our times, listen
in if necessary, and write us up. Stay on a call longer than thirty minutes
and your name goes into a log. Sit in Wrap (the time between calls) for
longer than three minutes, your name goes in a log. Take a Health break
for longer than five minutes, your name goes in a log. Leave your desk
without an appropriate code. Logged.
-
- I started working at the call center in downtown San
Francisco in February 1999, one of an incoming class of about 25. Twenty
months later I look around at the hundred or so faces, and I don't recognize
anyone from my class. Most quit in the first three months. In April a brand-new
class of forty was hired and thrown onto the phones. Another class in June.
-
- It's like how I imagine war to be. People just disappear.
You simply don't see them anymore. Hotcube got to them. They panic on a
call. Take a Health break and walk out the front door and don't come back.
When the crew thins out, a new crop of agents is recruited and given two
weeks basic training (Monday -- Windows, Tuesday -- Mac, Thursday -- NT)
and off they go.
-
- Brian sits across the cube from me. He's 23, works at
a Safeway in Oakland on the weekends and commutes from Livermore. Other
agents BART in from Berkeley, El Cerrito, Walnut Creek, Concord. Another
gets up at 4:00 a.m. and drives from Tracy. I'm one of the few who lives
in San Francisco. I keep my ten-minute commute time to myself. But soon
all this will change when the center relocates to San Ramon. I've heard
stories about the new location: lots of parking, lots of parking, lots
of parking. Maybe it'll happen in October, maybe January. An internal e-mail
regarding the move was sent out last week, with a helpful link to the Employment
Development Department.
-
- Brian takes calls with his head on the desktop and his
eyes closed. "Click on Edit, select Preferences, click on Servers,"
he mumbles. Last week we didn't know one another. We sat on opposite sides
of the center. This week, for some reason, our seat assignments were changed.
Brian thinks we've been moved closer to Hotcube. He thinks we're being
monitored. He could be right. Or he could be paranoid.
-
- When I started, I thought I could tell when I was being
monitored. I'd hear a click as the call was transferred. Or I'd hear a
slight echo on the line. Or a buzzing. Or sometimes, the question was so
easy I suspected the call was a fake and I was being tested. Please, I'd
pray, let the question be really easy. Don't ask a Mac question. I would
lift my head during the call and look around the room. It's him, I'd think.
He's monitoring me. Or him. Or her.
-
- The phone rings -- the first of about thirty calls in
the next eight hours. As a second-tier agent, I take calls from first-tier
agents. They're the point men, the grunts. They take the bullets. They're
mostly from small towns in the South. Polite as can be even if they don't
know much.
-
- This one's voice shakes. I bet she's wondering if she's
being recorded. "I have this customer who demands to speak to a supervisor.
Can I please transfer him to you? He won't speak to me anymore. He's all
mad, calling me stupid," she says hurriedly.
-
- She's breathing heavily. I know I could grill her about
the trouble-shooting steps she's taken, run through the standard check
list (check the cables, check the settings, rip TCP/ IP) and then shove
her back to the customer. But I can hear the panic in her voice. I remember
how it feels, calling for help and getting brushed off. "Go ahead,"
I tell her. "Transfer him."
-
- "Thank you so much," she says, her voice very
fast like a prisoner suddenly freed. I think: she's not gonna last much
longer.
-
- While she transfers the call I take a breath and prepare
myself. It's like the moment before telling your parents that you've smashed
their car. Or the two minutes it takes for a cop to walk up to your car
window and ask for your license. There's no getting around it: it's going
to be ugly. Brian taps me on the shoulder and points to his phone. He's
entered the number 55 into the display screen -- an unknown idle code.
-
- "Hotcube will see you," I warn him. Hotcube
sees everyone, knows every code you're in. When you're not in a valid code,
your inside line rings immediately. It's Hotcube calling to find out what
you're up to.
-
- "No," he says. "I tested it. They can't
see me." I think he's wrong but if he's right I wouldn't mind using
the code just to exhale every now and then without being monitored.
-
- Finally, the customer is transferred to me. "Are
you a supervisor?" he demands instantly. Since the beginning of the
month, everyone in the call center has been transformed into a supervisor.
Brian sleeping at his desk is now a supervisor. Ian with purple hair gelled
into points is a supervisor. Ron who begged not to be made a supervisor
is a supervisor. I am hoping next month, whoever decided to make us all
supervisors will make us CEOs.
-
- "Yes, I am a supervisor."
-
- "At last," he sighs. I feel sorry for him:
he thinks he's reached someone in authority. He's explains that he's had
a red sync light on his DSL modem (indicating a line problem) for two months.
He has had no service, yet he's been billed without interruption. It's
really a phone line issue. I get calls like this at least twenty times
a day. Basically there's nothing we can do. "I can escalate the case
for you if you like, but it's usually more effective if you call our Plant
Control Offices directly." We've been told to tell customers to call
directly. Better they wait on hold than one of us.
-
- If we escalate the case, it'll take about two weeks before
the telephone company sends a technician to the customer's premises. Ideally,
the customer will be informed that the technician has been dispatched.
Ideally, the customer will be home when the technician arrives. "I
can arrange to have a technician dispatched to your house," I offer.
Dispatched: it has a nice, speedy ring to it. Ambulances and fire trucks
are dispatched.
-
- "I've already had one of your so-called technicians
out here!" he blurts. "He didn't know his rear-end from his navel.
He was here so long he fell asleep on my couch! Now I want to know what
you -- YOU -- are going to do about this right now."
-
- What can I do? Put him on hold.
-
- I glance up at the reader board to check the number of
calls waiting and the longest wait time. When the wait time exceeds five
minutes the number turns from amber to red. After that, the numbers start
to flash. When a router goes down, the board lights up like a marquee.
-
- Perhaps he's not mapped correctly on the telco side.
I call our Network Data Operations Processing. "I need to escalate
a case to see if a customer is mapped correctly," I say.
-
- "You need to call the tech center," she tells
me.
-
- "I'm calling from the tech center," I answer.
-
- "Oh, then you need to go through PCO."
-
- "I've gone through the PCO," I persist.
-
- "I'm sorry. I don't have the authority to transfer
you," she insists.
-
- "Let me speak to your supervisor," I demand
instantly.
-
- "Hold on," she says. I imagine her knocking
on a supervisor's office door. I imagine a man with a tie following her
to her phone. She's probably passing me over to someone just like me.
-
- The theme song from Titanic plays. Sting sings. I check
my e-mail. Celine sings. The hold light to my customer flashes.
-
- I eye the Hotcubist. He eyes me. The call is going too
long. My hand hovers over the call disconnect button. One touch to the
release button, and my average call times will improve. I think of what
Kevin used to tell me when I first started. An ex-con with tattoos up his
arm and a talent for finding the foulest Web sites, he gave me the best
advice. "Remember this," he said. "There's a support boundary
in every call, and it's your job to find it." What this means is that
often we provide the appearance of technical support rather than support
itself.
-
- Some boundaries are obvious: Internet Explorer, Outlook,
UNIX, personal home pages. We don't touch them. But Kevin, like a pig searching
for truffles, would dig down deep and bring up the most priceless delicacies.
"I'm sorry, sir. We only support the 16650 UART chip." Unfortunately
I can't play a support boundary card in this case.
-
- Hotcube calls me on the inside line. "Long call."
-
- I check my phone clock that times each call. It's showing
twenty minutes. "I'm on hold with NDPSC," I inform him.
-
- "Sorry, no outside calls right now. We're getting
hit bad." A high-pitched beeping repeats overhead as a message slowly
moves across the board. "PLEASANTON DOWN. WATCH YOUR CALL TIMES!!"
-
- The director of the call center gets up out of his seat
and marches over to the Hotcube. He's doing what all directors do when
something goes down. He towers over the Hotcubist and stares up to the
reader board. While the Hotcubist tries to shuffle agents -- putting them
in one queue, taking them out of another -- the director barks commands.
"What's Watkins doing? Get him out of Wrap." "Tell Jones
her break is over." "Flanagan's in Idle for three minutes."
-
- Poor Hotcube. If the numbers don't improve quickly, he's
done for. No more cushy job, back to trenches like the rest of us. He's
perspiring as if it's his fault a router went down.
-
- "Where's Doyle?" the director demands, looking
over at Brian's empty desk.
-
- Brian's manager walks over to investigate. I suspect
Brian is done for also. Meanwhile my hold button blinks. I will have to
get my caller's number and phone him back. I hit the hold button to return
to the customer. The wonderfully joyous sound of dead air greets my ears.
He's hung up. I stand up, stretch, try to let the tension flow out of my
body.
-
- Hotcube sends an instant message that flashes on my screen:
"You're in Idle -- two minutes!!"
-
- "Sorry," I write back. I am sure my name is
going into a log.
-
- My next call is from a customer who canceled his order
before his DSL equipment and line were ever installed. For the past three
months he has been billed $39 for service he never had.
-
- "Stop the insanity," he pleads. "Just
please cancel the whole thing." I check his account and see that he's
on a special bill plan. I'm not sure of the exact procedure I must follow
to deactivate him. I have to ask the billing supervisor, but she sits across
the room.
-
- Hotcube looks over suspiciously as I log into Admin and
remove my headphones, then go over to speak to her.
-
- "It's a new plan," Angela sighs. "We can't
deactivate him. What we're doing is collecting names, adding them to a
list. Once we figure out what to do, we'll take care of it. Give him a
credit."
-
- "But he'll be billed again next month," I point
out. "He'll have to call back."
-
- "I'm sorry," she says. "It's all we can
do for the moment."
-
- "Okay, let me see if I've got this straight,"
the customer responds when I explain the situation to him. "I don't
have any service. I've never had any service. You can't cancel the account
which I've never had and you will continue to bill me?"
-
- "Yes," I answer cautiously, dreading his response.
-
- "I'm stunned, absolutely stunned," he says.
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a long, long time."
-
- There's a long pause. It's like waiting for the firing
squad to yell FIRE!
-
- And then he laughs, and I know I am in the clear. I've
dodged another bullet. "Well," he sighs, "I guess there's
not much I can do." Fight, scream, raise hell I would like to tell
him. Just not to me, to someone who has the authority to fix this mess.
If only he could find that person.
-
- I credit his account and send him on his way. Another
unsatisfied customer.
-
- After two hours in my seat, I need a Health break. I
punch the number 20 into my phone and leave my seat. I have five minutes.
The trip to the bathroom should take only two. Providing there's an open
stall, and I don't linger before the mirror. But I'm hungry for a bagel.
I take a small detour and head to the elevators. I can feel the clock ticking.
Maybe Brian's right. Maybe I am being monitored. I check my watch. Maybe
I should get back to my seat. The elevator door opens and I press the ground
floor button three times. The door takes forever to close and to open.
There's a line at the coffee shop. A woman is counting out pennies. Seven
minutes, thirty seconds. Finally I get my bagel and head back to the call
center. It's been almost nine minutes. I run down the hallway and rush
back to my seat. Hotcube looks at me, looks at the clock. Logged.
-
- While I've been gone, I see a small slip of paper has
been placed at every agent's desk. "Will you be willing to commute
when the call center relocates to San Ramon?" There are two boxes
to check: yes or no.
-
- I consider the commute, forty minutes at most. Against
traffic. Not too bad. I can handle it. For a little while. The exact same
words I said to myself when I took this job twenty months ago.
-
- By one o'clock, Pleasanton has been down for three hours.
The reader board is hemorrhaging. There are no allowed Wrap times between
calls. Once I hang up with one customer I must instantly pick up the phone
and take another call. There's not much I can tell customers besides: "I'm
sorry. We don't know when it will be back up." "I signed on with
you people," a caller complains, "because of Pacific Bell's good
name. I thought a company like Pac Bell would be a helluva lot more reliable
than this. But this stinks and I intend to tell everyone I know just how
much it stinks."
-
- "Yes, it does stink," I tell her. The words
just roll right out of my mouth.
-
- And suddenly I feel a great sense of release, as if I've
stepped out of the line of fire.
-
- "Oh," she says, sounding startled. "Well,
I know it's not your fault. I don't mean to take it out on you."
-
- "Of course," I tell her.
-
- At 1:30, near the end of my day, my manager asks me to
come by his cube. I think, this is it. I'm fired. I put my headset down
and walk over to his desk. As I walk over, I wonder, who monitored me?
Who's watching me get fired?
-
- And as I sit before him, it occurs to me that I will
never have to sit on those phones again.
-
- He opens a folder in his lap with my name on the tab.
He hands me a sheet of paper. I quickly scan them for a comment on my last
call.
-
- He looks over the notes. "Your AHTs look good,"
he tells me. "Good call control. Good. Try to remember your closing
statement. The Men in Black are particular about that."
-
- "Right," I nod. So I'm not getting fired; I'm
getting reviewed -- favorably. How can that be? Haven't the Men in Black
been monitoring my calls?
-
- "One criticism," he says tapping the paper.
"You have to enforce those support boundaries. We don't support Outlook.
Give them the help URL and send them on their way. That's what those sites
are for."
-
- I say nothing and he decides to wrap it up. "Okay,
well then. Everything looks good. Any questions?"
-
- Why am I here? What's in this for me?
-
- When I return to my desk, I notice Brian's computer is
turned off, and his picture of Scully from The X-Files is gone. A few minutes
later, another tech sits down at Brian's desk. He adjusts the seat height,
tilts the computer monitor to suit him, and then plugs his head phone into
Brian's phone. I've seen this guy around the center for months, but I don't
know his name. He takes out a bag of Tootsie Rolls and puts them on his
desk within easy reach. "Help yourself," he says.
-
- "Thanks," I say and then ask him if he knows
what happened to Brian.
-
- "Brian who?" he asks. His phone rings before
I can answer. He presses the ready button. "Greetings. Thank you for
calling Pacific Bell Internet. How can I provide you with excellent service?"
The Men in Black like him much better than Brian.
-
- I wait for the second hand to sweep across the number
twelve on the clock, and then I log out. The reader board is a sea of blinking
red. I turn off my computer and stand up. I take my Pacific Bell Internet
mug off the desk and drop it in my backpack. I mark no on my San Ramon
survey and drop the slip of paper into the box at the receptionist's desk.
-
- Outside on the street, the bright sunlight makes me squint
as I walk to my car. My legs are stiff from sitting so long. My head rings
with people's voices yelling at me. As I get into my car to drive home,
I feel like a soldier whose tour of duty has come to an end.
-
-
-
- Comment
- From Max
- 11-18-3
-
- Hi, Jeff. Hmmm. I must stress straight away that there
may (actually there will) be a little crudity in my message. However,
I do have a serious point to make here, concerning our apparent devolvement
as a race. I would first quote from the article posted by Erika Donald
on your site dated 11/17/3 entitled "Let Me Talk To a Supervisor!"
-
- Take a Health break for longer than five minutes, your
name goes in a log
-
- So that's the quote. So you may ask, what is my point
exactly? It concerns our toiletry habits when we are at work, and which
I believe reflects how we are actually devolving as a race in terms of
how we treat each other. Let me explain.
-
- 1 - 1000 B.C, or thereabouts. Hunter gatherer man needs
to take a "comfort break." So he shouts out to his companions
he has to take a crap and anyone who comes near him during that time is
likely to ingest a spear in the chest. No one bothers him.
-
- 2 - Fast forward to the Roman era. A slave in the employ
of an emperor needs to take a comfort break. Assuming he is a good slave,
and is not actually bunking off it probably won't entail him being sacked
or worse, killed. Providing he does not take advantage and sit on the
can for half an hour reading the latest papyrus news.
-
- 3 - Go even further into the future, that is the industrial
revolution. A worker tending some monstrous machine within one of Britain's
great mills. So much as look at the toilet whilst you are working and
you will lose your job and go straight to the poor house, without passing
GO and without collecting two hundred pounds. And possibly you will risk
being hung, drawn and quartered for daring to challenge to the machinery
of big business by daring to suggest that you may need to use the toilet
more than once a year when in your employers charge.
-
- 4 - The 1970's. A rare rest period when we, the workers,
are all allowed reasonable comfort breaks. The workers almost break out
in spontaneous joy at the thought they can finally take a three minute
shit without their employer banging on the rest room door and telling them
to clear out their belongings and vacate the building within fifteen minutes.
-
- 5 - The 1980's. Whoa, no time for a crap here boy, not
when there's money to be made! (sorry, I meant stolen). To paraphrase
Gordon Gecko, taking time for a crap is for wimps!
-
- 6 - The early to mid 1990's. The comfort break makes
a come back. The lock is taken off the work room rest house and suddenly
its alright for us to admit to all being human and occasionally needing
to vacate our bodies of waste products. After all, as John Major told
us at the time, the nineties are the CARING nineties. Ahhhhh, what relief.
Break out the toilet paper, guys and gals!
-
- 7 - The late 1990's to the present day. An eleventh
(yet very old) commandment has now been brought back into play: Thou Shalt
Not Crap During Work Hours. And no matter if you have IBS, cancer or any
other health problems. Or indeed just that normal day to day (yet highly
annoying to big business) human occurrence of having of vacate waste products
from our bodies. If you even so much as look at the toilet you WILL lose
your job. And possibly also be hung drawn and quartered for having dared
to waste your employers time with so trivial a requirement (see point 3
above for an historical comparison).
-
- Sorry for the language, Jeff, and believe me or not these
thoughts of mine are not flippant. I am actually extremely angry as we,
the workers, seem to be heading back to the days of the work house. Where
some workers, here in the UK and no doubt also the USA, actually have to
put our hands up and ASK to go to the toilet! What!!?? I say again...What!?
Here in the so called free world so many workers actually have to ask
permission to go to the loo!!! Grrrr. I am going to sign off here, Jeff,
because this makes me so angry I don't want to indulge in even more bad
language. But before I go, if you wish to post my thoughts please consider
it copyright free. I have a very strong feeling that, if posted, this
will draw a very robust response indeed. In fact I would very much hope
you do post this just to gauge the response from other hard working folks
out there across the "free world."
-
- Best Regards
-
- Max
|
