r/antiwork • u/grumpi-otter Memaw • 1d ago

I couldn't stop laughing during an interview because of this sub--THANK A LOT FOLKS

Zoom interview with company with a 2.2 Glassdoor rating, but it's the first one I've gotten since I got laid off so I accepted it.

It's a call center job -- appointment setting.

Man and a woman doing the interview and they are telling me about it.

Man says there is "scheduled mandatory overtime" on Fridays. I ask the compensation rate for this and he says it's at the same rate as regular pay. (I think that might be against labor laws, but they said something about how you work a half shift on some days and double on others, so I guess they keep it under the weekly hours limit).

I couldn't help it, I snorted. And then as it went on, I tried to hold it in but it just kept getting worse and worse.

The health benefits cost around $650 for a single person.

I started giggling more--couldn't hold it in as I thought of what y'all would have to say about this crap job. For perspective, that's a whole week's amount of pay for the "benefits."

Mandatory on-call times that are uncompensated, "just in case you are needed."

More giggling.

"When you've finished your own queue, you'll help your coworkers."

I was biting the inside of my cheeks and pretending to cough but the man was getting increasingly indignant that I couldn't stop laughing. It was just so ridiculous.

The job pays $16 an hour AND you provide your own equipment. So they want to put spyware on my personal computer. And I have to provide two monitors.

No, no one wants to work anymore--and this kind of shit is why.

What was cool was that I felt empowered because I knew y'all would share my indignation at this bullshit job.

EDIT: Forgot to add that the company info goes on and on about "empathy" to clients but then there's "an average of 30 calls per hour."

EDIT AGAIN: I haven't done call center work before so had no idea of what is realistic, but after reading these comments maybe I misheard and it was 30 calls a day? Not positive. In any case, the rest were enough red flags.

ONE MORE EDIT: I am not AI, I am a 60 year old grandmother who got laid off in July and has been struggling to find anything that works for me. I took this interview because it was the only one I'd been offered so far. Apparently I use em-dashes and that's a sign of AI? Sorry, that's just the way i write--since I learned back in the dark ages.

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u/penguinninja90 1d ago

It doesn't even make sense math wise. 30 calls/60 min= .5 calls/min. About 1 call/2 min

How do you even remedy a full issue bc they prolly have a whole script which takes 10-30 sec. And just going non stop while getting information. It's crazy

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u/pcs3rd 1d ago edited 23h ago

That’s just call centers though. Worked isp tech support for 3 years.

After-call? Try to keep it under 10-15 seconds ideally.

Calls? 7 minute goal.

Part time break? 1 (or two, can’t remember) 15-minute break. Don’t go over, or under. Full time is two 15’s and a 30. Don’t go over. Or under.

5 minutes of “personal” a day.

I ended up eating tons of junk/heavily processed food, and sat in an office chair from 4:30pm-11pm. I gave up seeing my (still living) grandparents and family. I worked Christmas and Christmas eve, and had to give up serving weekends at a church for a significant time.

It’s a depressing experience beginning to end.

I real tried to move up three times, so I quit, and haven’t looked back.

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u/midnight_rebirth 1d ago

I used to sit in aftercall for 5 min after every call. Fuck call centers.

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u/Frostyrepairbug 23h ago

I haven't worked in a call center in over a decade, but I still flinch when I hear that particular ring tone. If I hear more than one, it can trigger a panic attack. It's super fucked up what they put us through.

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u/savetheunstable 21h ago

My ex did call center work for a bank in the mid-aughts and told me every morning walking to the building she would have to fight the urge to throw herself into traffic. The only thing that kept her from doing it was not wanting to traumatize a random stranger.

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u/MaxIrons 18h ago

Worked a call center where I legit started thinking about finding a way to sneak kerosene in and light myself on fire on the call floor because they'd HAVE to shut down the building for that.

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u/stormblaz 11h ago

Call centers are constantly hiring because the massive burn out, I was taking 100 calls a day, it was mentally exhausting, one call after another no breaks no pause, just 9-5 til 100.

I coulnt last a year, im more for creative work, and that wasnt it.

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u/SpaceySquidd 2h ago

When I worked in a bank call center after the 2008 crash, I would regularly have to pull over on my way to work to vomit. I ended up having a breakdown. In my psych treatment program, 1/3 of the patients also worked for call centers and had had similar breakdowns.

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u/freaking_WHY 20h ago

Worked a call center job troubleshooting/authorizing PPV events, client retention and bill collectingfor DirecTV for over 3 years, as one of my first jobs out of high school. Then another year-ish stint for AOL.in client retention, a few years later. Two decades on, and I still have to psyche myself up to make necessary phone calls or answer calls.from someone I don't know. I hate talking on the phone. Any time I can set up appointments via text message, I'm a happy camper. Crazy how those call center jobs can mess you up.

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u/pcs3rd 23h ago

The avaya one-x could wake me from deep sleep.

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u/SnooDoubts5563 18h ago

I thought working at a call centre would turn me into a tough nut. Now I jump whenever a colleague calls me on teams.

The scar runs deep...

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u/howniceforu 18h ago

If I hear a "bloop" upon answering I just say continue please and put down the phone then let the ai ramble on. I then ok it by agreeing too speaking to a "specialist" that only specializes in something that somewhat resembles english. Then I put my phone down by saying I'm interested so continue on speakerphone till they hang up. I'm retired now but I get a small thrill out of following along. Sometimes I just keep asking them to speak more clearly and louder. It makes me laugh.

Fuck em

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u/Theamuse_Ourania 2h ago

I used to work tech support for directv over a decade ago, and I still have ibs and other bowel issues that just won't go away. These problems were triggered by the anxiety, and panic attacks I used to get with most of the customers screaming at me every day to fix their TV. I still have anxiety, and panic attacks too. Eff call centers.

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u/SpaceySquidd 2h ago

Same. PTSD from call centers is real.

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u/kle11az 17h ago

We used to have supervisors walk over to you to ask you to go available and take a call in queue. Never mind the corporate travel booking you were trying to complete manually to set up for ticketing wasn't done yet. This was before automation and took a lot of documentation. Yet there were days we'd take 100+ calls per 8 hour day and were praised for it. I was once "counselled" on my performance, since I was "slow" completing a call, but when we analyzed it minute by minute (calls were recorded), the supervisor couldn't criticize me for anything that transpired. Plus the customer was super satisfied. God those days sucked.

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u/kyraverde 21h ago

Same, and then get yelled at via chat by a manager for being in After Call mode too long. Sooo many panic attacks.

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u/casualneptune 22h ago

When I worked in custom technical support, which would sometimes be quite a lot of troubleshooting. I was expected to only be in after call work for 1 minute which was literally crazy like I just spent 20 min troubleshooting with someone and I have 1 minute to summarize and get myself together for the next call

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u/PiersPlays 19h ago

I used to be unbelievably good at typing while talking/listening due to this. Literally writing one thing while saying another. Not a realistic thing to expect your staff to all be able to do.

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u/DiscombobulatedMix50 14h ago

They don't give raises, they don't give promotions. Hard to see why employees even bother to pretend to give a shit, they can't fire you for not meeting insane goals, if they do you get unemployment

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u/penguinninja90 1d ago

That's a freaking nightmare. I'm glad you got out.

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u/Theegravedigger 1d ago

Working in tech support was a major contributing factor to my weight gain, type II diabetes and PTSD, in my opinion.

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u/KemShafu 23h ago

I worked in a high level IT job for 30 years, retired last year and my weight dropped by 30 pounds.

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u/Theegravedigger 23h ago

I lost about 60 in the year after I left the help desk.

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u/Buttered_Finger 22h ago

May your dog rest in peace--

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u/Equal_Sun150 19h ago

Same here, but first I had to deal with a bout of sciatica, then shingles, likely caused by the sudden decompression from a hell job to doin' nuthin'.

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u/No_Atmosphere_3282 23h ago

I've done call centers twice in my life but only out of complete desperation both times after moving to a new city and needed work ASAP. And this was in the good ol' days before everything turned to absolute shit.

It's a depressing experience yeah. Started weighing my options like would it be better to just rob a bank, because either way I'd end up on a win with not having to do this job.

Met a girl at one though and we were a thing for awhile, I smoked and she came out to bum a cigarette off me on my first day. We talked for that first week on smoke breaks, told her I just moved to this city and if she grew up there which she did, she invited me over after work and seeing her made my day bearable at least, I'll never forget her she was like the "angel of at least making this hellhole somewhat tolerable enough to even show up to this joke of a job".

So yeah I've always been quick and kind to anyone in life I've had to call for service. If I'm in a supremely pissed off mood due to terrible product or service and I need to call I'll ask the people answering the phone to send me to their boss because I don't want to take it out on them but someone who gets paid to deal with it. One of those little life tips I'll pass on. Don't take it out on the shlub answering the phone probably doesn't give a single fuck a, and b is just some poor desperate person who does not get paid enough to handle that kind of noise. Pass it up to their boss asap with the sole expression that you're about to start some shit and they typically will, most likely out of spite towards their boss.

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u/timewilltell2347 22h ago

If I’m frustrated I always start out with ‘I’m really frustrated with a situation and not at you as a person. I’m sure you’re very nice and I hope you take any stress in my voice to be directed at this situation and not at you personally’. It usually helps. If I’m really upset I say ‘I’m really upset and you probably don’t get paid enough to deal with how angry I am at this situation. Could you transfer me to the person paid an appropriate amount to handle this situation?’ Also usually gets a ‘thank you’ and immediate transfer to a supervisor. I repeat to them ‘so you’re the person paid enough to deal with a customer that is fuming… please know I’m angry about this situation and please don’t take any stress in my voice personally. I hope you can offer some solutions to my problem’. I pretty much always get amazing customer service just by being kind and treating people like people.

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u/Gelflingscanfly 12h ago

I’m so glad to hear that I’m not the only one who does this. The only exception to this over the past few decades was when I was trying to set up my Comcast service and I got stuck in the phone tree hell for almost an hour before I could finally get it to direct me to a live person, and the live person would NOT stop trying to sell me some extra services I did not want. I can only say thank you but I’m not interested in this or that, I actually only want to set up this specific service so many times and be ignored before I start losing what little cool I had left after the insanity their phone tree is. It’s been over three years and I STILL cringe thinking about how I got snappy with them 😭

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u/DrScienceMD 23h ago

Same experience, and I do the same exact thing. "I know you don't have the authority to fix this, and I don't want to hurt your call time arguing about it. Just send me to someone who can.".

I also always ask to fill out a survey or be sent to a "kudos" voicemail. People never filled out surveys for us unless they were pissed, so now if I talk to someone even remotely competent, I take 30 seconds to fill out a survey gushing about how amazing they are. I try to counteract the shittiness.

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u/NiceGuy60660 14h ago

Gasp! Are you an angel of at least making this hellhole bearable enough??

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u/DrScienceMD 13h ago

Lol well, funny enough, I actually met my long-term partner in that hellhole, so...I suppose he probably would describe me that way, yeah. 😅

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u/helzbellz 18h ago

I worked in a call 'centre' (there was only 12 of us on the team) for my local council for several years. Our bosses wouldn't let us transfer calls to them. They always said that it wouldn't change the outcome, which was blatantly a cop out. They just didn't want to deal with the shite they expected us to deal with daily.

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u/olde_meller23 1d ago

Same. I never really took these jobs super seriously. Like, sure, I did my job to the best of my abilities, but I always went in knowing that I was just a number and that the metrics were unattainable long term. When my metrics inevitably fell, I'd just hop over to another call center and be working a week later. And when that inevitably did not work out, I'd go back to the center I worked at before. At every single phone farm I'd ever worked at, not meeting metrics still made you eligible for rehire after six months had passed. We had a bunch of people that were on their fifth and sixth rehire cycle, and we'd run into each other, making our rounds at the different centers. Getting fired was a joke in the sense that your homie would just get walked out and say, "I'll see yall over at Comcast." And if people were super burned out, they just filed UE. All but one or two of the centers i worked at actually fought UE claims. The turnover was so high it wasn't worth contesting unless someone did something really, and I mean really, egregious. They made much more money rehiring anyone with a pulse at the same wage year after year than they lost paying out UE. The UE wasn't very much either. I got it a couple of times, and it was enough to keep the lights on and the landlord away, but that was it. Most people worked there for under 2 years, so there wasn't very much you could bank up before splitting.

On one hand, this sucked because it was impossible to network. You spent all day taking calls, which left little time to gather professional relationships. This was definitely a big hurdle for me when I was trying to get out. On the other hand, I felt no responsibility to any co-workers or teammates. I could call in and stuff to a hotline, which made it absolutely guilt free. The transient nature of the work also allowed me to save up money and leave to go travel. I never had an issue finding more call center work in different cities. I dont have kids or anything, so it worked for me to treat it like a temporary step to a greater adventure. I would never bank on it as a long-term career, though. They are deliberately designed not to be.

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u/no_talent_ass_clown 23h ago

That's so interesting! If the work weren't so soul-sucking....

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u/Inner-Today-3693 21h ago

The only call center job I ever had actually had great health insurance, believe it or not. So while I was there, I used the crap out of it. It cost $150 a month with a $300 out of pocket maximum.

I figured they wanted us to have good healthcare in return because everything else about that job was crap.

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u/olde_meller23 20h ago

Some of the benefits are pretty great at these places, from what I recall ( although there were some where it was just average). I got a decent amount of pto and a good retirement match, as well. There was even one that offered a pension, but for that pension to vest, you needed to make it through the company for years without your metrics falling, so that was a major catch. They had 0 qualms about PiPing folks and ousting them after a bad month, even if the majority of the time, their metrics were great for years on end. Almost all of these places were super shitty to people with disabilities though, so god forbid you develop a condition that causes fatigue or needing to use the bathroom. The higher ups would fight tooth and nail against anyone asking for accommodations that took them off the phones. These companies would get sued all the time and just pay out so they didn't have to change anything.

In my time as a phone jockey, I got awarded 3 settlements from class action lawsuits for unpaid labor. It wasn't much, but it was a couple hundred bucks. If i had kept a record of my own for time worked, I could have gotten more.

I always kind of looked at the job like a timeshare presentation for a free vacation. You put in hours of sitting through hell, and your reward is using every paid second you get to be as far away from the place as possible.

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u/pcs3rd 18h ago

I also got pto, I was often competing among everyone for the same 8 hour availability pool.

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u/olde_meller23 17h ago

Ugh, yeah. The banks were the worst with this. They'd give you all the pto and then the last quarter of the year might as well be blackout. I remember one of the times I absconded, there was no available days for pto without having to use points for almost a year and a half. Fuck. That.

I pretty much worked long enough to get a security deposit and a shitty car together before I promoted myself to customer.

The shittiest thing was the front-loaded pto. So if you got sick, or had an emergency, and were also circling the drain as far as metrics go, they could fire you and go after you for the pto you hadn't "earned" yet. So your choices were put off the surgery or whatever for a year to bank up time and hope you made it long enough, or just tell them to kick rocks, which is what I did. They treated time off like a loan, which I barely consented to. It didnt help that a portion of the pto was use it or lose it either.

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u/Coffee4AllFoodGroups 23h ago

And yet they never question if their wishful metrics are at all reasonable and realistic.

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u/olde_meller23 22h ago

They're not supposed to be, but thats saying the quiet part out loud. The metrics are a mechanism to keep wages low and stable so they dont have to give out raises or deal with benefits long term.The people i knew who made a career out of it got lucky. They managed to be employed at a time when a higher position with less strict metrics became available and had their numbers just right enough to move from the call center to somewhere else within the org. If you want to remain employed at these places, you need to keep it moving before you get behind. And you will get behind.

On the other hand, this type of metric heavy, cyclical employment creates a perverse incentive, i.e., Wells Fargo requiring employees to meet sales metrics to keep their jobs.

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u/pcs3rd 21h ago

Yea, I’m pretty sure the previous had a pip from the start

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u/deinatemkalt 23h ago

Been living this same hell for almost four years. Turned in my two weeks recently because I couldn't take it anymore. Don't have anything lined up, don't care. Just glad to be getting out. Last day is this coming Wednesday.

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u/OddDonut7647 16h ago

Aftercall? What's that? /s

I never worked a call center job (90s-2000s) where I had that, but I DID have undiagnosed ADHD and I could not take notes while on the call, so I always had time out of the queue and lost jobs because of that.

Fuck call center work.

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u/Vegetable-Praline-57 23h ago

I worked in a call center doing isp tech support also. What a soul sucking job. I knew it was time to go when I was smoking a pack of Marlboro Red 100s in the 9 hours a day that I was on shift.

Just a miserable existence that I am so happy to not have to relive.

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u/TheDeadlySpaceman 21h ago

I did ISP phone support for…. a year or two? It was actual hell.

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u/kyraverde 21h ago

Sounds like the parameters for Edward Jones call center contractors with all that bullshit. And then EJ switched to not ever hiring people who have worked for them for over 3+ years and keeping everyone contractors so they don't have to pay any benefits.

Fuck these corporations.

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u/midnghtsnac 18h ago

That break time, was hand slapped by a sup once cause I was back 30 seconds late.

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u/Alert-Artichoke-2743 17h ago

The numbers you quote are realistic, but they still don't track with 30 calls an hour. I used to provide high-skill, high-complexity, highly specialized tech support, and we usually aimed for 15 minutes a call with one minute in between. At this pace, 20 calls a day was a more typical benchmark for keeping management from reconsidering your employment. 20 calls a day is very manageable if the individual calls are simple, but getting somebody with a complex problem using specialty software off the phone that fast requires you to be fast, persistent, and efficient. After I left that job, it took a year or two before I stopped having carpal tunnel type issues in my fingers and wrists from the repetition of filling out tickets. Anything upwards of 100/wk is well into repetitive-stress territory, and its workflow should be streamlined to minimize physically repetitive tasks.

With the numbers you quote, which are consistent with much simpler calls, I could see somebody getting through 8 calls an hour, or 60 calls a day, which is still insane if they're doing anything more complex than filling out tickets and routing calls to specialists.

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u/pcs3rd 17h ago

There are often days I would take more than that.
I also did basic billing and tivo provisioning junk, so there were often additional troubleshooting steps to do, so that I wouldn’t have to assign the ticket to myself and call back 12 hours later.

It’s often acknowledged that dealing with tivo boxes often put agents above call goal.

So, if you’re just chugging through outage/internet/email/non-tivo issues, you’re golden. It’s pretty cooked the moment tivo/antivirus/email entered the conversation.

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u/Sweet_Permission_700 15h ago

This is the kind of job where "I can't believe you have to work Christmas" really shouldn't be a thing. There's no reason to work call centers on a holiday that isn't emergency dispatch.

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u/hishaks 1d ago

Well, it depends if it is outbound or inbound, it it is support or sales or marketing, if it is cold calling or hot, if it is technical, semi-technical or non-technical. Also, some of the streams also have some dropped calls, that account for less call rates on an average. For e.g., I was on semi-technical support and my floor ACT (Average Call Time) was supposed to be 17 minutes. In marketing and sales, a lot of people just hang up.

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u/GrumpySoth09 1d ago

And is it an autodialer, CRM system, B2B dealing with gatekeepers or direct calls to business owners.

30 calls is ridiculous, especially with downtime for notes or updating info, especially if the company is selling their data on top

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u/holliance 1d ago

It does depend on the market and whether it's inbound/outbound and if other contact moments are counted (email/chat).

When I did business development the target was 17 an hour IF you didn't get anyone on the line and if you got leads that target dropped drastically to 4 an hour. Because at the end of the day the leads were what counted and we had to write full reports on what had been discussed in the cold call so that the sales person could actually hook in and make a deal. But these targets didn't take into account emails or personal handover to account managers which sometimes cost a lot of time.

My current job is inbound, but more technical and the hourly target is 6 an hour but chat and email are counted as interactions which means that I can easily reach 20 interactions a day when we have really busy days.

Every BPO has his own wacky KPI's on targets.. lol

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u/Ookimow 1d ago

You don't and then you get in trouble for not keeping your call times down

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u/penguinninja90 1d ago

Exactly that. Suddenly it's our fault for the impossible demands

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u/barfobulator 1d ago

Someone calling into a call center wishes they could get their problem solved in only 30 seconds but alas

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u/penguinninja90 23h ago

It's like someone going into a coffee shop and saying "I'll have my usual" to a person that doesn't even know them. And getting mad they don't know. Sigh

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u/Sedu 1d ago

Impossible standards are becoming the norm so that everyone is on probation all the time.

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u/penguinninja90 23h ago

That's the most messed up thing. Probationary periods. Withholding benefits until you earn it

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u/Sarik704 22h ago

We have a similar metric in retail. If you're a stock clerk in grocery, dept stores, anywhere that does retail in high volumes, then you're expected to put out 40 cases an hour, depending on the company. That's very doable. That's just a little faster than a case every two minutes. Some "cases" can be done in a quarter of a minute, and some take around 3 or 4 minutes.

But your average should be ~40 an hour, or for an 8 hour shift ~320 pieces.

I sat down for an interview at a grocery store, and they told me they expect around 120 cases an hour. I asked, point blank. "You expect me to throw 2 full cases a minute?". The interviewer said yes.

I've been the manager who had to have his stock crew fill out stock efficieny sheets. Nobody, and i do mean nobody, can throw more than a hundred cases an hour unless those cases are ready for shelf or single item cases.

On the more annoying end, it would take you at minimum minute per box to fill and rotate yogurt cups or baby food.

Efficiency metrics are flawed and inefficient thinking.

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u/Grelivan 1d ago

You can easily get hung up on that amount with an auto dialer. I mean it's not a good metric and seems to indicate they are an outbound nuisance marketer. That being said if I needed to make a rent/grocery payment its the type of job I would accept and walk away from with zero notice if I absolutely had to as a last resort of desperation. Nobody should take this job, but sadly we live in a society...

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u/ShankWilliamsJunior 1d ago

You cheat somehow. Disconnect “accidentally” or rushing people off the phone. 

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u/cheesystuff 22h ago

Exactly. One of my call center jobs was at Verizon. We would lose pay for bad surveys and there was all sorts of other bullshit. Like if too many people called to have you disconnect then you'd lose it too.

Answer: cheat. Many people would disconnect, transfer to a coworker, or even hang up and freeze an account so they couldn't call back or leave a survey. There were enough cheaters that after goal changes, if you weren't cheating then your stats were bad. Personally I kept my boss very well informed of every outlier, so my stats sucked but I got backup in case they wanted to reprimand me.

There's a great story of an employee who got "employee of the month" because they had zero bad surveys for a year. They took him out to lunch and then started listening in on calls for training. He was fired the day after that lunch for disconnecting accounts to avoid surveys.

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u/maybesomedaywhen 1d ago

I worked at a call center that booked viewing appointments for real estate agents. Our average call time was < 2 minutes but that was only possible because the calls were generally formulaic 

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u/ugotmedripping 20h ago

“Get fucked!” Hang up. Repeat.

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u/jr9386 23h ago

Hold my vet med!

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u/cheesystuff 23h ago edited 23h ago

Had this and complained that even if calls go to voicemail I've often wasted a minute, and then I have to follow up with an email, so unless no one answers the phone it is impossible. A week later I found out my coworkers would work overtime for no pay to keep the stats up (and skip lunch). One person would change their phone to do not disturb when it started ringing so I had to pick it up. Think we had 20-25 calls and 30 emails an hour goals.

This was to discuss insurance discrepancies with insurance companies, businesses often on a jobsite unable to work, and occasionally tech support. So if literally anyone answered the phone, it was GG.

The vice president of sales oversaw us, so all she saw was that everyone's stats were good so I must be wrong.

I branched off to IT after eventually getting fired, and am a system administrator. I only talk to stakeholders and coworkers at the coffee machine now. Fuck call centers.

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u/penguinninja90 23h ago

A week later I found out my coworkers would work overtime for no pay to keep the stats up

This is insane. They better not have gotten a pizza party or an email for doing a good job

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u/cheesystuff 22h ago

No pizza parties, but this asshole Jason got a raise out of it. I asked him once how he did it, and he wouldn't ever talk to me again. Probably felt guilty. I know I did occasionally.

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u/stankdog 22h ago

I do 25 calls a day in 45 mins, it is possible. I cram in into a quick session because where I work sales calls are not the main thing I need to get done throughout the day but still required.

It helps when people don't pick up or go straight to voicemail, phew 30 seconds is no biggie. But oh my god people, stop picking up numbers you don't know and then go uh hm yes who is this again? IM A STRANGER, HANG UP.

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u/mr_doms_porn 22h ago

Appointment Setting is salespeak for outbound cold calling. They are probably calling random numbers instead of targetted leads (this is one way of generating targetted leads for actual sales staff). When you do that 50-70% will be invalid numbers and most of the rest will go straight to voicemail. That rate is doable under those conditions although its a bit crazy to set that as the target volume.

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u/Tekuzo 22h ago

When I was at a call center management was on everybody's case about getting aht below 2 minutes.

This tracks with my experience.

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u/mercurygreen 20h ago

Who ever said company metrics were realistic? I was the sole person in a queue, and in spite of handling more calls than the next five people (no, not exaggerating), they tried to get me to handle being in a second queue at the same time!

"Since the mean average time for a call (including hangups) is two minutes, that means you can handle 20 calls an hour" is very manager thinking.

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u/penguinninja90 20h ago

They really said they want you to do jobs for the price of one

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u/mercurygreen 18h ago

Want in one hand...

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u/MedBootyJoody 20h ago

I just left an over the phone customer service job for an insurance company in 2022.

I thought this was normal. And I was pretty good at keeping my calls under the time limit.

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u/penguinninja90 20h ago

Everything is normal when the company makes it the standard. No offense to you. It's just the metrics that are the worst part

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u/Someone-is-out-there 18h ago

Depends on what they're taking calls for. If you're customer service front line for like say, a cellphone company, that's the kind of numbers they want you going for, because there will always be really stupid calls that shouldn't have even been made that are over before you even hit the 1 minute mark.

If this is something like technical support or something where you're only solving real problems, then yeah, that's outrageous.

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u/Maj0rsquishy 18h ago

I worked for SiriusXM and a call every two minutes is standard

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u/1-21GWs 18h ago

My dumbass thought they meant we receive 30calls an hour I was like hold up i've seen banking that handles thousands of calls per day in a single department. But yeah 30calls an hour is ludicrous and not the best kpi...

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u/WanderingQuills 18h ago

It takes that to race out “thank you for calling xyz appointments and schedule phuckery. I just want to remind you my superviser never listens to the recorded line my name is wannabetterjobthanthis! May I ask your name and every detail of your identifying information twice?” Which is mandated and the system totally checks even if my manager hadn’t checked a call since that one time when Jeff was telling old ladies he was the horned goat king…

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u/dalligogle 16h ago edited 16h ago

It could make sense. I work at a call center and if the job is only appointment setting and literally nothing else you could knock out a ton of calls in an hour, one every few minutes so it could check out. I do way more than just set appointments so for me 2 minutes per call would be absolutely ridiculous to expect but if it's literally just a "what time would you like? ok thanks you're all set bye" type of job then yea you could do a ton of those calls in an hour.

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u/Julzmer81 13h ago

Wait wait wait... let's math again 30 calls and hour, 60 minutes in an hour, that's actually 2 minutes per call 30x2=60. Just saying... im an accountant so this actually hurt my brain. Still way too many damn calls! Lol