The Idler

Call Centre Hell

Somewhere between an office and a factory, the call centre occupies a strange area between blue and white collar work. In Bristol, it is often said that when the slave trade ended, they just built call centres instead. Soon there will be so many that they will run out of land and start building them on ships. The sole purpose of call centres is to take shit for someone else. I spent four hellish months working for a certain adverstising company taking abuse from the general public.

Crazy people, rude people, bomb threats, deranged perverts, the arrogant and the idiotic. It seemed like no-one normal ever rang this national freephone advert/information line. To add to this the company seemed to hate all its staff. Toilet breaks were timed. Coffee breaks, timed to the second. How the hell I lasted four months in that pit of despair, I’ll never know. Never again. Ever.