The Idler

Fuck Off

I went to a temp agency who got me a job ‘with computers’ at the local (i.e. a 30 minute bicycle ride) Granada TV rental building. It turned out the job was in a call centre where people called to say there was something wrong with their TVs or satellite systems.

We would get in, grab a paper cup of lukewarm water and hit the phones. We had those headset things which make your ears sweat and your head ache. A customer would phone, we then looked up their account on the creaking green-screen system, and arranged for an engineer to visit and fix it. We couldn�t promise that the engineer would get there at a certain time, we could only say �morning� or �afternoon�. Of course, the bastards would usually not turn up at all, causing the poor sod of a customer to call back and complain to us.

We were also the call centre for all sort of rental crap like pub coin phones, stereos etc etc. All these needed a different button to be pushed so we needed training to spot what sort of customer it was. It was non-stop phone, with no let-up in the calls.

Rigidly-timed breaks and lunch were spent sitting in silence with our colleagues, contemplating suicide.

All this was grim for an optimistic graduate with his whole life ahead. I finally got the sack when, after putting the phone down on one customer, I shouted �Fuck Off� loud enough for a customer on another line to hear me. I didn�t even get the pleasure of being sacked there and then. I got home to find a message waiting, �don�t bother coming back�

In my desperation, I then got a job in Peterborough � see Crap Towns.

Matthew Petty