Tomorrow is my last day of work in this hell-hole!
You have to understand how stoked I am with this. After 3 years I'm just over it. It's been good, the pay has been ok (considering), and I could wear whatever I want to work, but I'm so excited to be leaving.
{via}
Just outside the women's toilets is a poster made by the company, of some of the qualities they want their employees to have. There's a picture of a little man juggling the letters A. S. K.
These stand for:
A Will-Do Attitude.
Appropriate Skills
Relevant knowledge.
Or somethingt to that effect.
It's the first point that gets me: A will-do attitude.
Not can-do.
Not will-try-to-do.
Not give-100%...
No...
Will do.
As in: If I tell you to do something, you will say 'yes sir' and do it.
As in: If management makes a decision, you will abide by it, and do what they tell you, whether you like it or not.
I think this sort of summarises a lot of the feeling around the place, however it'll never change because people here are comfortable. And ok, it's not the worst place you could work, though I reckon some of the campaigns (coutelstragh) are (were) pretty awful... But that's what it's about. Being zombies, bowing to managers. I mean, for Christ sakes, we have 8 minutes a day of allocated 'Personal time', which used to mean we could do whatever we wanted because it was, as the name suggests, time to do whatever personal business we want. Then we got a new manager, and she told us we could only use PT to go to the toilet, and refill our drink bottles, and we should be thankful that we're allowed to refill our drink bottles because downstairs, in Sales, they're only allowed to use it to go to the toilet. And so they monitor how long we log into 'personal time'. And if we go over that time more than twice, they have the ability to strip $150 from our pay for the fortnight.
Because you took too many pee breaks. (or, like me, need to pee once an hour. Lucky I'm super-speedy)... Or, I dunno, maybe you went to the gym in the morning so are extra thirsty cos it's a hot day outside so you need to drink a heap more, and then of course the consequence of this is.... yep, you've gotta pee more, so you have to break the rules and go to the toilet.
I mean, isn't that ridiculous? We're grown people. We stopped asking for permission to go to the toilet when we finished/were in highschool. And yet, if my manager were to look at my history for the day, she could see exactly when I went to the toilet, how long I went for... Which just creeps me out a little, to be honest.
This guy creeps me out. The cat looks so depressed. But maybe I should wear a tinfoil hat to work, since they're tracking my movements and all. {via}
But it's ok, because we have a 'will-do' attitude.
And if that doesn't make us enough like zombies, they send us around an email saying that we're not allowed to use our mobile phones while 'logged on'... which, most of the time, means waiting 3 minutes between calls and staring at a blank screen. We were told not to do this because it 'affects out customers' or something.
So we've said "Yes m'am, will-do!" and people have stashed their phones in their drawers.
Occasionally someone objects, like when a collegue did lose $150 for going over personal time last fortnight, but it always falls on deaf ears. After all, management is just saying 'yes sir, will-do!' to their management, and 'their hands are tied'.
I could have a bit of a rant about how this sort of attitude is deeply ingrained in the school system (and doesn't do any good there, either), but I won't.
Bring on tomorrow! We're going out as a team to an all-you-can-eat buffet place which ought to be fun. I managed to get Nic invited along too, since it's my going away party (can you tell this has gone to my head a little....?).
*I was so hoping that googling 'zombie call center' would get me some awesome picture, but alas, once again, nobody seems to have thought along the same lines as me yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment