If someone had told me a few years ago, that id be working at a call center, I would of called them out on it, don’t get me wrong, a job it’s a job and there is nothing wrong with working at call centers. I’m just a girl who is not a big fan of routines. However, I have learned to never say never. And no, I’m not quoting Justin Beiber… I’m just a 24-year-old girl who is currently working at a call center.
Every day I get up at 4:15am to get ready for work. The fact that I have to be in front of my desk by 6:30am is the reason why I need to be picked up at 5:30am. This only gives me an hour and somewhat minutes to get ready. But let’s be realistic here, my alarm is set to go off at 4:15am but thank God for the snooze button, I usually end up getting up at 5:15am. Having to apply the first thing you see, you wear rule. Now, my job is pretty simple, there’s not much science to it, and the rules are simple. You can wear anything you want as long as you’re not showing too much skin but that shouldn’t be a problem because we were all brought up with those set of rules from the time we started going to school.
Working at a call center, is almost like going to school. Everybody has their own cliques, you have break times, lunch time is of only 30 minutes long, now tell me if that’s not school like! Everybody sits close to everybody and everybody knows your business. Hypocrisy and envy-ness is also very much present. Someone is always talking about someone and someone is always getting walked all over. Again, so high school! I’ve only been working at Wyron for 5 months, and I already feel like I’ve been there for over 3 years.
Wyron is a company that specializes on business gifts products and does imprint on anything you could possibly think of. You want your underwear with your initials on them? You best believe Wyron has it. Wyron is a big company; therefore it has many departments within the company as well as many employees. There is sales, which are the people who harass you on the phone and make you buy things you don’t necessary need, customer service which is everybody who takes your complaints or assists you with anything you need, Art department, that takes care of all the logos and imprints on every item. There is also Vendor and Quality department.
I recently just got upgraded to the vendor department. I first started as a regular temp revising voice recordings, then making calls to confirm orders and then I did some of what they like to call “Inbound”, which consists of pretty much just sitting by the phone waiting for someone to call, and while you’re waiting you pretty much don’t do anything. You have enough time to do your nails, read a book, do your homework, study for your test or if you are like me, then you’ll have the time to write a book. I was never good with the whole inbound thing, I would always get nervous while speaking to a customer also stutter a lot, and I would even lose my voice at times.
I’d like to blame my childhood for that; I was always the awkward kid hiding behind everybody else just so I could go unnoticed. I was never a big fan of attention; I never really liked the spotlight. Don’t get me wrong; I was never a loner either. For some reason I was always popular in school. Maybe it was because I didn’t get in anybody’s way and I was pretty much a follower. I did what I was told when told and never questioned it. Even if it meant having to do something I didn’t want to do. I guess you can say I’ve always been a people’s pleaser. For some reason I have always put other people’s needs ahead of mine. Never have I complained about it either. I just never really liked confrontation. If you were happy, that meant you weren’t going to bug me and I enjoyed that. I was always teased because of how I looked, but it never really affected me. The fact that I was born in 1987, my mom had me with this hideous hair cut that made my head look like a bowl. Apparently that was the style back then. I looked like a mushroom, I was short, skinny and with a head that looked like a bowl of soup. My mom used to dress me funny, I was always in theme, Lion King Movie came out, and you best bet I had the Lion King outfit. I was always matching, shirt, shorts and socks. And for birthday parties, I was always in a fluffy dress. Who here who was born in the 80’s didn’t grow up like that? That’s why I love the 80’s!
Sometimes I believe my name should have been Jenna Hamilton, you know the girl from Awkward. I have never really cared about the way I looked or what people thought of me. I once made a boy cry. Let’s just say I know how to defend myself when the time is necessary. But let me state the fact that he hit me first. ha, ha so it was self defense. I was in 3rd grade and he was teasing me about my ridicules shoes. He was the bully of the class, and he loved the attention. For no reason whatsoever he started going off about my shoes, you see the shoes I wore back then were orthopedic shoes. When I was born the dr. accidently dropped me, which caused me to walk funny. I walked and ran with my right foot pointing at my left foot. I have to admit, it was funny! The teacher wasn’t in yet, and he was saying that I looked like a boy, that my shoes were bigger than my own head (he was right, those shoes were ridiculously big). Those shoes were made out of stone or something. They were black, looked like they had a platform on the bottom. It helped me look a tiny bit taller. And they were heavy as a rock. Again, the Jenna thing… as he was trying to get everyone to notice my shoes I said to him
“Stop using me to get attention, just because you’re a low life, with no respect doesn’t mean you can use me to get other people to like you”. Everybody started laughing at him and he took one look at me and kicked me. I’m not going to lie, it hurt and I even dropped a tear. My cousin saw the whole act, and told him to sit down; my cousin was 3 years older than me, tall as a tree, pale skin and had an intimidating look. He and I never really got along because our grandfather was always comparing us. He had stayed back in the 3rd grade three times. But when it came down to business, he was there. Carlos took one look at Enzo said ok and sat down. Carlos was tall yet not taller than my cousin. He was chunky with black hair and blue eyes. His skin turned even paler when he heard Enzo’s voice. But that wasn’t enough for me. I got up from my chair, went over to Carlo’s desk and kicked him on his knee. I said to him “you should never hit a girl”. He started laughing and said it didn’t hurt. I hit him again and he said it didn’t hurt, even though he said it didn’t hurt him, his face impression was definitely saying the contrary but I kept playing his little game. The third time I hit him; he said it hurts and started crying. Of course as soon as that happened, the teacher happened to walk in and witness my little scene. I got a week of detention and I was hi fived by my parents.
Even till this day I can defend myself but only when needed. The only difference between now and then is that I am now 24 years old, got rid of my bowl hair look. I currently have long black hair; I left my skinny days behind me. Thank you chick fil a and thank you beer. But I am still short. I didn’t grow much, I am currently 4’11 but to other people I like to say I’m 5’1. A white lie never hurts anybody. I have changed my hitting ways to a more peaceful way to deal with confrontation. I just try not to be a doormat. I don’t enjoy gossip, not because is not fun but because you never know who else is listening. I’ve always been distracted and clueless about my surroundings. People have to literally point out what is going on. I can be with a big crow or just two people and you will only get two words out of me, unless the conversation has to do with me, then I’m a chatterbox. Call me self-centered but when it comes to talking about me I like it when it comes right from the source.
On my first day at Wyron, everything was a big blur. Everybody seemed busy, and it almost felt like a school atmosphere. It was decorated with a summer theme; they had beach balls, fake palm trees, hammocks, and water boats. I guess they want people to feel motivated at work, who knows! I was pretty much new in the country; I had just gotten back from my leap year. I had spent two years in the United States with my family, and then went to Belgium to visit my best friend and her family. It was a pretty good year for me. The reason I got the job at Wyron was because my friend Melanie worked there in the sales department. She told me they were hiring and with my English, I could get hire. English is my second language my first is Spanish, but I’ve been told plenty of times that when I speak in English I sound like a white girl. I was hired after my first interview. That same day I was interviewed, they took me into training. I was trained for about two weeks. The two weeks where I would walk in straight to a back room, not giving me enough time to try to get to know anybody. Nor did I want to, like I said, I didn’t know anybody there but Mel. Her workstation was on the other side of the room. Now my thought was, that I was hired to be in sales but the manager told me I wasn’t sales material, she said I was too nice! Therefore she would place me in customer service. I had no idea what that meant, but I just went with it. I was being trained with two other guys, a couple; Chuck and Anastasia. They had been going out for about 5 months. They were pretty nice and funny, very open to new friends and eager to know me. The three of us were inseparable. Sadly the training was too long. Let’s just say it started at 6:30am and ended at 4:00pm. Once Anastasia fell asleep while the trainer was in the middle of a lesson, golden moment may I add!
After my two weeks of training we were thrown to the floor, they set us up with people that work there for us to see what they do, listen to phone calls and learn everything they do. They had us being their shadows. And they would set us up with the same three people. Every day we would just switch shadows. That lasted for about 2 weeks as well.
The people we were shadowing were pretty nice and eager to teach us. It was Mark, Juan and Walter. Now my favorite one to shadow was Juan. He is the type of guy that loves to know your background, wants to get to know you and loves to hear what you have to say. He is very laid back and does his job pretty damn well. He made me feel as if we had been friends for years. Made me feel comfortable with everything I was doing and made me feel confident about my work. Every time I was his shadow, we would talk for hours. I’d tell him about my drunken stories and he would tell me his. I’d tell him my love troubles and he would talk about the love of his life. We had a nice bound. Walter on the other hand, was always worried about his work; he never actually let me do anything. He would always tell me what to do, what to say and how to act. It almost felt like military work. Mark was really sweet, and he would let me do all the work and always said “once you’re on the floor, you’re on your own, so ask away” he would listen to me on calls, take notes and tell me what I did wrong when the call was over. If the call was too stressful for me to handle he would but in and tell me what to do. Desperate times for desperate measures!
On my last day of shadowing people, it was a Friday. The following week, we were going to be set up on our stations all on our own. Therefore that Friday, everybody wanted us to know everything. So they set us up with different people to shadow. I was terrified. I was going to be put with someone I had never spoken to. And everybody seemed so scary. I was starting to hate it! I wanted Juan, I needed someone to talk to and I knew being with someone new was going to mean awkward silence. Ugh how annoying! I was first set up with a guy named Carlos but his computer wasn’t working. I sat with him for 30 minutes and watched him try to fix his computer but then I was moved to shadow someone else. It almost felt like I was speed dating.
Chuck was shadowing with Ivy, she is in the quality department. Chuck gets up from her working station comes over to me and says: “Your turn to sit over there with Ivy, she’s a little crazy but I think you’ll like her”.
Now my first impression of Ivy was pretty standard. From far before I even introduced myself to her, she was just a light brown-headed girl with light skin, and pretty brown eyes. She was just a tad taller than me and she wore extremely high heels. Which means that in real life she has to be at least 4’10, yes I am finally taller than someone. She has a pointy nose and a smile that could be used for a Colgate commercial. She just seemed so happy. I guess it wasn’t going to be so scary after all. My trainer takes me to Ivy and says “Ivy, this is Emily she’s going to be shadowing with you for 30 minutes, then please send her over to Alex” Ivy takes one look at me gets up from her chair, smiles at me and says with her husky voice: “ok so I sing a lot and talk to myself so don’t be scare”.
I smile and sit down and watched her explain to me in two minutes what she does. After I watched what she was doing, and take a few notes. She grabs the phone to make a phone call to a customer and as she’s dialing she tells me: “Ok shorty, this is your call. Remember everything I just told you” and hands me the phone. Now I panicked because I had never been trained in quality. Neither did she have a set of head phones to hear what the customer was saying to me. She moves from her desk moves my chair in front of the computer looked right into my eyes and said: “Do your thing; I know you can do it.” Now I had never met this girl before, but the way she spoke to me, actually made me believe that I was capable of doing anything. She has such an intense look; it’s almost as if she’s looking into your soul. Without complaining or showing her any sign of panic, I quickly grabbed the phone and waited for the customer to answer. I was calling him because, he had an issue with the quality of the pens that he had ordered and I was going to offer him to keep those set of pens and we would send him another set. Or have him send us those pens he received and we would offer him credit. Either way, it was a pickle of a call. As I’m trying to figure out what to do with myself and how to use the computer in front of me, Ivy tabs my shoulder and smiles, she takes her notepad and writes down some notes. After 5 rings, and no answer, it went straight to voicemail, lucky me! I take a look at Ivy and tell her it was going to voicemail, she smiles and answers back
“It’s your luck; you know what to do, leave a message, simple as that.” Now, I had never left a professional message before, I don’t know the protocol for that, especially for quality issues. But she just seemed so secure of everything I was doing that I said, what the hell, I’ll give it a try. I killed it; I left a killer of a message that even she was surprised. As I hung up the phone she said “see, I told you it was easy, I knew you could do it... now do the next call”.
I think my mouth dropped, because she quickly starts to laugh, she covered her mouth to stop the laughter. She has such a peculiar laugh, it almost sounds like she’s crying and laughing at the same time. It’s a very distinct laugh, I’m thinking, is she laughing or crying? This girl had her own personality. And I thought to myself, I just found a friend!
Luckily for me I got voicemail on every call I made. She couldn’t believe it. She went on with her singing. Let me just add, her singing is horrible. I didn’t understand how people would bare with her singing; it would drive me nuts if I was to sit beside her. But everybody around her just seemed to shut her up and she would just smile, apologize and go on with her song. 30 minutes quickly went by; I had forgotten I still had someone else to shadow. My trainer went over to get me and moved me to someone else. I smiled and thanked Ivy for everything and she replies with an anytime.
That went well, I said to myself! Now to my last shadow of the day. Her name is Alex. And she was in charge of letting people know that we were out of stock for items, and offered them new options. Ugh, more calls to make! Alex was pretty nice, very down to business. Gave me options and told me to let her know when I felt ready to call a customer and only then she’d give me the phone. Alex sat opposite sides from Ivy. But somehow I could still hear Ivy’s singing in the background. It was comforting, it made me feel like ok this is not so bad after all, and people seem friendly.
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