Confessions of a Call Center Gal: a novel
One of these days I was wondering if there was any literature about call centers. You know, since it is a growing industry, here in my country at least. There is a variety of call centers that offer job openings with acceptable salaries, some offer flexible hours and other offer various perks like bonuses or rewards. So I decided to look if there was someone who had wrote about it. In my random search I found this book from Lisa Lim and it made me curious, since it is a novel.
This book talks about the Maddy’s journey in a call enter for Lightning Speed Communications and the relationships she cultivates within said place. She is a struggling writer that can’t find a job opportunity, so she decides to try luck at this job answering phones. In there, she meets Mika, Truong and Ingeborg and different people that help her or antagonize her along the way.
In her journey, she depicts the specificities of the job: the stages you have to go through and the customers you have to deal with. She begins with a six-week training about the product and follow suit with shadowing, nesting and operations. She tells us about the day-to-day activities of the job and mixes them with a little bit of romance, friendship, and drama. Of course, she has a love interest that she pines over because he is with another girl. But her friendship with Kars helps her a lot.
The book has a sarcastic and light tone all the way, and she takes her licenses describing the job. For example, the author allows Maddy to make sarcastic comments to the customer ―thing that would never happen in real life without a disciplinary action―; or she is allowed ―or has the time― to read, in between calls, books or novels to pass time. Believe you me, at some call centers you can’t even breath in between calls.
I believe Lisa does a good job transmitting the overall feeling people have towards call centers. First of all, Maddy is reluctant to enter a call center, then she complains about the job that provides her a small but steady paycheck, and finally she knows that other people can look down on her for working at a customer service position at a call center. After a while, all she wants is to leave this place, although there are some people that really like the job. She describes them as people who are in an abusive relationship with a CC.
Lisa provides us with a point of view of her own about call centers that resonate, or would resonate, with a lot of people. It is a quick read, although it took me some time. I believe you can read this if you want a taste of what it is to work at a call center. Her style doesn’t really agree with me but if you like Chelsea Handler’s humor, then you might like this book. Three stars.
Fecha original de publicación: noviembre 12, 2022.
