"Thank you for calling Scottish Gas, how may I help you?"
For the last four days I've been the friendly voice on the end of a phone copping abuse from shivering old pensioners on behalf of the incompetent, uncaring, lazy collection of paper-shuffling morons that is Scottish Gas. I was offered a few days' work at a call centre, and having never before experienced the pleasure of being chained to a headset and a call timer I thought it was an interesting experiment to play on myself. I'd heard horror stories about call centre work: micromanagement, restrictive scripts, not being allowed toilet breaks. How would I deal with having no autonomy? Would I be forced to pee myself to protest against authoritarian control of bladder relief opportunities? And how on earth could I be bubbly and chirpy for seven hours in a row without the assistance of three pints and half a bottle of vodka?
In the end it didn't turn out to be as awful as I had feared. The folk at the call centre company were really friendly and easy-going. No asking permission for toilet breaks, no being yelled at for letting a call continue for more than two minutes, in fact, there was no shouting at all from the management. The old dears on the phone weren't averse to hollering down the line though. Although to be fair, you couldn't really blame them. Basically, they'd all been promised free central heating under the Scottish Government Central Heating Programme. Each of them had just received a letter advising when they could expect it to be installed, and the dates ranged from some time in December right through to June 2008. Now I realise patience is a virtue, but in order to qualify for the programme the heating in their home had to be inadequate or non-existent. So we were flooded with calls by freezing eighty-year-olds who had no heating or hot water, had already been waiting seven months, and were slowly solidifying into granny-sized icicles in their highland homes. The Sunday Mail describes the situation here.
There was really nothing we could do except pass on their complaints to Scottish Gas (who would no doubt ignore them) so it wasn't the most pleasant of helplines to be working on. Although I was tempted at first to tell the oldies to stop whining and pay for their own damn heating instead of sponging off the young Scottish taxpayer, I was quickly won over to their cause when it became clear Scottish Gas had f*cked so many of them around so badly. So now I'm firmly on the side of the Grey Army in the battle against the Big Evil Corporation. Four days out in the big wide world of work and suddenly I have opinions...what's the deal with that?
Lessons learned by me this week: the sun rises about 8am, time drags when you're sitting in a cubicle, Scottish Gas is full of muppets, commuting sucks, old people can be very nice, and four days' work is quite enough for one month thank you very much.
For the last four days I've been the friendly voice on the end of a phone copping abuse from shivering old pensioners on behalf of the incompetent, uncaring, lazy collection of paper-shuffling morons that is Scottish Gas. I was offered a few days' work at a call centre, and having never before experienced the pleasure of being chained to a headset and a call timer I thought it was an interesting experiment to play on myself. I'd heard horror stories about call centre work: micromanagement, restrictive scripts, not being allowed toilet breaks. How would I deal with having no autonomy? Would I be forced to pee myself to protest against authoritarian control of bladder relief opportunities? And how on earth could I be bubbly and chirpy for seven hours in a row without the assistance of three pints and half a bottle of vodka?In the end it didn't turn out to be as awful as I had feared. The folk at the call centre company were really friendly and easy-going. No asking permission for toilet breaks, no being yelled at for letting a call continue for more than two minutes, in fact, there was no shouting at all from the management. The old dears on the phone weren't averse to hollering down the line though. Although to be fair, you couldn't really blame them. Basically, they'd all been promised free central heating under the Scottish Government Central Heating Programme. Each of them had just received a letter advising when they could expect it to be installed, and the dates ranged from some time in December right through to June 2008. Now I realise patience is a virtue, but in order to qualify for the programme the heating in their home had to be inadequate or non-existent. So we were flooded with calls by freezing eighty-year-olds who had no heating or hot water, had already been waiting seven months, and were slowly solidifying into granny-sized icicles in their highland homes. The Sunday Mail describes the situation here.
There was really nothing we could do except pass on their complaints to Scottish Gas (who would no doubt ignore them) so it wasn't the most pleasant of helplines to be working on. Although I was tempted at first to tell the oldies to stop whining and pay for their own damn heating instead of sponging off the young Scottish taxpayer, I was quickly won over to their cause when it became clear Scottish Gas had f*cked so many of them around so badly. So now I'm firmly on the side of the Grey Army in the battle against the Big Evil Corporation. Four days out in the big wide world of work and suddenly I have opinions...what's the deal with that?
Lessons learned by me this week: the sun rises about 8am, time drags when you're sitting in a cubicle, Scottish Gas is full of muppets, commuting sucks, old people can be very nice, and four days' work is quite enough for one month thank you very much.
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