u/Capital_Progress_390

When people talk about AI replacing jobs, I often hear that they’ll replace all white collar and desk jobs, including customer service. I do agree that it will replace (and already is replacing) a lot of “numbers” jobs like accounting and tech jobs like Web design, I don’t think it’ll ever replace customer service. While I’ve worked in customer service for over a decade and haven’t always enjoyed it, I feel there is an amount of job security in the field.

People say the only jobs immune to AI are blue collar jobs with lots of manual labor, I don’t think that’s true. Before AI was even a thing, the customer service industry has always been trying to use technology to solve customers’ problems without having to hire real people. The thing is that customers hated it and still do. Calling and having to press a certain number to hear a recording. The ones who really need what they need stay on the phone until they can FINALLY get to a real person. I’ve stayed on the phone for an hour just to get a real person.

This will continue to be the case. AI bots trying to help customers with their problems will just frustrate customers even more. People want to talk to people. If I need my taxes done, I’m okay using a machine for that. But if I actually need to talk to someone about the crappy service I got at a restaurant and want my money back, I’m not okay talking to a bot about that. A bot doesn’t know what actually happened and won’t talk to the server. I need human connection for that. Not to mention, people can tell when they’re talking to AI on the phone. It’s a bit easier to hide through text, but I’ve called customer support on the phone, and it’s so obvious. AI can’t replicate the human voice. It sounds so robotic, and it can’t listen well. The AI bot even called me “Rufus” for some reason.

Companies are trying to replace customer service workers with AI, but it isn’t working and will eventually backfire. Real customer service is here to stay.

I’ve been job hunting for a few months now due to a PIP my boss has put me (and 75% of the rest of the team) on, and it’s due to speed. All the other jobs I’ve been searching for mention “fast paced” in their descriptions or “multitasking” as a requirement. I can’t help but wonder if these companies think that makes the position actually desirable to job seekers like me. I guess I appreciate the honesty, but this is literally the reason I’m trying to quit my current job. We’re all on PIPs because we aren’t fast enough. No one can reach the unrealistic quotas. Quantity is more important than quality.

I’ve been in other “high paced” jobs, and they’ve been miserable. I don’t multitask, and psychological studies have actually proven that the human brain can’t multitask. Yet every job I’ve applied for has that as a requirement.

Contrary to these employers’ assumptions, not everyone wants to work their butts off every day, feel exhausted at the end of the day, crash when they get home, and get burnt out after working there for a month.

Stress is bad and unhealthy. I don’t know why these companies advertise this “fast paced” description as if it were something good or desirable to potential employees. The job I just applied for is VERY different than my current one, but during the interview, the manager said, “This is a very fast-paced job.” And then my heart sank.

I don’t work well under stress. It isn’t that I’m lazy, stupid, or don’t want to work. I just want to work at my own pace. I want to make sure that one project has been completed accurately before I move on to a new one, instead of zooming through 50 projects at a time with 200 small mistakes.

Do jobs that aren’t “fast paced” even exist? Can I just type “slow paced” in the job search?

On one hand, this ignorance annoys me. On the other hand, it gives me an opportunity to educate people about my passion. It’s a love-hate thing.

Some of the most famous jazz musicians throughout the genre’s century-long history have been vocalists. Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong*, Diana Krall, Mel Tormé, Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway, Calloway Brooks, Sarah Vaughan, Chet Baker*, and Nat King Cole**, just to name a few. And then there are the vocal groups like the Four Freshmen, New York Voices, the Manhattan Transfer, Take 6, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, the Hi-Los, the Boswell Sisters, and the Real Group. When people tell me that “jazz is instrumental,” I give them these examples. Usually they’ve never even heard of the groups. When I mention the solo singers, I usually get something like “I never considered them jazz.”

Really? If Ella Fitzgerald wasn’t a jazz singer, I don’t know who was. She was the queen of vocal jazz with all of her scat skills.

So yeah, the ignorance is frustrating on a collective scale…but then on an individual scale, I’ll get into a conversation about jazz that ends up being enjoyable, and if I’m lucky, we’ll end up listening to some great music.

* Yes, I realize they were also instrumentalists too, but they’re also known for their unique singing voices.
** Yes, I know this one is controversial, but mostly because he started singing towards the end of the Jazz Age and started singing more pop music once the Swing Era was over.

The rules and metrics at my work are absolutely INSANE. I’m going to try to be as vague about my actual job for the sake of privacy/anonymity…but we all know what METRICS are, right? My job involves lots of cold calling. When we make these cold calls, we have to help the customers in very specific ways that are mostly out of our control and in the control of the customer. So let’s say for example that I call a customer, he/she answers, and then I schedule him/her for an interview. Cool. Then he/she comes in for an interview. Even better.

When I first started this job many moons ago, there was one goal. Get through the list. Touch every case every day. If we can’t call the customer, at least put a note on the account, and we’re good. I was very good at this. So much so that I opted for a higher paying role. I worked that job for a few months, realized it wasn’t the right fit, and went back to the old role. Not as much pay, but the higher paying role was just stressful, and I couldn’t handle it.

When I “demoted” myself to the old role, everything had changed. New management. Same software, but different “improvements.” Also, new schedules were offered, so I figured I’d try a new work schedule. Instead of five days a week of 8-hour shifts, there was an alternate option of four days a week of 10-hour shifts. And it paid slightly more. Not by much, but a bit. So I figured I’d check it out. A three-day weekend sounded nice.

One of my former coworkers from when I first started at the company had become a supervisor. I was assigned under her. Okay, I figured that was cool since we already knew each other. She obviously wouldn’t be as good as my first supervisor because he was fantastic and couldn’t be beat. But at least we knew each other. Her supervisor/the team manager I’d never met before.

Anyway, things had changed. A LOT. The four day work week was a remote position, which was part of the appeal for me. Everything was much more strict. Instead of being measured by how many cases we touched per day, we were measured by that…plus more. Also how many interviews that were actually scheduled. Some types of interviews gave us a higher score than others. And if the customer missed an interview? Guess what? That doesn’t count. It reflects badly on us, as if we hadn’t scheduled it in the first place.

I got written up several times because my metrics weren’t high enough. At first I was worried. Was I going to be fired? But then I started paying attention to my coworkers’ scores. Our boss sends out a team metrics e-mail twice a day to show everyone’s metrics. We are on a team of ten. There are two of us who regularly meet all the metrics. Nobody else does. So I realized this isn’t a “me” problem. The 80% of us who also aren’t meeting our metrics are also on some sort of disciplinary action like a verbal or written warning or PIP. And it’s not like our boss can fire 80% of the team! So I’m not quite so worried about getting fired anymore.

The problem is that most of these metrics are OUT OF OUR FUCKING CONTROL! Yes, I can call 50 people per day. I’m quite good at it. But if 90% of them don’t answer their phone or it goes to voicemail, I’m penalized for that. WHY? How is that MY problem? Oh, so I didn’t schedule 50 interviews? Fine, but I called 50 people…but what am I supposed to do? Go bang on their door and force them to go to the interview?

Oh, and don’t forget, half of them think we’re scammers. These calls can take 20 minutes just to convince them we aren’t trying to steal their money. And frankly I don’t mind. I can understand that. But what I can’t stand is how this reflects badly on US. How is it my fault that the customer saw a 1-800 number and assumed I’m a bot?

Here’s the worst of it all. I think I’d be doing better in my original setting. Working my original schedule—five days a week, Monday-Friday. Having to start work at 7:00 and get off at 5:30 is just exhausting, even with the three day weekend. I’m not a morning person, and by 2:00 I’m exhausted and ready to go home…but the day is barely half over. Here’s the thing. Some who switched to the four day schedule managed to switch back. No problem. A lot of coworkers would switch with each other. The four-dayers like me who couldn’t stand the long hours switched with their five-day coworkers, and management was totally okay with it. But me? Nope. They said I can’t do that. I’m an exception. What was their reasoning?

Because I started under different management, then got that promotion, and then went back to my original position. So the fact that I actually moved up in the company is a bad thing. They’re punishing me for that by not letting me go back to my original schedule. Maybe they thought I “abandoned” them or something?

These metrics are not realistic. I told my manager. She said, “Yes they are. Jill and Jan are hitting them.” Well yeah, they are. But they are literally the ONLY TWO PEOPLE hitting them. Maybe unrealistic isn’t the right word. More like unreasonable. When you have 80% of your employees on disciplinary action, that’s a MANAGEMENT problem, not an employee problem. And the two people actually hitting these metrics? I can’t help but wonder if they’re somehow cheating or cutting corners to meet these seemingly impossible standards. Again, I CAN’T CONTROL whether someone answers their phone. All I can do is make the calls. And that’s the one metric I’m hitting. “Total calls” is the one and only metric in which I’m actually the top performer. On everything else, I’m average or sometimes even below average.

I know Reddit isn’t a replacement for actual medical advice, but I don’t have my next physical until October. This isn’t *urgent* per se, but it is affecting my daily life. I’m not sure if chronic fatigue is more of a physical or mental health issue. It is affecting my work. It’s also affecting just my everyday life. I have no desire to do any physical activity. I don’t mean just the gym. I mean fun stuff I used to like like dancing. I’ve also noticed over the last week that after work, I just crash in bed. I don’t eat dinner. I’m not hungry. I don’t even want to cook, which I usually enjoy. I don’t want to go and do hobbies. I just come home and crash at 6:00. Sometimes I set a 20 minute alarm so that it’ll just be a nap…but I usually sleep through that. I end up waking up around midnight, realizing my nap turned into more like a full night’s sleep. But what am I going to do at midnight, especially if I have to work again the next morning? So I might get up, watch a 15-minute YouTube video, and then go back to bed.

I wake up on time, but then half way through the work day, I’m exhausted again. I work from home, so I can kind of get away with sleeping on the job. I shouldn’t. My employment is actually in jeopardy…for different reasons. But I just can’t stay awake and productive for ten hours a day.

I don’t know if I should just wait six months until I can see my PCP or look for some sort of sleep doctor or something. Or maybe just talk to my therapist about it…I’m supposed to see him in a month. Hopefully I’ll still have a job by then.

What are your thoughts?