u/unpaidsexyphilospher

The longer you stay in a call centre, the easier it is to get stuck. You build more and more experience in the same environment, and then that experience starts determining what you’re qualified for next. Before you know it, your next job is another call centre job, then another one, and another one.
Don’t let the fact that the job is available and you’re used to it convince you that you have to stay.** **

If you need to pivot, pivot. If you need to take a temporary step backward to get yourself into a completely different field, do it. If you need to go back to school, learn something new, take an entry-level role in another area, whatever, just do it. Staying somewhere you’re miserable simply because you’re already experienced at it can become a trap and the longer you stay, the harder it can feel to leave.

Don’t wait until you’ve spent five or ten years wondering how you ended up still taking calls.

What’s one thing customers do that you absolutely cannot stand?

I will start.

1. When they call in and then go, “Hold on” and proceed to have a whole conversation. And it’s not even a quick “Mom, I’ll call you back.” They’ll be having a whole ass conversation like YOU CALLED MEEE. Meanwhile, you’re professionally obligated to sit there like: “…take your time.”

2. When they don’t know how to do extremely basic things on their own. People don’t really want to do ANYTHING for themselves. They want to be spoon-fed everything! Like, how do you not know how to do the most basic sh*t on your OWN device?

3. People who have absolutely no sense of urgency. My goodness. They make you feel like you personally work for them, taking their sweet time. Like why are you behaving like I have all day?!
   Customers who ask endless questions. Like, there is ALWAYS something else. You answer one question and they immediately have another one. You show them something and it’s, “Okay, what’s this for?” You explain it. “Okay, and what’s that for?” You explain that. “And what about this?” Then they want to know the difference between two other things. Then they have another question about something completely different. In my head I’m screaming SHUT UPPPPP

4. Customers who call and are absolutely convinced that they’ve been hacked or that somebody is listening to them or out to get them, but when you ask them what makes them think their account has been compromised, they have absolutely no concrete indication.

“Okay, what happened that makes you think someone has access to your account?”
“Well… somebody has been in there.”
“Okay, did you receive an unfamiliar sign-in notification?”
“No.”
“Any unfamiliar devices?”
“No.”
“Unrecognized purchases or changes to the account?”
“No.”
“Okay, so what specifically are you seeing?”
“I don’t know. I KNOW somebody has hacked me.”

😭😭😭 THEN WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO WITH THAT INFORMATION?!

So I’m curious: what are your customer-service pet peeves? What do customers do that shouldn’t bother you as much as it does, but absolutely drives you insane?

I am so tired of this job.
Like, genuinely, deeply exhausted. It’s ALWAYS something. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. One metric, one call, one mistake, one thing I apparently could have done better. It never ends.
And I’m so sick of feeling like I’m being squeezed for every single thing I have to give. The constant monitoring, the rules, the regulations, the metrics, the scripts, the expectations, it’s exhausting. You can do 99 things right and somehow the conversation is always about the one thing you didn’t do perfectly.
And the worst part is that I KNOW I’m competent. But somehow I’m constantly being made to feel like I’m not doing enough.
For how much? Seriously. For how much?
At this point, I’m seriously planning to quit. And yes, I know what everyone is going to say: “Don’t quit without another job lined up.” And honestly, maybe that’s the sensible advice. Maybe I’m saying all of this while I’m at an emotional breaking point and I’ll feel differently tomorrow.
But right now? I’m tired.
I’ve gotten to the point where I’m physically sick thinking about work. Every shift feels like waiting for the next thing I’m going to be criticized for. I don’t want to spend my life feeling this way over a call-centre job.
I’ve always said that if I had to, I could survive without employment for a while. Maybe I’m about to find out if that’s true. Maybe I’ll have to deal with unemployment and figure things out as I go.
But honestly?
I’ll be fine.
I’ll be fine.
I just don’t know how much longer I’m willing to sacrifice my sanity for a paycheck that doesn’t even feel worth it anymore.

It is so annoying when this happens. A customer calls about a situation, and you explain the limits of your scope and that there’s genuinely nothing you can do, but they think if they keep shouting, pushing, arguing, or repeating themselves, you’ll somehow magically unlock a solution that didn’t exist five minutes ago, like the answer was no 5 minutes ago, and it’s still no now.

I can't believe miserable people like this actually walk among us. I had a call today that has left me completely reeling from the sheer audacity of it. To make a long story short, this caller hadn't even done a single troubleshooting step, but immediately declared that I was incompetent based purely on "the way I spoke to her."
From the very beginning, as soon as I greeted her, she immediately demanded to know my tenure. I initially refused to disclose it. Then she starts throwing around fake flexes: "You don't know if I work for [Company Name]! What if I work for your company? What if I'm a supervisor? What if this call is a test?" and told me, "I'm giving you one more time to answer that question."
The constant attempts to remind me that she might be someone important were completely delusional. The assumption that she had the right to evaluate me while refusing to treat me with basic respect was unreal. She then demanded to speak with a supervisor and disconnected.
Here is what's eating me up: when she demanded to know how long I'd been working here, I initially declined, but then I ended up answering and telling her I’d been here a couple of months. Then she said, "You won’t be there for so long." Again, the AUDACITY!
I am so mad at myself for answering. But it was an automatic split-second reflex, your brain instinctively throws up a shield to de-escalate on a recorded line so you don't take a quality audit hit. Afterward, I was stuck in a sickening loop feeling like I gave her an unearned "one-up" satisfaction instead of just standing my ground and keeping up a brick wall.
This environment is so draining. I dislike this work with everything in me, and it hurts that I’m still stuck here. I am so sick of people taking power trips, yelling, and treating us like we aren't even human beings just because we answered the phone. Basic respect often feels completely optional to the people on the other end of the line.
I’m furious at the unfairness of it all. How do you guys deal with the rage of being talked down to by terrible people, and how do you stop replaying these calls in your head?