Helpdesk, information technology and schadenfreude.

This post has been 15 years in the making.  If you haven’t worked in a help desk environment or are thinking about working in a help desk you’d do yourself a favor by taking the time to read this.

There are a lot of help desk jobs to be had.  To be fair a help desk job can be a good entry way into more interesting work inside a company.  A foot in the door as the expression goes.  They also normally pay above average wages for a “first job”.  In the basic entry level position most times a high school diploma will be enough to get you hired.  They normally include things such as medical benefits and perhaps even access to the company gym.

There are however a lot of negative aspects to the job you should consider.

Take for example most help desk job descriptions:

• Do you like helping people?
• Do you enjoy speaking on the telephone?
• Do you pride your self on facing new challenges every day in a professional and courteous manner?
• Do you enjoy Flexible hours?

Add to this most help desk job depictions include a picture similar to the ones below (don’t they look professional, helpful and willing to help?):

Now let’s get to the cold hard facts

1. You are going to be paid to “take shit”.  Very few customers are going to treat you like a human being.  You’re going to get yelled at, you’re going to get called names and you’re most likely going to meet incompetence within the company you work for.  Don’t think for one moment that such an environment is a healthy one.
2. You’ll be doing shift work.  Forget getting holidays off, you’re in the service industry now and that means you’ll be working weekends and holidays as well.
3. You’ll be a “second class employee”.  The best way I can describe this is using examples.  That company barbq we’re having?  You can’t attend because we need people to answer the calls coming in, sorry.  Another good example of this was in my previous job the company would send emails indicating “because of the bad weather you may leave the office early to make it home safely”.  Our manager would always come around after these emails were sent to say “Yeah that doesn’t apply to us, we have to stay”.
4. Depression, substance abuse and psychological problems abound.

If I had to use one picture to describe a help desk job this would be it (Credit: http://www.members.shaw.ca/reamus/pichelpdesksupport.html):

Also take note of what your physical environment is most likely going to be.  You most likely won’t have your own desk, you’ll be sharing it.  The noise levels can be hard to deal with as employee’s have to lower or raise their voices depending on who they’re speaking with (person on the cellphone outside, noise in the office etc):

Now look at the above picture and tell me it doesn’t make you think of this:

The other thing which is extremely important to realize is that this work will change you.  In some ways it’ll change you for the better and in others it’ll ostracize you.  Until you’ve worked in a call center you just cannot understand.

Regardless of what type of help desk you work for, you’re going to have people calling you because they have a problem.  It may just be a question they have or it may be something they’ve been dealing with for months.  Rarely will someone call you to say “Hey everything is going great, I was just calling to say I really appreciate your work”.

To them you’re just going to be another mindless representative of the large corporation.  Their problem may be as mundane as being unable to print a document which “absolutely needs to be printed right away”.  They’ll spend hour after hour emailing you, leaving voice-mails insisting that they need the document printed right away.  They won’t however think of emailing the document to their co worker who is able to print.

That’s just one example of some of the things you’ll encounter.  Now I mentioned earlier that such a job will change you.  There are three main changes that I noticed in fellow employee’s :

1) Their skin gets a lot thicker and it either happens very quickly or they quit.  I’ve seen countless young women step away from their computers crying because the individual at the end of the phone called them names or talked “dirty” to them.  You’d be surprised by the amount of guys that call different call centers just to talk dirty when they get a woman.  It also works the other way, I have a good friend of mine who sounds like a 14 year old girl on the phone despite being in her 30’s.  She rarely got people yelling at her because she would pull out her “young girl voice”.  It’s very similar to what Anthony Bourdain talks about in his Kitchen Confidential book when discussing the verbal insults that they launch towards each other (the cruder the better).  If you can’t take the pressure of someone calling you names, you just don’t have what it takes.

There’s a beautiful French expression that loosely translates to “If you’re looking for me, you’re going to find me”.  Basically if you start talking shit and insults to a call center worker you better be ready to be put in your place.  In my case the caller got one warning, if they swore or didn’t calm down I just hung up.  However you did have one more tool at your disposal which you’ll see further down in this post.

2) Your patience for ignorance and incompetence in your personal life becomes non existent.  This one is much easier to explain.  You work 40 hours a week and your job is to be helpful.  You are being paid to listen to people who are lazy, rude, stupid and ignorant.  You’ll recognize when you get a fellow call center employee on the phone because they’ll be unusually polite and patient with you.   So when you’re out of the office the moment you see any of the above happening you loose it and cannot keep quiet.  I’ve become very vocal with my friends, family and in the general public when I see someone being rude, ignorant or stupid.  You have to put up with that shit when you’re at work and bite your tongue all day long but once you’re off the clock your threshold for these things truly becomes non existent.  I’ve told strangers to fuck off, I refuse to listen to ignorant people.  I’ve purposely broken off friendships and relationships because of this.  I’ve made fun of people in public for being any of the above and I’m considered a friendly, polite and relaxed person by my friends (for the most part ;-)

3) You stop answering your phone.  This one is the one most friends and family simply didn’t understand (and some still don’t).  “Your phone is ringing aren’t you going to answer?”  FUCK NO!  For 8 hours a day I sit in front of a desk and have to answer the phone politely.  Call after call, in most cases without a break in between other than your law mandated 15 minute break.  Do you really think that when I get home and hear my phone ring I say to myself “I wonder who that is?”  It’s the last thing on my mind.  Unless I’m expecting a call you better leave a message and not be in a hurry to get a call back.  I check my messages when I feel like it.  I explain this to people this way:  If you peeled potatoes all day long, when you got home would you want to peel some more potatoes for supper?  I’ve broken off friendships on more than one occasions after friends have gotten mad because I didn’t return their call “right away”.

You’re also going to take pleasure in two very specific things:

Schadenfreude, which is a German word that means “pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.” and trolling.  In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

Those two words seem a bit mean don’t they?  However after years and years of dealing with rude and incompetent people you slowly develop a type of dark humour.  I can’t count how many times I’ve had to “rush” to fix a problem because someone is leaving on vacation in 1 hour.  You see, after you’ve experienced this a few times you begin to tell yourself “wait a minute, you’ve had your vacation planned for weeks, possibly months.  You’re telling me you waited until the last minute to get something done and now because of your poor planning it’s suddenly an emergency that I have to fix immediately?”.  So lack of planning on your part means I have to stop everything I was working on to help you.  Sure, just sit tight I’ll be right up to help you.  It’s the reasons signs like these appear:

You’ll slowly find yourself laughing at these peoples misfortune and this is where I dedicate this post to Schadenfreude.  You see after 15+ years in the industry a few weeks ago I decided I had enough.  I’d rather work a job that pays me a lot less money than put up with the situations I’ve described above.  I sent an email to my boss explaining to him that I was finished with my current job and would be leaving the company at the end of the month.

At the time I didn’t have another job ready.  I didn’t have any money in my savings account.  I didn’t care.

When I sent my notice to my boss I immediately felt lighter.  A coworker saw me in the office the next day and told me I looked like I had just gotten back from vacation.  She pointed out I looked relaxed and very happy.  I asked her if she had heard the news and she answered with “What news?”  I explained that I had given my notice, she smiled and said “Now I understand why you’re looking so relaxed”.

Now the crazy thing is that two weeks after I gave my notice we found out that the whole department I work for is being outsourced.  All of a sudden people were accusing me of having gotten the inside scoop and giving my notice before getting outsourced.  In reality I had no idea the whole department was getting fired.  It was just serendipity, but things like that seem to happen to me quite a bit.  It made me smile.

I’ve only got a few more weeks left to work for my current employer and the trolling and schadenfreude has increased significantly for everyone in the office.  It’s been strange to see how some of the employee’s reactions have been.  Some were completely devastated while others were obviously pleased.  As someone who was already planning on leaving I felt like a fly on the wall watching all the worker bee’s react to the news of the colonies demise.

There’s a lot of dark humour in call centers and general attitude of “who gives a fuck”.  It’s one of the reasons Dilbert comics and pictures such as the one above are so popular with the IT crowd.  The reason is that often times management doesn’t have a clue about working the “phones”.

You see management is more concerned with three little things:  ASA, ABA and AHT.  Depending on the type of call center you’re working in first call resolution (FCR) may also be included.  That’s fixing a callers problem while you’re on the phone with them.  Management, acronyms and charts go hand and hand.  I like to think of them as the deaf, dumb and blind as well as the blind leading the blind.  The reason for this is that you can measure these and place them in nice little charts.  You can’t really measure customer satisfaction unless two things happen:

1. The company calls the customer to ask how they felt about the experience.
2. The customer actually takes the time to answer.

The first requires money and the second can’t really be controlled.  The ASA, ABA and AHT can all be “measured” and manipulated.  Somehow, somewhere the industry started using these standards as a measure for “customer service”.  Let’s explain what they are because if you plan on working in a call center you’ll be getting familiar with them.

The ASA is the average speed of answer.  This is as a customer, how long you’re normally waiting on hold.  This fluctuates a great deal depending on the time of day, the amount of people working and the type of business.  For instance you wouldn’t want to wait 10 minutes on hold when calling emergency services.  However if you’re waiting 10 minutes for a question about how to print a document you might not make too much of a fuss.  Unfortunately for you the call center management will usually schedule just enough workers to cover demand.  The moment someone calls in sick or there’s an above average volume of calls, the customers and the workers take the brunt of the frustrations.

The ABA is the abandoned rate.  That’s the amount of callers that are hanging up before they get to speak to someone.  There are “standard” percentages that are considered acceptable.  Once again these depend on the type of call centers you work in and the type of services they provide.  Doesn’t matter how good you are at your work if the ABA is too high management will not be happy.  But why don’t they just hire more people you may be asking yourself?  We all ask ourselves that but in the end the answer is simple: profits.

Finally there’s the AHT, which is the average handle time.  That’s the amount of time the person you’re going to get on the phone is spending with you.  Again these are usually determined by the type of industry you’re employed in.  If you’ve ever been told, “I’m sorry I’m not able to fix this problem for you but someone will call you back who can” you’ve reached the AHT maximum (or possibly a person who really doesn’t know how to resolve your problem).  It’s now time for the person to move onto the next call.

Another negative thing about working in a call center environment is people expect you to be able to fix everything with a simple description of the problem.  I don’t know how many times I’ve had someone on the end of the phone tell me “it doesn’t work it’s not doing anything, why you can’t you fix it?” after I’ve asked them to explain what is happening.

It has to be one of the only industries in the world where customers expect their problem to be fixed “over the telephone”.  I’ve used several analogies to explain this to friends and families over the years:

Would you call a mechanic and tell him/her my automobile is making a “bzzz” noise, please fix it because I don’t know what’s wrong”.  “Why can’t you fix my bzzz, aren’t you a mechanic?”.  You don’t expect this of your car mechanic so why do you expect it for your computers?

Would you call a doctor and say “I’ve  got a pain in my foot, can you tell me how to operate so that I can check what’s wrong with it?”  (I’m by no means comparing a doctor to a call center worker I’m just trying to get a point across).

Knowing you’re leaving such an industry can be fun.  For instance call center environments are usually very big on “team building exercises” in order to keep the morale of the employee’s up.  With a little bit of a passion for trolling and Schadenfreude you too can contribute to the office’s morale.

As previously mentioned our whole department is being outsourced to a very large and famous three letter company.  I’ve been “signing up” this large three letter company for all our events.  We have a social committee signup sheet.  Guess who’s name just appeared on it?

We actually deal with the company in question in various capacities.  Whenever I get a complaint about the company I now politely remind the person “You realize that company X is taking over our jobs in X months?”  The silence at the end of the line makes the endorphins rush through my body.  It’s like a junky getting his fix.

Finally I’ll leave you with two parting pieces of advice that has served me well over the past 15 years in call center environments.  Remember that there’s always a way to tell someone to politely fuck off.  It may sound strange but there’s nothing like an insult delivered in a polite fashion without using any rude words.  The person at the other end of the line will go quiet analyzing what you just said.  They won’t be certain how to react.  Did he really just say what I think he said?  There weren’t any bad words in there but I think he just insulted me.  You can hear their thoughts churning in the silence of your headset.

Secondly if you’re wondering how to get “things done” when dealing with a large corporations help desk here are a few tips:

Let the person you’re talking to do that talking.  Often times they have scripts which they must repeat every single call.  Let them to their job, they’ll be grateful for it and will be more receptive to help you.  Yes you may have already given your date of birth 3 times, do it again politely.

If you’re not satisfied with the solution be polite and explain that you are not.  Tell them you appreciate what they’ve offered and ask to speak to their manager or supervisor.  Repeat the process with the manager and supervisor asking to speak to their manager supervisor if still not satisfied.  Remain polite the whole time.

Take as much information as possible from your dealings with the company.  Write down the name and the time you spoke to them and keep them in a log.  Finally if all else fails go through channels such as the better business bureau or which ever avenues you’re willing to pursue to get your issue resolved (internet forums, television news crews etc).

With all of the above said.  Don’t let this turn you away from your first call center job.  If anything if should give you the skills necessary to succeed in the environment.  As GI joe famously said “knowing is half the battle” just don’t forget the other half is violence….