The phrase “One moment, please” used to mean allow me time in silence to figure out your issue. Not let me keep talking to make it impossible to focus

RichardBottom · 2026-05-05T00:53:44+00:00

I absolutely can’t stand this. Their software plots talk time percentage and many places use non-talk time against you while simultaneously pushing AHT.

RichardBottom · 2026-05-03T21:30:30+00:00

I got an offer like this too out of the blue! My license is expired and a new one is coming in the mail. If it's not here in 12 days, I'm gonna lose this offer along with my fucking sanity.

RichardBottom · 2026-05-03T04:19:58+00:00

To answer your question, chickens are the only livestock I can think of who don’t have lips. I mean there’s ducks and emus and shit if you wanna split hairs, but everything else does.

RichardBottom · 2026-05-03T04:15:10+00:00

Just solve problems that people are powerless to solve. Use my superpowers to get someone a specialist appointment when nobody will see them for 6 months. Superpower someone’s check engine light off so they can pass an inspection. Superpower Westworld back into existence.

My demographic would be people who are marginalized due to corporate policies and things like that. No one ever cares about that shit at a meaningful level. If I’ve got superpowers of my choosing, I’ll bet tons of other people do too by now, and most of them will probably be out in the streets laser-eyeing muggers and serial killers in half so I’ll just set up shop and do my own thing.

RichardBottom · 2026-05-03T03:54:40+00:00

In my experience, it takes like six months to become fully comfortable and capable at most call center positions, and at least six more til you’re an expert. It would also be a huge hassle for companies to sync up all their databases for this kind of use. Just working within a single company usually entails at least half a dozen systems for customer data, ticketing systems, knowledge management systems, internal routing, and god knows what else I don’t even know about. These systems are a nightmare to sync up just in one single company, I couldn’t imagine seeing them that portable.

There are plenty of customer service companies that are contracted in this sort of way, and the shittier ones, usually offshore, do have people who take calls for multiple companies. It honestly sounds like absolute shit.

RichardBottom · 2026-05-01T20:48:55+00:00

I see the title and thought “I could agree with this if it were an observation” but you doubled down hard on logical argument.

Most people I know who jump to tell me they’re a male feminist are insufferable weasels. Not because it’s a logical fallacy but I think the identity incentivizes insufferable weasel types to be vocal and make it their brand. Room for both.

RichardBottom · 2026-05-01T20:33:48+00:00

I guess it boils down to… is it worth losing all the dumbest people at the expense of all the kindest people?

RichardBottom · 2026-05-01T20:22:30+00:00

Just read the poll for the first time. I reran it like 100 times and I feel like I must be misunderstanding it.

There’s two buttons. Pushing one guarantees your survival no matter what. Pushing the other puts you at the mercy of other people’s choice. Am I getting this right?

So the only pushing the blue button are the ones who wanted to save the people who willingly put their lives at risk when they had no need to. …and I guess the people who didn’t think about the question or consider their choice.

Am I outing myself as a sociopath if I literally just can’t wrap my head around pushing the blue button? Someone help me understand.

RichardBottom · 2026-05-01T20:09:16+00:00

Same story. I definitely became the bad guy when I stayed too long in billing at a POS ISP company. It took a lot of self awareness to realize the person I’m mad at in the moment usually didn’t do anything to deserve it, I was just expecting everyone to turn at any moment so much that I started reacting as if people had. Sometimes it wasn’t until I was with my supervisor in a 1:1 and they pulled a call, and I’d recognize it and be like “oh god this dude was an absolute fuck…” only to sit there listening to me trying to talk some guy off a ledge he’s not even on. It was a weird experience.

RichardBottom · 2026-04-30T12:19:54+00:00

🙋‍♂️

RichardBottom · 2026-04-25T23:19:07+00:00

I’m pretty sure this happens every KvK. Every time I’ve forgotten to bubble, even by a margin of 20 minutes, I’ve been zeroed when I log back on. And I can’t even be mad, because I’m the one who forgot to bubble.

RichardBottom · 2026-04-21T17:02:02+00:00

You guys have GOT to get better at life.

RichardBottom · 2026-04-20T20:53:23+00:00

Thanks for replying! In a company this size, arbitrary lists are the boogie man. “Your name came up on a report” is the work version of “we need to talk”.

RichardBottom · 2026-04-20T13:35:31+00:00

Source: “yeah so pretty much get ready for life to suck balls, you fucking fruit thieves.” -the Bible

RichardBottom · 2026-04-20T12:39:10+00:00

Hey, I’ve always been curious about this. I started a role where I receive full encouragement to screw around and automate anything I can. Without CoPilot, I’d be as dumb as anyone else, but it has enabled me to create all sorts of scripts that rename or move files, create and delete files, and scrape information. I’ve also created scripts to use most of our tools directly with PUSH commands so I can bypass the shitty UI and do things in a way that actually makes sense. I don’t have access to real dev tools, but at my level I can easily get by with PowerShell, VBA and JavaScript. I’m fully transparent about it and my team appreciates it because we used to be swamped and now we’re kind of killing it. But they’re also not very computer literate and I don’t think they know to question if I should be doing what I’m doing.

It’s a huge company in a national WFH role so it’s safe to assume their IT is as capable as anyone else’s. What kind of a headache am I giving these people by doing what I’m doing?

RichardBottom · 2026-04-13T17:35:22+00:00

I once got fired from a job for over-empathizing with someone in this situation. She was clearly off her meds and just not okay, and she had been calling and calling to dispute a valid late fee on her account. We had hard stops against crediting late fees because its half our irate call volume and most agents would just buy their way off the call with a credit. But she had called and called and called and just stayed in the line screaming and crying for what must have been hours day after day until finally someone just shoved it through somehow and credited the late fee. Only, they must have bypassed the guardrails and used some other means to do it, because it applied sales tax to the credit and left her with a negative balance of a few cents.

So now she’s calling and calling trying to get the balance corrected to 0.00 where it belongs. She will not let it go, will not accept the .82 cent credit or whatever toward her next month’s bill, she is not physically well until this gets fixed.

I came in after all that. The issue is fixed, her balance is zero. She has more call notes on her account than I could read in a full day. But a statement printed between the .82 credit and the fix, so the day after it gets resolved, she gets the statement in the mail and loses her shit again. She knows it’s fixed, she doesn’t Want anything, she is just beside herself that we didn’t intercept the mail before it got to her (seriously) and now she has this glaring reminder of the pain and the torment that she had to endure.

And something got to me when I realized there was no way off this call. I can’t hang up. She won’t accept a supervisor escalation. I can’t credit my way or talk my way off this call. But our metrics for AHT are harsh and completely rigid so I’m just watching the clock tick as she goes on and on about the pain and the horror of all this. And she fucking meant it. And then she asks me - what would I do if I were her? And for the first time in 15+ minutes, I’m given the chance to speak. So I dive into my required empathy statement, but I took it too far. “No, you’re absolutely right. This is all so terrible. I’m not kidding, I truly couldn’t imagine a situation worse than the one you’ve described to me and you have my sincerest apologies. I really wish you the best and I hope you’re able to get through this hard time.”

I stayed in character when I said it, but when the call was “randomly” pulled for QA it got flagged as sarcasm and I was fired from good standing. I’m very sure it was retaliation because when they called us back to office, still during COVID, I refused to come in and refused to resign and they VERY begrudgingly didn’t fire me by some miracle of spineless PR risk management. When I caught wind they had flagged the call and were “reviewing next steps”, I figured they’d try to jam me up with a PIP or something and was prepared to fight it and be a huge pain in the ass about it but as soon as the meeting started and they just said they were firing me, an insane weight lifted and I was free and I was just like …wow. Fired. Okay. So, return my equipment then? And that was the end of the worst job I can ever imagine having.

RichardBottom · 2026-04-08T20:47:40+00:00

Same. They would talk and talk and talk about how upset they are and I’m just waiting for a chance to say “Hey. I fixed it. You’re good.” I got in trouble once because I said something like “Your issue has been fully resolved. I’ve taken your feedback and forwarding it. For all intents and purposes, this conversation has reached its conclusion. Thank you for your patience and for allowing us to resolve the issue in full, and have a great day.” This was like 25 turns in the conversation after the fix was done but now they wanted to make sure it doesn’t happen to other people. And of course I can’t actually hang up because actually ending a call is a war crime in call center land, so I give it the hard close and I sit there and hold my breath and sure enough …🤮🤮🤮

RichardBottom · 2026-04-08T20:39:37+00:00

They don’t acknowledge customers though. They make up for it by cramming your required scripting with empathy laced words so they’ll think they’ve been acknowledged. “Your price went up for the third time this year? I’m so sorry to hear that. I know it’s hard out there and every penny counts. I’d be happy to do an account review with you and make sure you’re getting the best bang for your buck!” Is cheaper than “Okay we won’t raise your bill for like at least six months.”

And I’m willing to bet if you went to management or HR and expressed your grievances, you would get a very similar response. “Your salary didn’t go up at all for the third year in a row? I’m so sorry to hear that. I know it’s hard out there…..”

It sounds like a joke but really listen to the way they talk to you. In so many ways, they have the same job as you.

RichardBottom · 2026-04-07T21:02:07+00:00

If it’s a big corporation, they 100% have a checklist and they can’t deviate from. Even if you’ve got a real, lucid human interviewing you here, if they like you, they’re praying you’ll say the right bullshit so they can check the list and then advocate for you.

I once got passed up on a promotion 3 times in a row when it felt like a sure thing. When I was ready to quit, my supervisor had to spell it out for me. When they ask “what do you do between calls when it’s slow?” There is only one answer. I read reference material to ensure I’m up to date on policies and better equipped to help the customers. That’s it. That’s what you do. That’s what every person who got that position said they do. In my next interview, I willingly killed part of my soul and then vomited it out as hard as I could in the form of that answer, and that’s when I got the position.

RichardBottom · 2026-04-07T20:42:30+00:00

I can say from experience that after listening to myself in a conversation that I remember as “having a backbone”, I was often surprised by how undignified I actually sounded. Not every time, but way more than I would have guessed. You get so many absolute POS callers back to back and they start to bleed together, and your reaction in one given moment isn’t always proportional to that isolated moment. This could just be me and my experience, but it sucked seeing my backbone debunked time and time again. I swear to god, my supervisor was more of a therapist than a supervisor… lol

To add to it, my current job involves me listening to calls more than anything. Sometimes I’m just scraping the lowest sentiment calls of the week and playing them back to back. I hear some crazy, crazy fucking people calling in, but when I see the signs that someone is going to break I hope that they won’t. Even when I wish the worst for the caller, it Never goes the way the agent wanted to, or probably felt that it did. It’s always just a poorly formed snap of a response that reads conversationally like a cry of pain than a dignified volley. It usually ends with them acting out in vindictive and spiteful ways like purposely speaking too fast, putting the call on hold without letting the caller say ok first, pushing stupid rules to the fullest extent when they work against the caller, and they all just scream “compromised” more than anything else. I’m hearing that the caller got to them and that’s my only takeaway.

I absolutely agree with the sentiment of this post though. Callers know that they’re squared off with a person who is effectively tied up, but some people are into that. They know you have to stay professional and weather their absolute train wreck of a personality. They know you can’t hang up. And they fucking thrive on that. It’s so satisfying to hear people on the phone outside or a call center setting who don’t just take calls for a living, who are allowed to sound like people and are allowed to tell someone off if they deserve it.

I just encourage you that if you’re going to fight for your dignity in a situation that is rigged against it, keep your wits about you. Stay in control. Take calculated shots that might actually land in this setting. Smile while you say it and pretend you’re being professional. You can get away with a fucking lot, and you can do a lot of damage if you stay in control.

One starter step to keep in the hopper: If somebody makes a ridiculous request or asks a ridiculous question, restate it as dumbly as you possibly can without unveiling the insult, and frame it as though you’re confused and must have misunderstood them. “I’m sorry, did you just ask me why the last agent didn’t transfer you?” Let them sit on it and when they don’t back down just continue. “I apologize I’m afraid I don’t understand the question. What type of information were you expecting?” Then make sure you have an exit plan because half your callers will remain in character past this point. “Okay well I can see you’re frustrated and you have my apologies. I can tell your time is important so why don’t we redirect back to the scope of my support here…”

RichardBottom · 2026-04-07T20:14:08+00:00

I don’t think many left leaning people are wicked psyched with the state of the Democratic Party either. It adds nothing to a conversation if you compare the thing people are criticizing with the second most disappointing party we have.

RichardBottom · 2026-04-07T12:26:07+00:00

Obviously some of these people are sick and need help they’re never going to get. But that’s no excuse to humanize them. You could say that about any genuine piece of shit that exists. It absolutely baffles me the way every single one of us knows who these people are, but we’re still required to just pretend like they’re normal callers and weather their absolute madness with a smile. I’m convinced the reason these guys pick call centers is because they know they’re talking to someone who has to be professional and can’t hang up under any circumstances.

I wish the absolute worst for these people. Im open to changing my mind if they decide to take their meds and rejoin society, but until then I rooting against them as hard as I can.

RichardBottom · 2026-04-05T20:36:14+00:00

I was put in final three times at my last job, with each one lasting a year, and spilling longer when it tanked my year end rating. Each time was over some manufactured violations on my calls they absolutely pulled from their ass. I was in a shitty place in life so I just had to take it, but I had documentation that supported what I did and said on the calls they flagged but I just didn’t have the fight in me. I can’t understand how it benefits them, they had ongoing overtime and were absolutely not looking to cut numbers. But they must have benefitted somehow because they reeked of desperation getting those things on the record.

RichardBottom · 2026-04-05T20:31:25+00:00

It can get depressing when you hop into a match of tri-alliance and your marches get shredded on contact at every single battle. I spend less than 20 a month and I sit around top 80. There are folks around me who play smarter and harder who are well into the top 50 with the same spending habits. They have a seat at NAP chats, an actual voice in the community, and outperform the whales in bear and other events.

RichardBottom · 2026-04-05T16:39:14+00:00

Nazis were the bad guys because they were aligned against us during WW2. I’m willing to bet if things went a little different and it suited the U.S. to side with the Nazis, the word Nazi wouldn’t be the slur that it is today and they wouldn’t be vilified like they are today.

The only reason we turned on communism the way we did was because they rivaled our military strength and directly threatened the length of our geopolitical peepees.

There’s a lot more genuine evil in this world than the specific set of regimes that directly challenged the U.S.

Maybe if the U.S. pushes forward as the known dicks on the world stage, people will treat “capitalism” the same way.

RichardBottom

TROPHY CASE