As a teacher I have been yelled at, sworn at, punched, and had furniture thrown at me, all by teenagers, many bigger and stronger than me, and don't even get me started on the shit I have endured from the kids' parents, adults who aught to have known better, but who were clearly the tree from whence the children fell. Yeh all a bit ho hum, and that was part of the job, not the best bit, but still, a part of the job, and generally if you hung in there the real problem would surface like a bloated body in the swamp and then solutions could be found.
But it seems pretty clear to me that if I was actually still in the classroom today, when a kid goes off like a rocket, I would be empowered by the Boss Gods, to put my hand up and say, 'If you go off again, I will terminate this class, as I do not have to put up with this.'
I can just see it now! perhaps 20 times a day, sticking my hand up and reciting a little catch phrase, and all would be well. Or if I wanted to finish early, all I'd have to do is wind up a couple of kids in say the yr 9 vocational English class to the point where they'd whisper, 'Shit' and then I could scarper, cos no-one can be expected to put up with that sort of shit, ever!
So what it means is that insurance companies and super funds and government agencies and quangos and utility companies and banks and telcos can all, without fear, keep sending wrath cooking shit in the post, or emails, and then encourage 'customers' to call premium rate numbers to ask what the fuck is going on. Yep they no longer need to fear that the shit that they send or the procedures they put in place, will make people cross enough to swear or heaven forbid raise their voices, cos if they even think that's gonna happen they can just trill off their little phrase about, 'terminating this call' and they can go onto the next one. It makes fuck all difference after all cos they have no interest in providing customer service, cos they get paid regardless.
So I have got to imagine that something truly horrible must have happened, and not as an isolated event, horrible, terrible things must have happened to call centre operators so now they are allowed to just hang up. And not just allowed to hang up, they are encouraged to do so after sprooking their little one liners.
So what devastating things could have befallen our fearless, now fearsome folk on the phones. Well I guess someone could have hung up on them loudly, although that really hasn't happened in the last decade cos in the digital era, it's not possible to slam of the old plastic receiver onto the phone ( this was excruciating and exhilarating depending on which end you were on ) - yeh back in the old days, when there was some interest in solving a problem or easing a complaint, that slamming clunk would have meant trouble cos that would have been one pissed off customer who might be immediately walking their business elsewhere. Yeh the boss would not be happy about the customer hang ups, follow ups would happen, and apologies would be offered and businesses would grow.
So there might have been a hang up or 2, or as happened, every day when I worked the phones with my mate Rosie, we'd be told to 'Fuck Off'. I suppose it was lucky that we were a couple of teflon gals cos instead of needing stress leave and psychiatric attention, we'd laugh it off and count 'em up. I reckon that 24 might have been the winning score in a 6 hour shift.
What truly dreadful thing must have happened that has lead to this 'Terminate the call' crappola? Perhaps it's the 'elf and safety police' just making sure they all stay in a job, so people are employed to write the 'terminate the call' dialogue, and then trainers need to be employed to teach the phone operators how to best deliver this speech, and of course then there would need to be counselors on hand or at least on speed dial for when things get really out of hand. Yeh I can see how the unions would be tickled pink with themselves to have engineered all these other roles, it's just a shame that from a customer perspective, there is less and less service.
I was gonna outline the events leading up to me hearing 'the speech' today but I am pretty sure that we have all heard it before and the organisations are, let's face interchangeable. I didn't swear, I have learnt my lesson on that one, but I did raise my voice, mostly because I imagined that PAUL was hard of hearing cos it was that or he was just thick as shit.
Ho fucking hum!
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