The Grass IS Greener on This Side

I received a mental blast from the past the other day. While cleaning out the basement I found a complex grid from GE Capital, where Mike and I worked for over 10 years each, explaining how to compartmentalize your employees into one of two categories: "The Team Player" and "The Individual Contributor." It brought back memories of how different the corporate culture is from what we do now, how we were concerned with totally different things and how much emphasis was put on pleasing the Management, performing according to standards such as answering the most customer service calls, having the shortest resolution time of customer complaints or locating the most missing payments. All well and good if you are the customer and a company is trying to be successful, but working in a call center is a highly stressful job. You have pressure from above to reach certain imposed goals and even have an display on the wall showing how many calls are holding, how long they have been holding and what percentage are hanging up. That light is like the cheese at the end of a mouse's maze as you go this way and that way with your verbal and technical skills trying to get the light to say "0," zero calls holding so you can breathe and if you're lucky, maybe even take a potty break. At the same time you have pressure from the customer whose problem you are trying to solve. No one ever calls their credit card carrier's toll-free number and says, "I just wanted to let you know how happy I am with this card. You guys are doing a great job!" Never happens. When a customer calls they are at best confused and at worst irate or irrational, or both. And those calls come through in rapid-fire succession. GE went so far as to install a phone program where you could not even control the spacing between the calls. When one caller hung up, another was immediately on the line. It is such an artificial and contrived environment, and I am so very, very thankful that I don't have to work in such a place anymore.