1. All the talking gives you a sore throat
2. You get a sore back from sitting on the uncomfortable chairs.
3. Sore eyes from staring at the computer screen.
4. You start using your 'telephone voice' when talking to your friends or family.
5. Even though you hate your job with a passion, whenever you get together with other call-centre workers its all you talk about.
6. You are doing a job that brings misery to the masses.
7. Exposed to every germ going through communial head-sets.
8. Being endlessly invited out to 'Call-Centre Nights Out' in shit bars.
9. Novelty theme days in work, encouraging you to dress up '70s' or 'Bad Taste' for fun.
10. Having to work under people who are full of their own self importance even though you have more intellegence in your little finger.
11. Never being able to finish a sentence with your fellow workers, always being interupted by calls.
12. Getting names you can't pronounce flashing up on the screen.
13. Training sessions with 'humourous' overtones.
14. Phoning and asking for someone only to get their recently widowed other half.
15. Always watching the clock and it goes...so....slow.
16. There is always an office 'wide-o' who thinks he can pull any girl on the floor and impresses everyone with his extensive sexual comments.
17. Speaking to really old lonely people who want to tell you all about their lives.
18. Spending 50mins on a call, getting on with the customer really well and then not getting the sale.
19. Phoning people on a Friday night only to get smug comments about how they are going out, designed to highlight the fact they have a life while you are stuck in a call centre.
20. Being thirsty all the time.
21. The stupid jingles people have on their answering machines.
22. Spending ages on a call only to discover the customer (always very keen) has the wrong kind of bank account.
23. The fact that supermarket cashiers and toilet cleaners can feel superior to you because their job is miles better.
24. Not being able to stop yawning during calls.
25. Being made to fill out things like 'target sheets' on which you have to lie about how motivated you are.
26. Being forced to 'support each other' with empty statements and encouragement.
27. Clicking on the computer screen in the same pattern so often that you can still see the screen when you shut your eyes.
28. Loosing your voice all the time.
29. Being 'motivated' by bribes of sweets and 99p bottles of wine.
30. Being given the shortest breaks allowed under law and being made to adhere to them to the second, even if you have to go down eight flights of stairs for a cigerette.
31. Getting a sore ear from the constant beeping and talking, BUT ONLY ONE EAR.
32. Your office NEVER looks like the offices on the call-centre adverts on the TV, its always a dump with broken air conditioning.
33. Getting obsessed with silly pass-times, as they make the hours go a little faster, ie nots and crosses, filing your nails and oragami.
34. No matter HOW bad the data list is, you can NEVER blame it for getting no sales.
35. The last ten mins of your shift always feel longer than all the hours that went before it put together.
36. Having to avoid answering the 'what do you do' question in public to save embaressment.
37. Having to know more about insurance/direct debit save-guards/data protection than anyone could ever want to.
38. Offering people a 'free-offer' but still having to get their bank details.
39. After a while everyone you speak to have exactly the same tone of voice.
40. Being called duck/love/pet/sweetpie/hunny-bun/darling/child/woman and a million other monsterous pet names.
41. Hearing people tell you truely terrible lies about why they can't give you their bank details.
42. People who let you give them your whole epic pitch and then hang-up on you.
43. Customers with financial advisors.
44. Nosey husbands/wifes who interfer at the last moment of a sale and have the whole thing called off.
45. People who aren't interested before you have even told them why you were calling.
46. Parents who think its sweet to let their two-year old children answer the phone even though they can't speak properly yet.
47. Parents who think its sweet to let their children record their answer-phone messages.
48. People who answer the question 'is there any particular reason why you aren't interested' with 'I'm not interested.'
49. Customers who don't speak English.
50. The endless fear that you might be stuck there for a long long long long time.
Robyn & Jennifer (Bitter Part-Time Call Centre Staff)