I used to work as a telephone operator when I began my career with AT&T. I was lucky enough to get a job with “the company” when I was pretty much right out of high school. My friend Chris’s grandmother worked for AT&T as a middle manager and she heard that the company was hiring in the Worcester, MA area. Chris and his sister and I went down and took this long test to get hired by AT&T. We weren’t 100% sure what the job was that they were hiring for, but I knew that whatever job I got, it beat the hell out of slaving away in the Millbrook warehouse or being a dishwasher and mopping floors in a nursing home! We took the test, aced the test (it was pretty simple – if you could do eighth grade math and could think logically, you would pass the thing), and got the whole orientation all in about 2 hours. We were hired on as “term” employees and told to come back next week for training as long distance operators.<\/p>\n
Well, the training was pretty exciting, and for the actual job was pretty interesting for the first few months, but then Boredom – with a capital [size=22]B[\/size] – set in. These were not the old cord-board days that most people picture when you think of a telephone operator – this was even less active than that. You sat at a terminal with a keyboard and monitor and a headset that you plugged into the outlet at your workstation. This job was really tedious and the “old school” supervisors made it even more difficult.<\/p>\n
[b][u]Here were the rules[\/u][\/b] (in a nutshell):<\/p>\n
[u]Be at work on time[\/u] – anything over 30 seconds past your “plug-in” time was considered late and you would be talked to about it. There were large digital clocks mounted all over the building that showed the correct time so there “were no excuses for being late.” On top of this pressure, there was the problem that you hardly ever worked the same hours two days in a row. One day might be 10am-6pm, the next 2:30pm-10pm, the next would be a 7am-10am and then 2pm-6pm split shift. And you never knew what you would be working the following week until the hours were posted on Mondays. Oh, and unless you were really high up on the seniority food chain, you always worked weekends.<\/p>\n
[u]Answer calls as they come in[\/u] – you sat there with your headset on and calls would come in to you one after another, with only a beep and the callers information flashing up on the screen to let you know. The only way to stop them was to hit a button or unplug from the station.<\/p>\n
[u]Take a break or lunch only at the scheduled time[\/u] – watch those clocks! If you are on a call, finish it ASAP or turn it over to another operator, but just get “off the boards” at the scheduled time! The two breaks were each 15 minutes long and lunch was 30 minutes. Come back on time! And if you needed to go to the bathroom, you had to check the “Out-a-Minute” board to see if there was currently anyone out that that moment. Since only one agent was allowed out at a time, you would call the in-charge desk and ask if there was anyone at that time. If there was not, you were told to unplug and go. But, you had to first sign your name and the time you unplugged. Then, upon your return, you had to write that time down as well. The person in charge had to total up the OaM’s at the end of every hour. If you had excessive OaM’s you would be talked to about it.<\/p>\n
[u]Be polite and offer good customer service[\/u] – these were things that I thought would be easy, but it became increasingly difficult as you dealt with more and more morons who should not even be allowed to use a phone! All of the operators were monitored by managers on a regular basis and the results of their listens were revealed to you in a review session. There was also off-site monitoring done so that the second-level managers could also listen and see how we were treating our customers. There were several folks who were dismissed after being caught telling customers to “f**k off” or, better yet, people who were having “personal” conversations with the customers.<\/p>\n
Lest you think that working as a long distance operator for AT&T was all bad, there were some good things about the job and many entertaining moments! <\/p>\n
– We received lots of free training. <\/p>\n
– The hours were variable and people were willing to exchange hours so you could often get the days off that you needed. <\/p>\n
– The pay was great and you always got nice differentials for working Sundays, holidays and over-time. <\/p>\n
– There was a lot of time to read (especially during those all night tours!). <\/p>\n
– Days off during the week made avoiding weekend crowds much easier. <\/p>\n
In the next About Me feature, I will cover some of the interesting things that happened and wackos…uh, people I spoke with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I used to work as a telephone operator when I began my career with AT&T. I was lucky enough to get a job with “the company” when I was pretty much right out of high school. My friend Chris’s grandmother … Continue reading