I sat on the can and lit a cigarette at 11:00pm. It had been a long day. A day of transition. I had been working for a company called Davis and Henderson in the Bells Corners region of Ottawa west for the last year and a half. I thought about the first day I had started working for the company. Back then it had used to be called Resolve. A massive call center compared to anything my past had known. I never really thought I would be working there as long as I did but the day I started was a different time. It was sometime around the beginning of August 2009. I was living with two friends in a residential college area known to the locals of Ottawa as Deerfield. It was a dumpy little place but we didn't pay much for rent. I had not had a job for far too long. I had no money for food, or liquor, or anything really and my roommates were certainly bringing it down upon my head. I payed rent and what I could scrounge up for food contribution. Finally I followed my buddy Shamus into Resolve for an interview. I was hired practically that day and I felt like a king. I thought the place would be able to offer me something other than just pay and job security. I was looking to move up. I wanted to make enough money to be able to live comfortably while giving me just enough time to work on my music and my writing.
One thing I have never really come to terms with learning is that a dream is seldom granted to those who seek it. I am stubborn that way. This is something the youth of the 2000's may have to understand sooner than they think but I got the job and Shamus got the job. I walked around for the rest of the year with stars in my eyes. It wasn't until Shamus had quit and about 6 months into the shit that I had finally begun to realize I was being leashed and whipped. I worked my ass off for the company receiving foolish laminated rewards for customer commendations and getting perfect quality scores on every call that I took. For about 3 - 4 months I was even a designated floor supervisor until the emotional strife ensued. I worked under a woman who was my supervisor and for the sake of not revealing to much of her identity Ill label her as Tammy. Tammy was a short, in your face, blond who took her call center supervisor career more seriously than anyone would contemplate finding a million dollars sitting on the ground on their way home. Tammy was a cold hearted, astro cunt. She had it in for Shamus and I since the moment we were hired (she was also in the same "training" class as us). Shamus and I used to write songs and play guitar on our breaks until Tammy had decided that one day she would speak to an Ops manager about our music playing during breaks and lunch deeming it an "Inappropriate workplace activity" and this greatly concerned that cold ice chunk floating in her chest.
To get back onto topic here... The six months of working with this woman had turned me completely sideways. She had tried the entire 3-4 months that I was actually working as a floor supervisor to get me pulled off at any chance she could get and finally succeeded in doing so during the 4Th. I spoke to her boss about the situation. He was a man that was so nervous at the sheer thought of any kind of confrontation that he would have to let out a giggle at the end of every sentence he spoke. He tried his hardest to be friends with every one of his employee's and this included pleasing the likes of Tammy to solidify what he thought was a "Stable work environment."
I was relieved of being able to supervise the floor even if that meant giving the position to someone who knew less than half of what I did about the programs and resolutions. If they were going to fuck me like that I sure as hell wasn't about to take it like a bitch. I started slacking off. My quality scores dropped, I tore down my awards and I certainly did not give a fuck. They tried to use the Floor Supervisor role as an incentive for me trying to do better.
"Now Jaden." They would say.
"If you bring up those quality scores and start showing more initiative then maybe you can supervise the floor again."
Well I did it... After coming close to failing over 10 quality tests I fell for it. I still had a minute amount of hope deep down somewhere that maybe these people would actually let me advance if I tried a little bit harder.
My scores got better. My attitude changed and 3 months had passed since I had been able to supervise the floor. I had aced all of my quality tests, even winning a $50.00 cash prize for scoring the highest. At this point I figured I would be more than capable of getting back my old position and maybe a little happiness back into my working life after all this was not what I loved to do, this is what I had to do in order to survive and work at my true worldly passions. I spoke to Tammy's boss again.
"So it's been about 3 months now and Ive done literally everything you have asked me to do. Is there anyway I could work the floor again?" I asked as reassuringly as possible.
"Well Jaden." Here we go.
"You see, Its your adherence that is really the problem. Maybe if you just work really hard and try not to take any sick days for the next few months we could possibly consider it."
Fuck that! I had nothing left to give. They had lost my respect, my commitment, and the rest of the care they had managed to suck out of my dry sack of bones. I was done. A year and a half down the drain for a company that cared so little about their employees and thought so highly of their half wit Supervisor that I felt like coughing up blood just looking at the building from the outside and this was a horrible thing for everyone. They lost an employee who would have been more than happy to work there for years and I needed a source of income to pay rent, feed myself, and bay the bills. They were still fucking me dead.
A couple months had passed. I moved into an apartment on Pinecrest with a good friend and I basically "fucked the dog" at work, as an old coworker always used to say. In fact over the last 3 weeks I spent with the company I was having such drastic technical errors that I was unable even to login to a single system to merely do my job. It was completely and utterly their fault. As much as you think going to work and sitting around for 8 hours a day twiddling your thumbs and staring at walls for 3 weeks would be perfect, it was far from it. The days passed like years and the entire time I was there I was getting ridiculed and shot dirty looks from other Supervisors on the floor because they were to egotistical to admit that there could be a possible system malfunction going on. The best part about it was that I was not the only one this was happening to. In fact there were 2 other agents experiencing the exact same problem that I was having and I was still getting the stink eye, all 3 of us were. We were treated as the scum of the Earth by the people who were getting payed to help us but who would listen? Nobody. They were our bosses. Upper Management. We were nothing but Customer Service Agents and apparently that meant that we were completely disposable.
To sum things up about the job. I had lost my shit for lack of better words. I went in and was demeaned to the point of pure frustration. Tammy had decided to drive me over the edge with her "I'm better than you" bullshit and I walked out to the back, hauled off and punched a dumpster. My hand swelled up. I went back inside and took a seat beside a couple of friends from work as a lady from the Human Resources department walked by.
"Oh my God!" she exclaimed.
"What happened to your hand?" She was oddly concerned. Not something I was used to experiencing in that place.
"I.. Uh... I hurt it..." I had no idea what to say.
Thankfully my buddy who had been sitting beside me had some sharp wit on his shoulders.
"He tripped outside." He filled her in.
"And he fell into the wall."
Fucking lifesaver!
"Oh no. Come with me immediately."
The woman rushed me off to a back room where she gave me ice for my hand, filled out an injury report form, sent me home with a day of pay, and gave me cab fare to get to the hospital and then back home. She put me in the cab and let the driver know that I would need to be taken to the Queensway Carleton Hospital and have my hand looked at pronto. The cabbie agreed and took off right away.
"Now listen man, I'm going to level with you here..." I said to the cab driver.
"If you can just take me to the LCBO and then back to my place you can keep all the money here."
"But don't you want to go to the hospital for your hand?" The cab driver looked confused.
"I just need a six pack of beer and my apartment and everything will be great." I assured him.
"Ha ha! You are a funny man." His laugh was a cry of victory in my ears.
I had won. Do not fuck with Jaden. In fact that very weekend my sister let me know there was a Supervisor/Interviewer position that had just opened up in the call center she works for Downtown Ottawa and to send my resume into her friend who would be doing the hiring. I sent it in the next day which brings us to now...
I sat on the can and lit up a cigarette at 11:00pm. It had been a long day. I did not go to work and received a call requesting an interview at a call center Downtown Ottawa for the position of an Interviewer. I explained to the man named Ryan (whom I had apparently met before at a party) all of the experience I had pertaining to Call Center work and Floor Supervising. Ryan was ecstatic. I took a drag of my smoke and stared down at a small putting green a friend of mine had given to me as a house warming gift that was wrapped around the bottom of my toilet. Fingernails, dust, lint and pieces of fluff and string had gathered themselves on top of it. Looking back entirely on the situations I had been through over the last few years and the similarities the carpet was sharing with them, I had to laugh a bit, out loud.
No comments:
Post a Comment