The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!

[Errkal]

That's because the job wasn't sold to me that way, it was an admin role. But 90% of the work was phone calls, rendering it as effectively a call centre.

A job where you place lots of calls in an office is still an office environment?

They even had one of those hellish screens up that logged everyone's time on the phone and the more time you spent on the phone, the higher you ranked - even if all of that time was wasted making the phone call as long as possible. It was strawberry floating absurd. They offered me a contract renewal by the way - meaning I did the job well, but I declined because it was horrible and I felt ill every day I came home.

If it wasn’t sod you you as then it’s proper gooseberry fool, i had call centres at the best of times, but to be in one in whittingly, strawberry float that!

They are office but it is a separate category, there are things that are needed for effective running of a call centre that isn’t the case for a back office office.

If your I dunno, Finance say you don’t have calls coming in as much etc so you don’t need to ensure the calls are covered etc. But a claims desk needs to be manned so people hat drove into each other can call in otherwise you lose business from bad reviews.

It’s an office, but it’s different. When I say “office” I mean back office, call centre office I would always refer too as call centre.

[Green Gecko]

It was even in a literal panopticon with visibility on all sides through the hexagonal centre built out of glass!

Was through a recruitment agency and wage was £7.50, it was about as Orwellian as you could get to be honest. Actually the job was screening CVs so I can't think of a more nightmarish job in reflection. We could be ordered to do media searches on people, I was phoning up people in Russia and China to check on people's school diplomas.

Just imagine the kind of businesses that use that service though - my clients were Dell, Oracal and others were companies like Deloitte and Rolls Royce.

Especially with my ASC, I felt like throwing up after a couple of days

[Errkal]

It was even in a literal panopticon with visibility on all sides through the hexagonal centre built out of glass!

Was through a recruitment agency and wage was £7.50, it was about as Orwellian as you could get to be honest. Actually the job was screening CVs so I can't think of a more nightmarish job in reflection.

Especially with my ASC, I felt like throwing up after a couple of days

It would be like being on display in a zoo or something. strawberry float that.

[Green Gecko]

It was open office too, there were monitor-high screens but no cubicles so there was no privacy and everyone could be heard over each other.

We werne't allowed to leave anything on our desks for "security reasons" and had to lock all documents away every day and take them out again. No post-it notes, no notepads, nothing.

Looking at a mobile phone during work time irrc was a fire-able offence.

There was an entire department dedicated to "compliance" where they would comb through every single file you processed for adherence to the policies/procedures and if there was an error it would come back to you the next day in a red folder. THis only happened to me once out of god knows how many files, but if you got too many of these, you were put on essentially a high risk list.

May as well try to conduct efficient business with everyone yelling on a bus. God it was awful. I definitely made the right decision in retrospect but the MD was really surprised when I said no I would be declining the job

Come to think of it, given this was my first ever actual paid job (after an illegal unpaid internship in a filthy flat rented as an office in soho), I'm not surprised I feel this way and I probably am a bit biased.

[Errkal]

We have some of those rules in the call centres to be fair, but being an insurance company GDPR and fraud prevention are pretty important so are necessary.

Leaving stuff on desks is a security risk so that’s justified, if you leave stuff you can leave personally identifiable data out by accident and that then causes a breach, so to prevent that you ban all things, it’s also better from a hygiene perspective as cleaners can cut ally clean desks.

Mobiles are banned in our centres because insurance details, bank details etc.

In some cases the rules make sense, it doesn’t make them fun, but a required evil.

[Zilnad]

Work continuing to fish for information on tasks I can't complete from home. Today's problem could easily be resolved by me sending a weekly email with the information required but apparently my director couldn't say yes or no to that suggestion and would "need to go away and think of a solution" like it's some great effort.

Oh well, I'm continuing to WFH at the moment so they can do whatever the strawberry float they want while I'm not in the office.

[Red]

Been accepted onto a 3-6 month training scheme as long as I can get my construction site H&S card sorted out, really happy. Will be a bit of a pain, it's in Lancs first then Hull, and I'm based in Newcastle, but I'll just have to find a way to make it work. If I can get this under my belt I can apply for things that are more convenient. I'm a bit old now to do a lot of away working.

[Dual]

If it's the CSCS card you need the test is very straightforward. I would recommend paying for the app that lets you do mock tests.

[Red]

Aye that's it. Noted - will do, ta.

[Joer]

Been told today that my company are cutting 12% of it's staff, losing 550 jobs. Can't see my team surviving the cull to be honest, but we should find out more at 12.

[Cuttooth]

Anyone had a crisis in confidence on interviews before? For years I've been really well prepared and able to answer questions with good examples of experience but for the past year I'm basically babbling away to relatively easy things.

A few years ago I was applying for this job I really wanted. After going through the online massive form and then acing the assessment day stage I had a phone interview. Which is incidentally the first and only phone interview I've ever had. I'd prepared more for the phone interview than I ever have for any job interview before or since.

The interviewer asks me the first question, "What do we do?" and my mind goes completely blank. I can barely manage to string a coherent sentence together. It was the biggest car-crash of an interview I've ever had. Surprisingly I didn't get the job.

This is for three different internal positions over the space of a year, the first one I think the interview went well but ultimately I didn't have the specific experience required, which was fine they made the right call. A couple of months later I applied for a direct promotion to the role I'm currently in but don't like and just absolutely floundered.

I think that's affected the interview I had today for a promotion into a different team for a role that should be nailed on perfectly for me (to the point the manager had a quiet word with me to let me know the role had come up) but again I couldn't describe the examples I had already rehearsed.

I reckon it being done over Teams made it a bit weird but honestly I thought it might actually help me going into it. I think I'm a bit broken.

I got the job.

[Memento Mori]

Congrats Cuttooth!

Comis Joer.

[Cuttooth]

Been told today that my company are cutting 12% of it's staff, losing 550 jobs. Can't see my team surviving the cull to be honest, but we should find out more at 12.

gooseberry fool sorry to hear that Joer, hope you end up ok.

[Drumstick]

Been told today that my company are cutting 12% of it's staff, losing 550 jobs. Can't see my team surviving the cull to be honest, but we should find out more at 12.

Good luck mate.

Edit: Nice one Cutty!

[LewisD]

Been told today that my company are cutting 12% of it's staff, losing 550 jobs. Can't see my team surviving the cull to be honest, but we should find out more at 12.

Fingers crossed for you buddy.

[Joer]

I'm not too disheartened about it as I was looking at my options anyway due to promises being made that Covid would make impossible to keep, but the not having a regular income and looking for a job in this current market when so many others are side of it is the real worry for me.

[Eighthours]

Been told today that my company are cutting 12% of it's staff, losing 550 jobs. Can't see my team surviving the cull to be honest, but we should find out more at 12.

Good luck, man. Sorry to hear about this.

[That's not a growth]

Good luck Joer

[Qikz]

Damn, good luck Joer.

I feel guilty posting this now but I got some great news at work yesterday. Looks like my company are happy to move forward with pretty much Full time WFH for everyone even after Corona. They said maybe there'll be maybe a day every few weeks we'll come into the office, but if we want to work at home we'll be able to. Until Corona is done they said we're not going into the office unless people really really want to and only then can we have like 5 people in.

[Moggy]

We've just been told that working from home will continue forever, even when COVID has strawberry floated off. Sounds like the offices will remain open, but it'll be on a hot desk basis.

Great for most people, it's really going to change the way we all work.