King Leonidas: Spartans! What is your occupation?!
Spartans: Ha-woo! Ha-woo! Ha-woo!
If, after all my previous training blogposts, you still have not guessed where I work, let me declare it now with Spartan fury: I am in a call center! Again! Not just any call center, but one with an 8% monthly attrition rate and a fierce reputation!
Yes, indeed... if the seminaries won't let me console people and solve their problems through the confessional window, then I'll do it through my AVAYA phone! I've been in a call center before, but the first step is always like a paradrop. As the weeks of training have proven, a shepherd must not guard his sheep from afar... he must stand in the trenches. And so I visualize the first few minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" and shout King Leonidas' words from the movie "300": "This is where we stand! This is where we fight!"
Most people dismiss the call center as a passing fad. It is greatly misunderstood. A call center is not an office. It is a battlefield. As a tenured agent from a previous call center (A part of me will always be theirs), I know how the headset feels like a helmet, how the psychological armor and shield have to be secure, how the LINE1 light looks like a signal flare, how the first customer's profanity sounds (and feels) like machine-gunfire. And speaking of gunfire, I remember how Superman faced those bullets and justified his (and our) existence: "You wrote that the world doesn't need a savior. But everyday I hear people cry out for one."
As long as technology can fail, as long as systems have weak links, as long as people are prone to error, as long as God can hit a cellphone with a lightning bolt (requiring that poor customer to call technical support), we will stand and fight!
Sometimes, though, I wish I could be a different kind of agent and say, "Mr. Anderson, what good is a phone call... if you're unable to speak?"
