My Mental State.. Do you know why?

If you want to know/understand which is my actual mental state, to know how I've been feeling this last year and how I'm going to feel the following days you should read this extract I've made of a text I've found on Internet about working in a Call Center. The original text was in Spanish but as I didn't feel like translating it (and, I must confess, I have lost some of my translation skills lately) I used the Google Translator to do it so you will sure find some mistakes but it will be enough to understand me. If you don't want to read it all you can read starting in the paragraph beggining with "What is the task?"


[...] "The overwhelming majority of those who work in call centers are young people between 18 and 25 years, predominantly women. For many this is their first job, and therefore are more likely to accept working conditions of extreme flexibility. The most common is that they are students, who settled for their careers, looking for a job a few hours, but there are young mothers who need a job that takes little time away from home or unemployed willing to take the post it is. There are plenty of kids from middle-class high school graduates during the decade of the'90s, full of euphoria Menemist "first entry into the world." Many graduated from bilingual schools, where they learned English and computing.

The call center takes a series of characteristics of this generation and social sector such as the use of languages, available to the rotation, a certain relation to communication and computing, the familiarity of the interaction with the display or the taste for speed. Many are attracted to join a multinational postmodern look, full of computers, plasma monitors, vending machines with sodas and coffee, carpets and air conditioning.

The promised payment is another undeniable factor of attraction, but soon discovered the pitfalls: the amounts are very low base and what actually reaches the pocket is composed of a complicated wage custom combinations of rewards and penalties. The specific salary to be charged is a mystery that only reveals the end of each month. While workers in call centers are responsible for making and receiving calls, usually companies do not recruit them as employees but as phone trading. The base salary of the latter until recently was 750 pesos a day for 8 hours. But as the call is supposed to work only six hours (although his real workday usually reach nine) accounted for $540. That salary could double or more, but that depends on a number of "bonuses" or "extras" that the company believes that there is no legal obligation to pay. That variable pay is not linked to productivity: no more to earn more sales to meet or more calls. Most of the awards are about achieving the "TMO" or average call time required (a "metric" are imposed only seemingly objective, as constantly changing), not spending time with recreation, methodically follow the script, just what to say at the right time.

In this way, the ends being conditioned to pay obedience to the operator: the more you are subjected to rules, more wins. The salary and not a right but a reward. A form of compensation that aims to strengthen the self-control, the holding of oneself and guilt ( "if you do not win more, it is my responsibility, if not having done more to the supervisor").

And all this we should add, of course, that in the case of offshore call centers, the profitability of the mother company of those on whose behalf the calls are attended not have an impact on the wages of workers and outsourced desterritorializado.

What is the task? After a one week training, operators are already beginning to take calls. Work up to nine hours per day, with one free per week. The environment? Usually it is a large apartment, where the boxes are lined in the interior of each box is located the operator, next to their peers, but separated from them by walls. In a higher place, where everything and found the pace to the cries, they are supervisors.

What you need to develop a standardized set of operations, whether in Spanish or (if it's an off shore) to "Neutral English". The contract marks the call center and is responsible for designing the scripts call for brief exchanges are connected to a fixed script and controlled. The worker is imposed, literally, a grammar: it must respect precise rules about what to say and how.

Besides subject to time limits, we must necessarily adopt a friendly tone, close and cordial. In speaking of the training pitch this as "the smiling telephone and indicated that there is sustainable over time. Even in some cases are actually putting mirrors up to the mouth, so that the operator will see smiles while talking.

On one hand, we have to repeat endlessly and almost meaningless the speech of the company (an employee has not exceeded that required at the time of call and simultaneously forced to always tell before cutting: "Thank you for contacting STI Mobile and remember that the cost of air minutes and SMS is the cheapest in the market"). So communication can-and should-be, that is, a true encounter between two human beings are degraded to mere repetition. However, censorship is the operator that sounds "robotic." This results in a truly maddening paradox: "I hereby order you to be spontaneous."

The disposition of the bodies in the call center space reminds the panopticon of Bentham, described by Michel Foucault as the number of disciplinary society. Each operator in its box, separated from his companions, while the supervisors monitored from a point higher. But this is a revised and expanded panoptic well. Hysterical to human control of the supervisors is the sum of relentless surveillance machine.

Indeed, the heart of the operations of call center software is the "Avaya" call a manager capable of delivering comprehensive information on what is happening. This program is responsible for mandar directly, one call after another, without being able to do anything. The machine and decide the pace of work. Which also solves another call center to derive the flow of calls when the network threatened to saturate. It is a program that can measure all the time for appeal, the amount of times you are late, the minutes do not work, the frequency with which the operator is "desloguea" (leaving the system and still receive calls), the number of times tardy to play, how much was on hold for customers.

While supervisors are not deprived of the shouting or abuse, can prevent operators from the adjacent boxes talk to each other, with the help of the program may stop to chat, to measure the time of the calls, observe and record the screen, hear the conversations, sales and accounting to the minutes used to go to the bathroom.

The call is subject to supervision so intense in these stifling conditions, are required for increased performance and end up suffering from many physical and psychological consequences. The physical injuries are hearing problems, eye diseases, nodules in the throat, tendinitis, spine problems, persistent pain and migraine headaches. But more serious are the psychological stress, panic attacks, phobias, depression and various types of psychosis. It is said that it is unlikely to pass the call to the psychiatric center, with some stations prior pharmacological (abundant consumption of anxiolytics and other drugs and licenses for psychiatric reasons are quite common). This is one of the jobs where the syndrome of "burn out" ( "be burned") affects proportionally more workers. This makes the rotation of the workforce in the sector is very high. Studies show that the fateful figure of the "Antichrist," the triple 6 summarizes the average lifetime of the employees of call centers: rarely stand more than six months working six hours during six days a week.

Diego takes eight months as a call center employee who prefers not to identify, to avoid reprisals. "Before I was working on a company and had office hours, but it was closed. Then I went to an interview in which I was told that the task was not really a call center but in a technical support have been received very few calls. I clarified that they were only working 6 hours per day, Monday through Saturday, and had many opportunities for advancement.

But the fact is that the job was like that of any call that a promotion in rank means more than a salary increase, an increase in load. Although I am among the best payments, which won just as basic exceeds the limit of one hundred pesos poverty. Theoretically you can get more through the 'bonds', but it is very difficult because the patient is going away and this is reflected in your' metric '. Regarding the consequences on my health, which is the most suffer mental exhaustion. Is not that tired term, but then need to be in isolation, I can concentrate a lot, I am very cranky and irritable. This is a product of the dynamics of work that involves a constant control over what you say, what you see on screen, what you delay in the bathroom, whether you're standing or sitting. In short, do everything possible to exprimirte to the fullest. I have no great physical discomfort by now, except a pain in the back that is directly tied to how burned you are finished that day. Respect of claims for improving the situation with a peer group signed a petition asking for an increase, but did not get results. Now we are sharing information with people from other call centers, because we realized that we will only have strength if we join. Apart from the fight the fight the indifference of many companions, which accept the trampling of their rights and to come to justify the arrogance with which it treats. The only solution is that all employees of call centers and we join together to defend a claim for work that has proven to be unhealthy. "