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Some friends I made when I skipped work and went to Field Day
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And here's where the experiences of myself and Owen Shipton, the guy who wrote the hate letter to call centres on VICE earlier this week, begin to differ. It turned out that I, luckily, wasn't being asked to sell solar panels to the elderly in Norfolk; I wasn't chugging over the phone. What I was doing, I was told, with some pride, was enabling prospective student's to change their lives for the better. It turned out that the company I'd joined specialized in what they termed "Student Lifecycle Management Solutions." In real terms this translates to employing people like myself to ring up students who've either expressed interest in studying at a particular university, or have received offers to study at said institution, and either begging them to apply or accept. In my head this seems completely separate from the low level harassment that most traditional call center employees are asked to engage in on a daily basis for a wage that barely covers the rent at the same time as it perforates the soul.SEE YOU ALL HERE TODAY RIGHT!? pic.twitter.com/lGkCILqPOZ
— Baines (@bain3z) May 9, 2014
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So there I sat, day after day, turning up at 10AM in Darkthrone T-shirts and Vans, swigging Relentless and troughing down on croissants from the Sainsbury's over the road, headset on, my Client Management System humming in the background ready to log the info from the calls I'd make with a minimum amount of fuss. I'd methodically work down that day's call list in Excel, stopping every minute or so to check Twitter. I'd usually ploughed through enough calls by lunch that I could nip out for a falafel safe in the knowledge that the afternoon could largely be spent browsing the same three websites in a state of near catatonic bliss. This was as close to heaven as one can get in a dark office off Old Street.This was as close to heaven as one can get in a dark office off Old Street
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