Call Centers: The Modern Day Sweat Shop
by I work in a Call Center and I do have to say, I do wonder if our work conditions are even considered desirable.
Ok so let me start off by saying that the conditions are better than what the sweat shops had, but let’s be honest to ourselves here, the situations are very similar. Now back in the early 1900’s children, women, and men worked in these sweat shops since there were no child labor laws and it was all ok. These day’s its men, women, and young professionals who find themselves trying to make a living in this non-desirable environment.
This might seem like I’m just hating my job but for many I’m just stating facts. We work in a high call volume environment, our work areas are all the same and very assembly-line like, and our hours can be very unreasonable. For a young college graduate 25k per year actually sounds like a bargain the way things are in this economy, but at one time this wasn’t even a consideration.
Let me be brutally clear in the fact that we might not have the physical labor some jobs have and I do feel for those professionals, but the design of a call center and factory are basically the same thing. You have the assembly-line or call center cubicles/desks, the supervisor or factory manager is there, and the phone calls or materials to assemble keep on coming in non stop. There are the occassional breaks in these centers but some of the call centers aren’t even offering lunch breaks. I might seem like I’m complaining but don’t take this article as a complaint, it is more of an observation. The similarities are shockingly similar for those who have never considered it before, and in reality even the foreigners with the booming economies are going through it. I guess the value of a person is nothing in these places since they are highly replaceable with another person willing to take that job, for that pay, and will do what it robotically takes to get the job done.
Yes I have been very brief on my explainations on why these 2 jobs nearly 100 years apart are so identical, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the similarities. I guess the reason I’m typing this up is because I needed to get this off my chest, and let people see what I feel. There are some good things about having this job, and getting paid, but at what expense do we take it…
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