The world of crappy jobs

This article was accepted, and paid for, by a mainstream news organisation about ten years ago. They'd set it for printing in their magazine, then pull it out at the last minute, and say it was too libellous (hardly - it's wet) and negative (so what) to print. Then, the next month, they'd set it for printing again. Then, they'd pull it out. This went on for years. Sad wankers are probably still at it.

But enough. This is an article about the sort of monotonous job that people all over the planet are stuck in now:

A small group of Phonebet operators celebrated the company's birthday this year by bursting all the birthday balloons in the staff cafe with lit cigarettes. A guy called Matt proposed this little rape. Matt is a witty, long-haired, unwashed individual of about 50. He is perhaps Phonebet's least sentimental member of staff. Like most people who work the phones in this huge call-centre, he's paid about ten bucks an hour for the monotonous, low-level data-entry job that is taking phoned-in horseracing bets from the thousands of people around the country who make them each day. Unlike many of his workmates, though, Matt sees no reason to feign gratitude for this employment. So he doesn't. He is often late for his shifts, and, when he is in work, spends most his day heading outside for a fag.

Anyone who tries to wind him up about this usually comes off second best.

'Where have you been?' centre supervisors hiss at Matt when he wanders in, past the supervisors' table at the top of the room, at least an hour after his shift has started. 'This shift started at ten.' Matt always keeps walking when the supervisors start in on him. Some operators find it hard to understand why Matt hasn't been fired. The consensus usually is that either Matt isn't as perverse as he pretends, or he's living proof that it's difficult for operators to get the sack. The work is so boring, badly-paid and pointless that it is not at all unusual for operators to fail to turn up for shifts, or to arrive late and leave early and claim that both were genuine mistakes. Hundreds of people who start work here drop out after a week - they claim their RSI is playing up and go back on the dole or the sick, or they find a slightly less monotonous job in another call-centre, or they go back on the weed, or whatever.

Matt gives his fellow call-takers something to look at, anyway. Right now, for instance, he's about to walk straight through the centre of a presentation ceremony that is being held at the top of the room for a supervisor who is leaving Phonebet after 20 years' service. This is Matt at his very best. Several hundred phone operators sit in pseudo-respectful silence in their rows in the vast room, listening to the presentation speeches and clapping when each one finishes, and there's Matt, striding through the middle of the whole event with an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He even stops to feel for his lighter in his shirt pocket. Some of the people who are participating in the ceremony can't see each other around him.

'Well, it's not like I'm going to miss that bitch,' Matt says of the retiring supervisor as he leaves the room. A number of operators nod at this. Feelings about supervisors run high among operators. Supervisors are responsible for checking that operators keep to their shifts and break-times, and that they turn bets over as fast as they can. Some supervisors are better in this overseeing role than others - the less-than-pleasant supervisors will go so far as to hiss 'be quick' or 'haven't you been already?' at people who are on their way to the toilets. Phone-operators are touchy about taking instructions at the best of times; at the worst, there is a lot of bitching about overlords and police states and long fucking live the Third Reich.'

'Nice cake," says a guy called Jeremy, with his mouth full. Jeremy is a red-haired, balding, raucous individual of about 40. He says he works this job to meet child support payments. He likes women, and food. The cake he is eating is his personal slice of the Phonebet's huge, specially-baked birthday fruitcake. Each operator received a slice in a miniature, white cake-box, as a surprise.

'Generous here, aren't they?" observes a woman called Cath. Cath is small, 40 and stroppy, and the single mother of two. She's sports-mad, a one-eyed patriot, and a keen, and able, amateur athlete. She works as many hours here as she can.

Near Cath is Nola, a pretty young girl who recently had a baby. She smoked throughout her pregnancy but nobody said much, to her face. Down from Nola sits a guy called Jeff. Everyone likes Jeff; he's mild, and intelligent, and a natural peacekeeper. He works extremely hard - he works about 40 hours a week taking calls at this place, and about 40 hours a week moving boxes in a warehouse. Just past Jeff sits the small crowd of university students who work here part-time. Past the students sits the core-staff crowd of middle-aged women who've worked here for ten, even 20, years. Everyone sits down, and begins, automatically, to talk.

People talk all the time in this room. They talk whether they're taking calls or not. They talk to supervisors, to each other, and even, often, to themselves. They read shopping lists out loud, or ask questions of nobody - "now, should I have just my banana, or my whole sandwich, or just half my sandwich...?' - something about hearing yourself think, perhaps. The chat charges the place. On busy days, when everyone's in, the air vibrates with the unpleasant, wet hissing that is several hundred people spitting at each other in shouted whispers; a palpable buzz.

---------

God, but it is boring, this job. Time physically stalls in it.

The job goes like this: a punter calls, and reads out a Phonebet account number and pin and then the bets to place on that account. The operator keys in the bets on a customised keyboard, and reads them back to the punter. That's it. The computer does everything - the adding, the subtracting - everything. All that operators need for their part is an adequate set of reflexes. There's nothing to think. There's almost nothing to do.

Operators aren't allowed to read the paper, or a book, or fill up the time in a constructive way. They're permitted only to sit there, staring at their screens and waiting for calls. Even so-called busy days are a creeping torment. Far from speeding things up, a swag of calls accentuates the repetitive aspect of proceedings. Calls usually take between 15 and 30 seconds to process. Most calls come in the few minutes before a race. On a busy day, a good operator will process about 100 calls a session, but the overall average is somewhat lower than that - it stands at a rate that the Phonebet often tells staff only just meets budgeted turnover. Some days, as many as 40 calls are missed before a race because customers can't get through.

Not many operators care though. Nor do many people care much about liability, although liability is a massive problem for the company itself. Phonebet must compensate punters if an operator keys in a bet incorrectly (all calls are taped, and checked, if there's a complaint).

The trouble is that operators make mistakes precisely because the work is so tedious - they're trying to keep their minds off the job, not on it. People talk, and flirt, or do deals, or call home - anything that even briefly engages the brain. A genuine, she's-miles-away daydream is considered something of a shift-wide triumph. Unfortunately for Phonebet, operators often key in bets while thus asleep.

The upshot is, of course, that Phonebet is working hard to cut staff out of the picture altogether. It has already upgraded its touchtone betting system and is considering a voice recognition system that will ultimately make operators redundant.
The core staff here - the full-timers who depend on this job - are extremely concerned about touchtone and voice recognition. They are perfectly aware that progress in this sort of job means watching technology hooever at it until it's gone. Everyone knows this - already, as the job stands, there's nothing there.

----

'You know the odds - now fuck off,' grins a younger operator as she heads out to the cafe for a cheap coffee. They're spirited, operators; they like to give out. Quite a few even give out to punters - call-takers are fantastically rude to customers.

Occasionally, as part of an ongoing and desperate campaign to remind operators that is it important to treat customers well, Phonebet management holds short, in-house day-sessions with operators - day-sessions that are euphemistically referred to as 'staff training days.'

Basically, these sessions are about playing - for all to hear - tapes of calls that feature some of Phonebet's rudest operators (all calls made to the organisation are recorded). The hope seems to be that playing these tapes before their peers will embarrass abusive operators into behaving. Alas for Phonebet, this scheme has yielded thin results. The most hostile operators are easily the organisation's most popular.

Taped calls with punters tend to go something like this:

'You didn't read my whole balance,' a punter complains to a call-taker, on tape.

'It saves time,' barks the operator.

'What?' says the punter, stunned at the woman's tone.

'Not reading out your balance saves time,' snarls the operator. 'IT SAVES TIME.'

'Hey - forget it, lady,' says the punter. 'I'm not putting my bets on with you.'

'Good,' says the operator. She hangs up on the caller.

Someone else rings up in search of race results, or some information he should, as a paying customer, probably be given. 'No, I can't do that!' screeches the operator, flapping his hands, genuinely hysterical. 'We're far too busy for that!'

Other callers just get yelled at before the call-taker hangs up on them.

'Decide what you want before you call.'

'Charge your phone.'

Some operators even address Valued Customers in this manner. Valued Customers are punters who regularly spend thousands on betting. The words Valued Customer flash up on the screen when their account codes are keyed in. This means more to some operators than others.

Some operators like punters, though. This is especially true of the core staff - the long-termers, the people who have been here for five, ten or even 20 years. They come to know regular punters well. They exchange names and stories and a rather striking amount of personal information over the years.

A lot of long-term staff describe this aspect of the work as its saving grace. People like Jeff say they prefer this job to their second one because here, 'you get to talk.'

And talk. 'Oh my God,' an older operator called Pam rushes over to tell an operator called Jo. 'Trish just gave her phone number to a punter.' Jo smiles. Jo is about 50, and single now. She's a long-term staff member, and she's been around.

'I've done that twice,' she smiles. 'Hope Trish's one lives up to his voice.'

'Have you noticed that that guy Jeremy always takes his wedding band off when he comes in here?' says a woman called Carol. 'It's pathetic. You can see the mark on his hand where it's been.'

'I thought he was separated,' says a woman called Anne. 'Why is he wearing it anyway? Everyone looks over at Jeremy.

Jeremy doesn't notice. He is playfighting with one of the university students. The student is a very pretty girl of about 19 called Michelle. There is always a queue, somewhere in the ether, for playfighting with Michelle. Michelle is very different from most of the students who work here part-time. By and large, the students are hard, remote types. They don't mingle with core staff. They're aware that they're passing through, and that everybody else is stuck here. Michelle, on the other hand, uses her time here to practise sex. She's forever rounding the likes of Jeremy and Matt up, and hugging them and sitting on the floor in their rows to sing tracks from the Sound of Music and other songs they've heard. No-one has any idea what to do about it.

'Tell you what - that kid of mine is definitely finishing sixth form, eh,' says a very large, very determined-looking woman called Mary as she sits down to lunch in the cafe.

Mary, another single mother, has three teenage children. She is preoccupied with them. Her entire conversation is a re-enactment, or, at least, a rehearsal, of the tough line that she takes with them.

'He's not leaving without doing sixth form, eh. He can get into his horticulture course without it but what if he changes his mind halfway through that course? He won't be able to get into any other course. He can say what he likes, but I don't have it, eh. I just don't have it, eh. I don't even listen. It makes all the difference at this time, eh. I just tell him No.'

'Guess what!" says another core-staff member, almost beside herself with excitement. 'My son is down to the last ten or something for Treasure Island Reality! He's going to get onto that show!'

'You're joking.'

'That's pretty good, isn't? It's pretty good, isn't?' The woman is delighted. 'He could win ten grand or something. It's pretty good, isn't it? It's not bad, is it? He can probably last a lot of people out, because he's pretty fit. It's pretty good, isn't it?' The talk about this one lasts for the length of this tightly-policed tea-break. Around the room, cigarettes angled, the smokers prick the balloons.

1998