Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
These experiences reach a level of Zen-like perfection when you eventually get referred back to the first person you spoke to.
The Ouroboros complete.
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K-Punk
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The Ouroboros complete.
comelately
Wild Horses
Did a few days at one of those shopping channel contact centres completing purchases.
Got an ear infection from an earpiece after pads weren't available because I joined the shift on the weekend. Doctor was sympathetic and wrote a solid note, so I kicked up a fuss and got paid a bit - nothing to write home about.
If you weren't taking calls then yeah that's timed and that obviously includes toilet breaks. There wasn't really mental motivational sessions but the penultimate hour was usually dubed 'power hour' and you were supposed to somehow 'feel the power'.
Got an ear infection from an earpiece after pads weren't available because I joined the shift on the weekend. Doctor was sympathetic and wrote a solid note, so I kicked up a fuss and got paid a bit - nothing to write home about.
If you weren't taking calls then yeah that's timed and that obviously includes toilet breaks. There wasn't really mental motivational sessions but the penultimate hour was usually dubed 'power hour' and you were supposed to somehow 'feel the power'.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
With stuff like this, I can never tell whether the person inflicting it on their underlings has truly bought into their own bullshit or if they're really a sadistic performer who enjoys watching people squirm and cringe.
version
Well-known member
This comes up in the book too. That very few people actually believe it. Everyone knows it's bullshit, but it doesn't matter because they do it anyway and their knowing it's bullshit somehow makes it okay despite not actually making any practical difference.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
They play along because their manager expects them to play along, and the manager's manager expects the manager to play along, and...
version
Well-known member
I get what he's saying re: people not knowing what they want and the lack of challenge - we were talking about this the other week in the avant-garde thread - but it's a bit authoritarian for me. Who's going to be the arbiter of this stuff and how do you stop it being hijacked?
IdleRich
IdleRich
Also letters on a slower circuit. I remember when my brother worked at Nationwide Life and this letter arrived complaining about how they had been asked to fill in the same form countless times. It said "I am sending this form again, this is your last chance keep it in your records and do not lose it, if I'm asked to fill this form again then you have lost me as a customer" - so he sent a reply straight back asking them to fill in the form. It makes you wonder how often those circuits and so on are naturally occurring and how often they are result of mischievous call centre workers. Incidentally he got fired from that job when he started laughing at a complaining customer on the phone. When they said "Are you laughing at me?" he quoted Shawshank Redemption (I think it is) "I'd laugh a lot more if you were sucking my dick with no teeth".
Another guy I knew who worked in a call centre and who discovered that he and one of his co-workers had a mutual love of The Fall, they passed the time by trying to get as many Fall references into their calls as possible, they would say things like "Can you read me your Hex Enduction Number?" and the customer would go "What?" and they would say "Your hex enduction number... or it might be listed as customer reference number on your contract".
This kind of thing is surely a natural product of employing bored, temporary, often over-qualified staff who don't give a fuck. It ought be be built into the model and calculated with like shrink is in a shop.
linebaugh
Well-known member
From the dematerialisation thread, but seems appropriate to the earlier conversation.
This is already the case for delinquent students. If your involved with the schools more rigid disciplinary apparatus its highly likely most of your schooling is done teacherless online with programs like this one here. As soon as the school is no longer needed to keep kids docile while parents are away at work(...) moves will be made to normalize this. In person schooling will become a class signifier.
This is already the case for delinquent students. If your involved with the schools more rigid disciplinary apparatus its highly likely most of your schooling is done teacherless online with programs like this one here. As soon as the school is no longer needed to keep kids docile while parents are away at work(...) moves will be made to normalize this. In person schooling will become a class signifier.
constant escape
winter withered, warm
That's a very interesting prediction/theory. Should that become normalized, might "higher quality" schooling become more affordable?
linebaugh
Well-known member
Hard to say. High quality schooling is still free for some, but those are typically the public schools in more affluent areas. But even in a low performing school the teachers are high quality and you can still leverage those resources like you wouldn't be able to online. So no I would think the opposite, suddenly everyone is paying for what was once a shitty but free education and in-person learning is a complete luxury.
The plus side, and its a pretty brutal calculation, is that shitty online education is true to the spirit of arbitrary public education and does allow students to bypass some tedium by removing the arbitrary nature of time spent in class, since you can do these online courses at your own pace. I had a student who spent their first 3 years in school skipping and subsequently failing classes. I had them as a junior and by then theyd turned a leaf, but were struggling with the glacial pace of in-class lessons because 1)they needed to make up for lost time in order to graduate on time, 2) they were pretty smart and got the remedial lessons almost instantly and 3) worked the overnight shift at a fast food restaurant, racking up full time hours and probably making as much money as their parents, something like 5pm to 3 AM every day. Eventually they got switched into a program where you sit in the library all day with a select group of students and complete classes rapid fire online in the presence of a monitor. You can see how that's a 'nice' opportunity for a case like them.
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version
Well-known member
Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures - Repeater Books
Edited and with an introduction by Matt Colquhoun, this collection of lecture notes and transcriptions reveals acclaimed writer and blogger Mark Fisher in his element — the classroom — outlining a project that Fisher's death left so bittersweetly unfinished. Beginning with that most fundamental...
repeaterbooks.com
