Some jobs can be really weird. But this guy’s job was weirder.
He got paid to do nothing!
Find out how his training session got way too prolonged at a call center to the point where he’d do nothing but play video games!
A couple of years ago I worked customer support for an investment and pensions dept of a larger company.
Basically, answer the phone and help customers who don’t understand something about their account or need to access features usually reserved for their accountant.
He was a fairly new employee…
I had only been with the company about 3 months, had finished my training, and recently been cleared to take calls unmonitored. But a supervisor was still listening back to 3 or 4 of my calls each day, just to check.
It was coming to the end of the tax year, so the lines were super busy open to close, but a lot of the calls I was taking were for pension or ISA withdrawals or deposits, so all I had to do was check a few details then drop the customer in the call queue for the relevant dept.
Things were very busy at work!
Due to the high volume and relative simplicity of these calls, I was answering 20-30 a day.
After a week or so I got a message from my team leader telling me I was taking too many calls, so the number he was checking wasn’t a high enough percentage to be indicative of my performance.
Ok, fine.
Starting the next day I would take a call, pass the customer on, then sit and twiddle my thumbs for ~an hour, all while the queue is getting longer and longer (we’re talking 2-3 hours on hold), then take another call and repeat.
He knew what he was doing…
Fast forward another couple of weeks and I have a perforated review with my team leader. He says that my verification of customer identities isn’t up to scratch with company standards.
I explain that 1. I am meeting the standards that were laid out in our training and that all further advice and guidance had been completely contradictory, or so vague as to be meaningless.
He tells me that when I come in tomorrow I need to log in, mark myself as ‘in training’ (so I won’t receive any calls), and wait to hear from him about next steps.
He had the best time for the next few days…
So the next morning I log in to my work laptop and wait to hear from him.
For 5 days, I sat in my spare bedroom/office playing video games, all while logged in, marked as ‘in training’, and waiting till hear from my team leader.
The next week, I get a message from a manager 2 or 3 steps above my team leader asking why I haven’t taken a single call in 5 days.
UH OH…
I explain what my team leader told me, sent screenshots of emails etc, and said that I was waiting to hear back.
She said she would look into the situation and get back to me.
Cue another week of video games and naps on company time.
I ended up getting made redundant and taking the balance of my annual leave before anything got resolved because the company outsourced 90% of the call handling to India, but those 2 weeks were great!
Geez!
Why didn’t his manager just let him work especially when they needed an employee?
Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.
This user shares their neighbour’s story!
This user appreciates this guy for his funny story.
This user shares their story with their manager.
This user is concerned about the workload at this guy’s workplace!
That’s right! This user cracked the code!
Some companies have the most absurd policies!
If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.
