Yup. I done did it again!
But, to be entirely true to the definition I ascribed to my made-up word, I actually didn't technically EMBARQ. I quit. Albeit by email and within an hour of my scheduled start time so....
Like I described in the last post, my prospects were on shaky ground immediately following the classroom training portion of our supposed three-weeks of training. The red flags had been there from the very first day though if I hadn't decided to just sweep them away from my mind in order to get as far as I could.
Day one had us new hires standing outside the front door of the building for a good twenty minutes until they got their shit together enough. You see, they had to file us in individually to process our I-9 forms and make-up our badges. We were all wearing our masks and we were admonished to line up on designated marks on the floor herding us like cattle (socially distanced cattle) to the copier where our documents were copied and to a small room with a camera set up to take our pictures for the badges which they imprinted on our security badges.
Standard stuff but they were super conflicted about their new Covid protocols. In fact, throughout training many people were violating the policy by not wearing their masks correctly and grouping together. It had to have been a daunting challenge for our trainer since the training modules were very much designed pre-Covid with all sorts of group activities and breakout sessions. Tiffany, the main trainer tried her best though, this whole thing is a fucking mess anyway so, yeah, not gonna get into pointing any blame there and frankly health protection and Covid safety had almost no factor in my ultimate decision to leave. Other factors would be enough of a bale of straws that would ultimately break the camel's back.
Now that being said, I'm not gonna give Tiffany a pass on everything. One of the more frustrating aspects of the classroom training was here poor time management skills and lack of authority in controlling wayward or immature trainees.
On Day Two, right at the start of training class, the virtual members commandeered everyone's time by holding a good two hour bitch session about how they felt "overlooked." You see, not only did we have three full in-house rooms full of new hires but we also had about 10 to 15 trainees who were connected virtually, from their homes, via Microsoft Teams by way of overhead projection seeing their avatars for us and Tiffany and a desktop camera filming us for their screens. These were Work-at-Home agents who all had already worked for the company prior to the Hulu campaign (there I said the name...who cares now...I'm gonna state all the real names now) so, you'd think they were not only more equipped regarding company policies but also able to be held to a higher tech savvy standard than say, a new hire sitting in the classroom with no prior call center or tech-related background. Not necessarily so, in fact, either by stupidity, bad luck or purposeful playing it up, some of them were the slowest to keep up. I mean REALLY slow. I'll elaborate more in the upcoming roast post, which, again, this isn't. Tiffany patiently (or naively) backtracked for these folks continuously.
And, while she was trying to deal with these alleged technical issues some of the virtual folks were saying they were having, some of the kiddies positioned in the far end of the main classroom ('cause as I fully knew when I was a trainer, that's where the chatty kiddies always chose to sit thinking the trainer was too far away to control them) constantly needing prompts from "teacher" to pay attention. It was like I was in high school again. And not my usual honor student classes where we were all attentive, but like the B-level elective classes I took.
The big issues I had came during the time we were positioning to transition to "grad school." Really should be called "Trial by Fire." Our "coaches" taking over directing us to the reality of the production floor were a motley bunch for sure. I had PTSD-like flashbacks of immediate revulsion to their boiler-room-like attitudes and blatant Call Center Nazi behavior. I'll describe each one in more detail in the roast post of course.
Like I mentioned in the last post, that first day on the floor was a disorganized mess peppered by lies, bitterness, deflecting, and major, major throwing of shade. So many bad experiences from my long and tiresome past in this biz came flooding back:
DialAmerica sups cracking the whip in the eighties and nineties, that Sprint sup, half my age (back then even) and treating me like dirt, LaCroix and his snotty glare and wildly angry golf swings, that coach at that first vacation room taking everyone's chairs away, the other vacation room with no air-conditioning in the Floridian summer heat, and the last vacation room in Daytona yelling at me for talking to my dying mother on the phone for a few seconds beyond the allocated time. The incredibly abusive and belittling supervisor at Parker-Murray in New Orleans, the morally-corrupt, aloof supervisors as Convergys, the vapid "placate them" trainer at Cruises-N-More, the clueless trainers from Milpitas at Symantec as well as Cheryl Kilsheimer and her constant bitching, that "I'm not sending any truck out" Rick at Embarq (now CentruryLink), and last but not least, Laura Fucking Hupfel at Chase. And these are just the ones off the top of my head.
Yea, for I have truly walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death many, many times.
Though my hangover after the 6 and 2 bought at the Gate gas station on my way home from Wednesday night's shift wasn't too bad, I woke up around 1:00 pm with a snippet memory of my last dream, it was the sneering face of the coach Arianna who confirmed that my 18 minutes of accidentally being in the forbidden "unscheduled busy" ACW status was "on me," despite me asking a floor coach if I were automatically in that status due to a call drop and being told no. But there it was in glaring, mean-looking red on my screen stats for me to stare at all night. True, it wouldn't have meant anything disciplinary since we were in training and these transgressions would be forgiven, for now. But it was right there in my face, reminding me of the potential future in real "production" when you and everyone around you were valued only so far as the numbers and graphs on your computer screen.
And when one of the 20-something year old black girl coaches with a heavy "country" accent snapped at me for allowing my chat timer to go into red (which it will do every 30 seconds between chat responses) because I had my hand up for her to help me, I apologized nicely, she "forgave me" and I pretty much decided my fate with this shit right there and then. I tried to do some cognitive restructuring after that which is why I said in the last post I was merely "thinking" about the "E"-word, but deep down...I knew.
One of the Operations Managers reached out to me by phone this afternoon and left a voice mail (since I saw it was from them and chose to ignore it) asking if I would call in to allow her to find out the reason for my resignation and if there was room for improvement on their end to avoid any issues going forward or some shit like that; an exit interview of sorts. I haven't called her back. Ain't got no time for that.