I work in Seeboard (the electricity company) customer service in
Portslade. The call centre floors are pretty daunting, with constant
chatter and beeping. To start you must find any seat and take it over
from the previous worker as they finish their last call, with no time
wasted while they're packing their possessions as they leave.
As soon as you're settled and logged in, the calls start coming in,
and as soon as you finish one call the computer automatically puts you
on to the next call, leaving no time whatsoever in between to catch a
breath or to recover from a stressful and emotionally draining call.
You're on call constantly apart from the 15 minute break every six
hours, and they make every possible effort to make sure that this time
is monitored and controlled. To go to the toilet, you need to ask your
team leader for permission, who come and dial the code that allows you
to go. If you try and leave your desk without asking for permission
the computer will deduct the time from your wages. In this way they
can keep track of everything you do while at work. In some departments
you are not even allowed to talk to each other, and we get told off
quite often for chatting.
There is a high turnover of workers at Seeboard –not surprising
considering the conditions of work. But this also works out well for
Seeboard since it imposes a kind of ‘collective amnesia': only a few
workers can see the worsening of conditions over time, while most
workers who just get the job for a short period do not seem willing to
put up a fight. But we can use this against the company. If we are
only going to stay for a while, we don't have much to lose anyway…