‘My company skimmed by bonus; I stopped generating revenue’: Employee's quiet quitting leads to 80% drop in revenue

Author image for Eleonora Bader
Eleonora Bader
May 29, 2023 7:00 PM EDT

Call centers often demand employees hit a certain number of calls per day, even when that isn't the actual goal of the company. In this case, OP was working at a call center for a collection agency, whose main target was to collect debts, generating revenue for the company. OP was doing really well, but sometimes they missed the daily target, and managers would dwell on their call count, instead of taking a look at the numbers OP was generating for the company.

OP found out that the company was grossly skimming his and other employees' bonuses that OP's department's client had been providing them as a reward for successfully collecting on these debts. The under-appreciation OP was receiving from his company in literally every form made him decide that enough was enough… OP began quietly quitting, and soon enough, the company was losing a lot of money as a result.

Management noticed pretty quickly, as OP's revenue dropped by a whopping 80%. But hey, at least he was hitting his daily call targets, right? Management approached OP with quite a few questions, but OP's malicious compliance was well thought out, and management couldn't quite pinpoint what was going on.

Scroll down to read what happened next. For more, here is an employee who got their boss fired during a disciplinary hearing that was actually designated for the employee himself.

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  • 01
    Font - Posted by u/grimfukis21 19 hours ago S I'll meet the call count but won't make the calls count LOC
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 02
    Font - I worked at a call center for a collection agency for nearly 5 years. Anybody that has worked in this type of environment knows that there are all sorts of targets that are expected to be met, be they daily, monthly, or whatever.
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 03
    Font - One of our targets was to make a certain number of calls per day, I believe it was 120. Naturally though, the more contact you would make with debtors the less time there was to make other calls. It's usually not an issue but but some days
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 04
    Font - you might make significantly more contact than others and sometimes your call count might be like 2/3 of what it should be. We would get regular updates on the call count and our manager would let us know if
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 05
    Font - we were on track and at the end of the day they would give you the final results. I found it very annoying when you would have a successful day, collecting debts and generating revenue for the
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 06
    Font - company, only to have a manager dwell on your call count. Any protest of, yes I didn't meet the call count requirement but hey, look at the revenue I generated today. It doesn't matter, the target must be met. Even if it wasn't a
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 07
    Font - successful day but I knew I still ended up spending much time in contact with these debtors in attempt to collect I would ask managers to review my talk time to see that the efforts were being made to do what we are
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 08
    Font - hired to do. It doesn't matter, the requirement must be met. Now, to be clear, a call only counted if someone picked up or the call went to a voicemail box that wasn't full. The system
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 09
    Font - was unable to register events otherwise (not in service, voicemail box full, rings out with no vm box or answer) meaning if you were to make hundreds of attempts in one day only a fraction are
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 10
    Font - registered. Everyone is aware of this but it didn't matter to the company. Well, I was tired of the unfairness of it all. It also doesn't help that the company was grossly skimming our
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 11
    Font - bonuses that my department's client provided to us as a reward for successfully collecting on these debts. It was really obvious when our bonuses became random numbers when it was only possible for them to be
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 12
    Font - multiples of 5. Frustrated with this literal theft and under appreciation of successful collection (the whole point of the job) I decided to comply with the call count expectations and never be under the target again.
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 13
    Font - I created a notepad file with a list of all the telephone numbers that went straight to voicemail. These are often numbers that have blocked us or presumably the owner of the number set up as 'away' or something. From then on I
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 14
    Font - made sure to make 15-20 calls per hour that would register (implying that even more calls were being made that they just couldn't see due to the way the system registered calls). I would spread these calls out so my
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 15
    Font - activity wouldn't seem suspicious and would spend all day reading articles on the internet. Naturally, the revenue I had been generating decreased by about 80%. "How come you're not collecting!?" "Well manager,
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 16
    Font - you can see I am surpassing my call count target and my talk time is very low so I'm just not getting the opportunities to do so!" It should be noted that whatever I was collecting after doing so was really easy; the people whose accounts we
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 17
    Font - received who could pay and wanted to pay anyway. Often these people would call us so I just relied on that to make it appear like I was doing anything at all. They started giving me lower value portfolios to work, which is fine by me.
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 18
    Font - You are stealing my bonus, the very incentive I have to do more than the bare minimum anyway for a paycheque. I honestly thought I was quiet quitting, but no, I had a reputation as a valued member of our department and
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 19
    Font - company, so no one wanted to fire me. I guess they just chalked up my lack of success to the sh t portfolios they were assigning me.
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 20
    Font - Steal my bonuses and dwell on a target that would be better judged as a marker of effort rather than an end all be all and I couldn't care less. I was getting paid to read. This went on for nearly 2 years until I had to leave for mental health reasons.
    via u/grimfukis21
  • 21
    Font - Lynavi 18 hr. ago Reminds me of the time my employer decided they needed more client contact, so they decided to make everyone in our department have to call a certain number of clients to tell them about whatever the latest
    via u/Lynavi
  • 22
    Font - feature was. My role was QA so that I normally only dealt with other employees; I HATE making client calls, so I was dreading this. But when they rolled out the program & gave us the specifics, they said that if you called a client 3 times and couldn't get them on the phone, you could
    via u/Lynavi
  • 23
    Font - mark that contact completed. So I'd wait until the end of my day, when I knew most of our clients would have gone home already, then made my calls. Majority of the time I got no answer or
    via u/Lynavi
  • 24
    Font - voicemail; I think I was able to resolve like 95% of my list without ever actually speaking to a client. Vote Reply Share
    via u/Lynavi
  • 25
    Font - grimfukis21 OP 19 hr. ago I should also add that I had created macros for the AS/400 (old IBM software) so that I could complete most system tasks with a simple keyboard shortcut, further reducing my bare minimum workload and increasing the time available to read. Vote Reply Share
    via u/grimfukis21

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Tags

call center employee management petty revenge malicious compliance workplace-stories quiet-quitting malicious-compliance-reddit workplace-stories-reddit company-revenue employee-bonuses call-count
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