Customer service rep gets paid to play video games after management's misguided instructions leave them without any work: 'For 5 days, I sat in my spare bedroom/office playing video games, all while logged in'

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    Cheezburger Image 10424670464
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    Do nothing? Ok! M 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.
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    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.
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    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. Due to the high volume and relative simplicity of these calls, I was answering 20-30 a day. After a
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    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.
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    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
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    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. 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.
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    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. 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.
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    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!
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    Original_Chari... 9h ago. I guess they realised they could not pay for your time and the customers were used to the wait!
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    Farscape_rock... • 9h ago My neighbour got a job as a contact tracer during the pandemic, he tells a very similar story of being paid but not actually ever doing anything for a couple of months before he got bored and stopped bothering.
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    Minnow2theR... • 5h ago Anytime, ANYTIME you can put one over on the bosses, is a good time! Well done.
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    oylaura 4h ago. have a perforated review I truly am not being pedantic here, but that is the best typo I think I've ever seen. Thanks for the laugh! That's exactly how I feel my reviews go. I feel perforated afterwards!
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    Bemteb 5h ago . How can 20-30 easy calls a day be too much if the queues are full? Shouldn't you easily do 100-200 in a 8h work day?
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    ohiomudslide · 10h ago This is ace!
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    PhoenixApok • 7h ago Unrelated but does anyone know why things get auto removed from this sub so rigorously? I see very few posts for a very popular sub. I've never been here before but I've tried to post several times and it's auto removed. I don't get a message as to why like on other subs (like posting faqs or posting links) AFAIK I'm not breaking rules on my post.

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