Aug. 3rd, 2012

Wednesday, December 5, 2012 Aug. 3rd, 2012 2:13 AM spring, bees, fall, beautiful, summer I work at a teleservices job in the Omaha area. I have been an agent here since September 2008, first doing outbound survey work, then inbound customer service calls. Now my job is a little more complicated than that, but mostly it's just taking calls. I think my Boss wants me to take the Supervisor position that is going to be vacated next week. I asked to job shadow our Supervisor before she leaves so I could see what the job is like. I have some idea of what she does, but I don't know the day-to-day details, and I wanted to see that part of it before I submitted my resume. He said no. He does not think it's necessary for anyone to job shadow the Supervisor. The general consensus is that he wants to train someone his way, from scratch, with absolutely no background in the job or any idea how it was done other than what he wants them to see. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that idea, but there's no way around it. He's not going to let anyone see how she does her job or exactly what she does every day as part of her job. He's going to train the new Supervisor after she's gone. I told him I wasn't really interested in the job, and yesterday I wasn't, but I've thought about it ever since, and I do want it, if only so I can fire the people who don't do their jobs the right way. We have a lot of trouble with agents who do not listen to feedback to correct mistakes they are making on a regular basis and at least one of our clients is not happy with how things have been going. I'm the one who has to listen to their calls and write the feedback, then it seems like nothing happens. I feel absolutely useless sometimes. Why ask me to do the feedback to help correct the mistakes and then the mistakes continue to happen as if I never made any input at all? Anyway, after I told the Boss, I was not really interested in the job, he said, "Let me know when you are interested. I need someone who's interested," and he walked away. He's training at least 2 new floor leads to help out during the day, but I am the only one qualified for the Supervisor position. It's just that I do not like people. I don't like dealing with them. I do not like talking to them. I do not like interacting with most people. I'm very direct in my approach, usually, and a lot of people do not like that. Either that, or I try to keep my mouth shut, and that doesn't do any good either, because then I can't tell the idiots they're idiots or they're doing it wrong. I can be personable and happy, but it's not my job for people to like me. I know I'm going to have to lock myself in the front office and jump up and down yelling at least a couple times a month if I take the Supervisor job because in a place like this we do not get the cream of the crop when it comes to new hires. It's very rare we get people who can do their jobs correctly, listen to feedback, correct mistakes they've been making, or just generally not screw up. But, if I'm the Supervisor, I can have some input and at least be part of the process to try to improve the quality of our agents rather than sitting by and waiting for somebody else to not do it. I get really mad when people continue to screw up, despite multiple efforts to help them correct their mistakes. I would just write them up if they continued to do it wrong after the first attempt to straighten it out, and then fire them after the 3rd write up. I won't deny I would be most happy to be able to do that. I polished my resume a few days ago and I'm going to submit it tonight. Today I asked the Boss what if I was interested in the Supervisor job. He basically said I have to be nice to the agents and be presentable when we have client visits. I find that kind of offensive. I've been here for about 5 client visits and there were never any complaints about how I was dressed. I live within a 5 minute walk of our office, so if anybody was going to get sent home to change, it would be me. I know how to dress appropriately and I have done so on multiple occassions when there were client visits. As for being nice to the agents, I cannot smile and say, "You've been doing such a wonderful job," when it's a lie and the point of talking to them at that moment is to tell them what they've been doing wrong and how to fix it.