The Co-Worker Blues
Working in a customer service call center has some definite advantages, but like anything else there is a flip side to this as well.This fact has proven to ruin the work life of many people who work in call centers, either because they get fired, or quit because they are simply fed up.
Although customer service work is a real legitimate job, it can certainly seem like high school all over again sometimes! I have experienced the frustrations of sitting next to a co-worker who constantly talked about religion no matter what others around them thought, or someone who literally picked his nose and ate what came out all the time throughout the day.
The person who sits in the lunchroom and has a negative comment to say about everyone’s food is not making a lot of friends.
What to do?
These things can drive you mad if they are not addressed and resolved. I have also dealt with customer service agents who were at their wits end with others around them when I worked as a manager.Either way, the different personalities and beliefs of people can pay their toll on everyone in the call center unless they are handled properly.
The biggest reason these kinds of problems occur in the workplace is the fact that people don’t realize just how diverse a group of three hundred people really are. They don’t take into account how they make someone else feel when they say the things they do when it comes to opinions.
Opinions make the world go round, although no one ever wants to accept or admit it. That saying about sticks and stones is just what it is, a saying and nothing more.
Opinions hurt people’s feelings and make people angry.
But in reality this doesn’t happen, and it probably never will. Because we cannot control anyone other than ourselves, it seems there would be only one solution to problems when it comes to what co-workers do or say, and that is to learn how to deal with them on our own and just let it go. Seems easy, but it is definitely easier said than done.
I know I spent plenty of evenings at home ranting about how someone at work drove me crazy that day, and I got tired of it.
Needless to say, my family got tired of it too!
I figured if I am going to be happy at my job and be able to go to work everyday with a smile on my face, I have to do something about this.
The first thing I did was politely ask my neighbor not to talk about religion while others around them are working on phone calls, as some may not share the same views and it can become offensive. Not to mention, it was against company policy to talk about such things at work.
The rest of the day, I didn’t hear another word about it. It’s not that I minded the fact that this person had their own views about religion, but I didn’t feel the need to stir up comments and frustrations from others around because of the things that this person was saying.
It was hard to hear the beliefs of this person, and then hear someone on the other side of me constantly complaining about them. After a few hours of sitting there trying to do my job, my mood would be totally shot and all I wanted to do was go home. I was no longer interested in working, or even doing my best while I finished my day.
The polite conversation I had with my co-worker didn’t help, it actually made it worse!
In spite of my request, this person decided it would be beneficial to all if they spent even less time working and more time talking about these controversial issues.
That didn't help... What next?
This is when I realized I cannot worry about changing others. I have to fix this for myself. So I went to my manager and told him what was transpiring in my little corner area of the call center.I requested to be moved which wasn’t a problem, and I was no longer bothered by this person anymore.
The point is that we have simple choices to make when other people’s personalities don’t quite mesh with our own for whatever reason it may be.
- We can stay quiet and suck it up, venting about it later which is not productive in the slightest bit...
We can ask the person who makes us uncomfortable or angry to stop...
We can go to our managers and bosses alike, requesting that something be done about it...
But in the end it all comes down to making the decision not to let the trivial stuff bother us, looking at the big picture and doing whatever it takes to make peace with the situation within ourselves, and for that there is no one way to do it. The way to do it is simply what works best for you as an individual.
