h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've spent four years running around inside call centers in Montreal (the Call Center Mecca of North America, where labour costs and long distance is cheap), and I think without a doubt that it is the greatest temporary employment opportunity that exists. Sure, you will work in places where they decide it's easy to take advantage of you, because agents are disposable and easily replaced. But if you find a good place, which is getting more common, what with labour standards and other easily enforced regulations, you can make good money, meet new and interesting people, and hopefully use it as a springboard to better things. I spent nearly a year as an agent through five or six different companies before moving up to better positions. I've gone from lowly phone peon to near-mythical heights of shift supervisor (where all the real action is). As an agent, things look pretty bad. Barely above minimum wage, hours that generally screw up any chance of a social life, constant supervision. As a team supervisor, it gets better. You're off the phone, you're telling people what to do, encouraging and advising, making them see that it's not all pointless drivel. As a shift supervisor, you tend to be the answer person. You deal with bureaucracy. You handle pay disputes, schedule changes, employee issues, discipline, hiring, firing, it's kind of like being a dad, only you're not married, you have no social life (because the shift supervisor generally spends more time in the office than the carpet), you're making great money at this point (because nobody does this kind of work cheap, considering the aggravation), but you really have nothing to show for it. On top of all that, you're the first one the higher-ups blame when things go wrong. And if you're a good shift manager, you don't pass that blame along. You find out what the problem is and you deal with it accordingly. If it's a bad agent, you have the team supervisors counsel the agent, correcting the problem. If it's a proceedural problem, you change the proceedure.
Of course, this all works in a theoretical world. Nothing really works like that. Odds are, the agents are all just trying to make money and go home, the team supervisors are tasting power for the first time and getting addicted, and the shift supervisor is on his last pass through Burn-out Beltway. Add the traditional post-shift drinking session, the groans and complaints that come with life even when you have a good job, and look what happens. Disgruntled employees and a very elusive morale problem.

But I digress...