Customer Relations sucks. Should I get a new job?
I've been at the Walmart Home Office for 9 1/2 months now, and it's been pretty good. I've only been taking calls from other Walmart workers, never the customers, which definitely helped. Just last week, though, they finally took me off store support and made me a customer relations agent. Now I spend eight hours a day being chewed out by nasty customers over the phone for problems I neither caused, nor can do anything to help with except email the store it happened at. And for a company like Walmart, these calls NEVER. FREAKING. STOP. At least with store support, I might sometimes get a three or five minute break between calls, but on CR it's one right after another. Plus, the managers are jerks. They only want us to take 30 seconds between calls. That's 30 seconds to fill out the call ticket with everything the customer said and what I did to help them (a lot of times they have several complaints for more than one store, so I have to make more than one ticket), send the ticket, bring up a new ticket and get it ready for the next call- all in half a minute!
Not to mention that sometimes these computers can be as slow as molasses, and it takes a full thirty seconds just for it to send that one ticket you're working on and load up another. And if you're too slow, there's a guy who apparently just sits around and stares at everyone's call times, and he'll let you know via chat message when you're over your 30 seconds JUST AS it gets there. "Adam, you're over thirty seconds. Adam, you're at a minute. Adam, it's been a minute and a half, hurry up!" Seriously, I can't hardly go a single call without this guy cracking his whip at me. No time to catch your breath or clear your head after being screamed at for twenty minutes. It's stressing me out more than I would have thought possible! I have Asperger's Syndrome. Talking to people I don't know is stressful. Being yelled at is stressful. Being told to hurry hurry hurry, go go go is stressful. This new position is like a laser beam of stress straight into my chest. And, well, it's only been a week, and I don't want to do it anymore.
So, my question is, would this be a good reason to start looking for a new job? I haven't even been with the home office for a year, and before that I was going from one job to another within months of each other. I spent three years as a Walmart cart pusher, then became Walmart meat department associate for a month, then a mail room worker at JB Hunt for three months, then a press worker for two weeks until they fired me, and then a lawn worker at TruGreen for about four months, and now I've been at the Walmart home office for almost ten months. I know employers don't like hiring job hoppers, and I understand why, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to handle taking customer calls for much longer. I don't even know what other kind of job I'd be eligible for, especially since Walmart actually pays way more for this than I expected ($13.50/hr). So, yeah, what do you think?
I can't think of a job I would hate more than customer service or sales. I would rather load boxes on a truck all day.
Your concerns about job-hopping make sense, though. Is there a place where different Walmart positions are posted? Maybe something you like better will show up and you can apply for that. I would think transferring within the same company would not be frowned upon.
It also wouldn't hurt to keep your eyes open for job opportunities at other places. You don't have to quit your current job to do that.
Working towards a goal of getting a better job can make your current job more bearable.
Something that might make your phone work more interesting is exaggerating your "nice" tone of voice almost to the point of sarcasm, but not so much that people would notice. You could also try some Jim Carrey impressions "Alrighty then!" or Ned Flanders "Okely Dokely!". Do this with an insane smile on your face and it might make the time go by faster.
I haven't been with the home office long enough to be promoted anywhere. I have to be there at least a year for that, which won't be until the last week of November. Even then, I don't know how easily I'd be able to get promoted. When I first started I wanted to go into either marketing or innovation, places where they would pay me to be creative and make stuff, you know? But until that happens, I'm stuck taking customer service calls. Maybe I could hold out for that, maybe not. I don't even know what other jobs I'm qualified for. I never graduated college. I have a trade school certificate, but nobody takes those things seriously. What if I'm stuck doing this for the rest of my life?
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