mm, a lot of it has to do with poor work conditions, bureaucracy, and third-party hiring. I’ve done tech support for three major household-name corporations and only one of them was actually decent.

the first one, I worked for a company that contracted with a big cable company to do their tech and billing support. they secured their contracts by bidding as low as possible. this meant that we were paid $5.25/hr unless we lucked out and got more than 35 hours in a week. it was nearly impossible to do so since you were forced to log out for breaks, meals, and bathroom breaks, and also because the bosses didn’t really pay you the amount you were owed according to the computer. I recorded all of my logins and outs for two months and found that my logged hours always came out differently on the computer than what I had written down. the bosses didn’t care because, if you were working there, you likely didn’t have the freedom to seek legal counsel for reconciliation.

the second one operated similarly even though I worked first-party, though they also hired a lot of third-party companies. with both of them, the bureaucracy issues came in with the nearly-encyclopedic knowledge of policy you were required to have. customer has a computer issue that should be fairly simple to solve? well, you can only help them with the parts that the company provided. even if you know that all they need to do is clear their cookies or get rid of some junk adware or virus protection, you’re not allowed to help them with anything more than the modem and router. if they have their own router, then you can’t help them with that. all liability stuff, total headache. and you have to make sure to ask the exact same questions each and every time, even if the customer is technically proficient, because otherwise you’ll get written up or docked when QC listens in on that call.

another shared issue between the two of them was the lack of investment in infrastructure. at the first job, we were using computers that were ten years old, computers that took three minutes just to load a website. the software looked like something you’d see in MS-DOS and required you to remember well over a hundred different codes to access different pages. helping a customer with their bill? well, you need to know the two letter code to see their charges, then the two letter code to see their payments, then the two letter code to see their services, then the two letter code to see each individual service, etc etc etc. and don’t be surprised if the program crashes randomly or loads an error, that’s likely to happen at least once a call no matter how well you use it.

the biggest issue is when the bureaucracy and the out-dated tech combine, so you can’t access all sorts of shit without having to have the customer repeat security info again and again. or, as a first tier tech, you can’t even correct the customer’s misspelled billing address without having a manager either walk over to your desk or having to put the customer on hold and call a manager. when you do that, you have to repeat the security info to that manager so they can pull up the same account, and a fix that should take literally five seconds now takes almost ten minutes because some jerkoff VP wanted his bonus for coming in under budget so he decided a new car was better than increased customer satisfaction and employee morale by way of updating the goddamned tech.

and then there’s the human aspect where some fuckass fucked up on an account previously and you have to clean up the mess, and that fuckass fucked up because he no longer cares about his job since he can work as hard as fucking possible and still not make enough to eat three meals a day. or you’ve got the managers that pull a 180 and break policy because they don’t want to deal with the screaming asshole on the phone, so now you look like the asshole for following policy but you fucking had to or you’d lose your shit ass job.

the last company I worked for was awesome. work from home, constantly updated software, they provide a brand new computer to do the work on, and they paid me more than I’ve ever made in my life.

but, then I had to have a breakdown and get all suicidal and now I don’t have that awesome job anymore.