[mireaux7]

For many years, I have worked in a white collar job. As of last year, I finally switched gears, and am now employed as a blue collar worker.

The average impression is that white collar jobs are superior to blue collar jobs. In fact, there seems to be some sort of rash stereotype that those who work in white collar positions are bright, educated individuals who, due to their mental skills rarely are required to use physical exertion in their daily setting. Whereas, blue collar workers are depicted as mentally dull in comparison to their white collar counterparts, and seen as labor-laden beasts who slave away at their jobs.

Im not sure where the origin of such stereotypes is derived from, but I dont find it to be true at all.

both job types each seem to have their superior positions that require college degrees, usually management type positions. Aside from that, their are also key positions that can only be filled by those individuals who possess required certification to perform specific duties.

My story:

I have worked in various white collar jobs for 9 consecutive years. Most of the jobs I have worked have been in call centers, I have also worked for two different collection agencies as well. From what Ive observed in my experience, these specific types of white collar jobs have a high turn-over rate. Due to that, there are frequent job fairs that consistently scout for new talent to fill empty chairs at work that become available.

Its largely the same: You go to job fair, apply for job, get the job..they entice you with great information.."what a great company they are to work for,.and your medical & dental benefits start from day one".."we have on-site fitness center". They make it seem like a full on party,..within a bout 3 months, that party is over, and then the nightmare begins.

Those of you who have actually worked in a call center environment know exactly what I am talking about. For those who never have, let me bring you up to speed.

It seems like a pretty easy job at first. You put on a headset, log into a computer station, and start taking calls and assisting their customers with random situtations. Most of the customers are friendly and understanding and simply want to be helped..easy as pie. Sadly, not every customer is like this, you encounter brash, rude, and biligerent customers who will stop at nothing to verbally slander you. Some do it to voice their frustrations at the company-and use you as a liasion channel. Others do it, because they quite simply, dont like you.

Its requires much patience and focus to overcome and assist even the most demanding of customers, and while this rule seems to apply to virtually any job setting, I can tell you that call centers differ greatly.

Unlike working at some local store, that sells services or goods that are marketed to a local or regional customer base. In a call center, your customer base is quite literally on a national level,.sometimes even a global level (but usually just a national level.). What this means is that, anyone who picks up a phone and dials your toll free number, becomes your customer. Even if they dont hold an account with your company, youll still hear their voice on the other end of your line. sometimes the calls are true in nature with either actual current clients or new prospects seeking info about your company. sometimes the calls are sheer malicious taunts that serve no real purpose, but to push your pressure buttons and make you blow your steam.

going back on what i said, your customer base is on a national level. so,for example, if every person in the state of Wisconsin wants to pick up a phone and call your company..guess what..your company's phone lines just went red,.your calls are back-to-back, "in queue". Due to such a long hold, once you speak to these callers, most will voice being frustrated by the wait. Usually, if a lot of people are calling, its due to some unresolved issue that was caused by your company (not you personally), but you still get the blunt of the verbal abuse, if they decide to lash any out on you.

As a call center employee, you are "trained", and expected to be able to handle all situations. should the customer request a supervisor, you are expected to exhaust all of your attempts at resolving the issue yourself, before escalating the call to a manager level.

Bare in mind, that in most call centers, the calls are back-to-back. And even if your calls arent back to back, their is usually no more than about a 3 minute wait in-between each call (this goes on every 8 hour shift you work). Wanna take a break? You get two 15 minute breaks and a one hour lunch,.and let me assure you,.when I say one hour,..I do mean 60 actual minutes. If your even one minute late coming back, youre deemed for disciplinary action. The same rule applies for your breaks as well. ...oh and by the way..those initial times I quoted are found at the most generous of companies,.other companies only permit a 45 minute lunch, and two 10-minute breaks. Is this sounding fun to you yet?

The golden rule applies at all of these jobs.."The customer is ALWAYS RIGHT". Even if the customer is wrong, they are right. What I mean by that, is if they are mislead in any way, its your job to correct them about something,.but ensure they are completely satisified. On many of your calls, you are subjected to being secretly monitored by the company's quality dept that randomly listens at any given time to your calls. They are looking to see that you treat the customer good, and are exercising every last little policy the company holds. Did you miss a policy, did you forget to tell the customer something? did you forget to say goodbye? Ooops,.dont say "Goodbye", some companies hate that,.and will write you up for it, because it sounds like you are shoving the customer out the door prematurely. (and yes, Im being serious about this).

If you fouled up on anything, rest assured, you will soon get a full feedback report from either your manager or the quality dept itself. after such a discussion, you are asked why you did what you did, and are usually required to sign your name in bold ink, promising to never do it again, and should it occur in the future..can lead to termination.

Im not speaking just from my own experiences on everything Ive mentioned thus far, but rather, a collaboration of other co-worker experiences as well, to form a general consensus about how things are or can be given certain circumstances. A lot of what ive noticed is that the company never has your back covered, ever. They hold their customer in the highest regard (this is usually due to the company wanting to raise the value of their stock for their shareholders).so get ready to give a firm wet kiss as the customer leans over and exposes their round tush for you. because the customer knows that the company will respect them, over respecting you..even if you are being totally respectful, and the customer is being disrespectful..like i said before, the customer is always right.

These type of jobs, you are constantly "micro-managed". You are expected to never come in late for: your shift, your lunch, your breaks. You are expected to meet time allowances for your call duration..that is,..hurry up and help the customer in under 5 minutes, so that you can do it all over and again for the next customer right after him. you are expected to multi-task, while talking to customer, you need to type verbatim notes into the account, research the account, activate the account, do a sales pitch to increase profits, give your "how will you rate me" pitch...yes,..all this, in under 5 minutes (good luck)

needless to say, i bit my last nerve, and decided to switch from white collar to blue collar. and while my experience in white collar may not be the same for every white collar setting, its probable that many of the items i detailed can be found abroad in various white collar jobs.

blue collar is different. i can take my breaks and lunches whenever i want, and im not penalized for coming back one minute late, or 5 minutes late...as long as its a reasonable amount of time,.no one really cares. a lot less stress. I work as a forklift operator in warehouse. I have specific duties I am expected to perform, and as long as I execute those duties well, no one says anything to me.

In theory, I can actually work a whole shift without speaking to anyone, and still get paid. Not that Im anti-social or anything,.but just to give you a theory. Blue collar companies dont seem so overly-possessed about their stock rating, their shareholders, etc. As long as the job you do is good, everything else will fall into place, and everything else will be good.

Blue collar supervisors are generally much friendlier than white collar supervisors. Most dont hold up a chain of command policy about you needing to talk to 5 other people, before being able to talk to the head man in charge. The work setting is much more laid-back..and believe it or not,.there are times when you have lots of free time. Thats right, Im not slaving my ass away all day long...there are times when we do get slow. But dont get me wrong, there are times when we are mad busy too.

Ive noticed that in most blue collar settings, it does require a skill to perform given duties. a machine operator, a welder, a truck driver, etc. and while the risk factors are much higher in blue collar for getting injured on the job, there are many OSHA guidelines used to make sure you are safe.

well, this is my opinion. I would like to hear yours. Let us know if you currently work white or blue collar, and what type of jobs youve worked in the past. Try to give specific info for why you think white or blue collar is better than the other.

[Slade]

My dad's been working in a call center for over a year now, so I know exactly how that stuff goes, and it's atrocious. He and the other veteran workers are thinking about starting a pool to see how long the new employees will last due to the high turnover rate you mentioned. That under five minutes rule is ridiculous, especially for my dad, because he actually wants to help people who call, and sometimes problems take longer than give minutes. But that's what you're rated on, not your actual effectiveness (unless people complain about you frequently or they listen to a call that's been recorded and you've done something bad on that call, of course).

Having not been in the workforce much yet, I can't say anything about how everyone is treated in general, but I think that whole pro-customer anti-employee thing depends on the company, and the larger the company, the less personal everyone in it is treated. And customers are always treated personally because they give the company money, and profits are what everything is about to the point where sometimes companies will fire a thousand of their lower-rung workers to give their upper management a raise. It seems to depend on the business.

I would also think that blue collar jobs would see stricter rules and more poor treatment because some of them can be considered so expendable. Of course, some require a whole lot of special training, too, so those wouldn't.

[Deepsycher]

I never heard of that system before but I had some bad experiences with customer services of being passed from person to person back to the same person in a loop.

Usually I am polite but I have to raise my voice when I am being forever passed to person to person and also when I requested on many occasions to be taken off their lists of spam letters.

Other than I don't normally get frustrated. I only get concerned when I am paying a high price for the call involving a faulty expensive product to be refunded or replaced apart from some old times when I was mislead and treated rudely. For the customer is always right I do as a fact present evidence of the fault and I proved using video evidence some months ago about my camera getting scratched by screen wipes provided with anti scratch screen protectors. After a couple of times of being ignored by the same person who sent me an insulting letter at first I did contact the customer liaison in a polite manner and apparently they vaguelly heard of the person who wrote that letter. Now they are replacing the display for free and I still have to contact them on the progress.

Here is something new am noticing and it is frustrating:

When I receive spam from a company I phone up and usually I get an automated voice call.

Example:

(1) For enquiries
(2) To purchase a product
(A) Are you at home
(B) Are you business partner where you need your account number.
(3) For technical support with your account

On many occasions selecting like 1 2(a) and 3 I have been waiting for as much as 15 minutes or less time for each before hanging up. As soon as I phone up again and select number 2 (B) guess what? instantly I am put onto someone and I end up arguing that I am being sent illegal or unsolicited spam mail by them for over the second time. I get passed on several times then they deal with my request instantly. The excuse I normally get "The department was closed due to maintenace." Somehow I don't believe them and I don't think it is fair to keep on charging callers for a call they are not going to get.

The usual letterbox spammers or exploiters of these kinds are new banks and loan companies.

Just what I see from my place.

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 10 June 2007 - 02:16 PM

[civilian_number_two]

Call centres aren't exactly the ideal represented by the term "white collar." I think the term was intended to refer to skilled office work, the lowest definition being data entry, the highest probably being upper level project management (leaving out CFO/CEO). You don't need a lot of training to use a phone, and there isn't enough typing to require that you even know how to do it.

I think what defines those lousy jobs is the unit-per-hour metric coupled with the insistence on customer service. You know that old saying "You can get it fast, or cheap, or good, but not all three?" Well, increasing the metric will have a corresponding loss in customer satisfaction. That's a mathematical necessity, but the management can't acknowledge that because their bonuses are tied to your performance. And for all their boasting, upper management doesn't care about customer satisfaction of the "Problem solved" sort. Their chief interest is in getting wait times down, because they're sure that's the key to happy consumers. I don't know about all of you, but when I get an immediate response from some call centre in India, I always wish that I'd contacted an agent who had the time to understand my problem and who took the time to answer. Pretty much, that's never what you get.

Blue collar jobs I've had include forklift operation and order picking for a grocery warehouse. There's a metric there as well, in pieces per hour, and yeah, pretty much any guy can do it if he's in basically ok shape. But like you say, I don't see how that separates it from call centre work. There's very little training and no startup requirement. All the training is on the job.

Anyway, since you're looking for an opinion, here's mine. I'd rather work a real white collar job to a blue collar job, but I'd rather work a blue collar job over a job in a call centre. The work is better, it's good for the heart, and I wouldn't feel any embarrassment telling folks where I worked. "I work in a call centre" is slightly emasculating, but "I drive a forklift for a grocery outlet" isn't.'

No offense intended to Slade's dad.

This post has been edited by civilian_number_two: 10 June 2007 - 05:29 PM

[mireaux7]

Call centres aren't exactly the ideal represented by the term "white collar." I think the term was intended to refer to skilled office work, the lowest definition being data entry, the highest probably being upper level project management (leaving out CFO/CEO). You don't need a lot of training to use a phone, and there isn't enough typing to require that you even know how to do it.

I think what defines those lousy jobs is the unit-per-hour metric coupled with the insistence on customer service. You know that old saying "You can get it fast, or cheap, or good, but not all three?" Well, increasing the metric will have a corresponding loss in customer satisfaction. That's a mathematical necessity, but the management can't acknowledge that because their bonuses are tied to your performance. And for all their boasting, upper management doesn't care about customer satisfaction of the "Problem solved" sort. Their chief interest is in getting wait times down, because they're sure that's the key to happy consumers. I don't know about all of you, but when I get an immediate response from some call centre in India, I always wish that I'd contacted an agent who had the time to understand my problem and who took the time to answer. Pretty much, that's never what you get.

Blue collar jobs I've had include forklift operation and order picking for a grocery warehouse. There's a metric there as well, in pieces per hour, and yeah, pretty much any guy can do it if he's in basically ok shape. But like you say, I don't see how that separates it from call centre work. There's very little training and no startup requirement. All the training is on the job.

Anyway, since you're looking for an opinion, here's mine. I'd rather work a real white collar job to a blue collar job, but I'd rather work a blue collar job over a job in a call centre. The work is better, it's good for the heart, and I wouldn't feel any embarrassment telling folks where I worked. "I work in a call centre" is slightly emasculating, but "I drive a forklift for a grocery outlet" isn't.'

No offense intended to Slade's dad.

well, my intent is to basically compare various types of jobs in each segment. white collar and blue collar. i referenced call center work, because its what i have experience with. im not exactly saying its the best job, and clearly not the highest paying, but it is still classified as a white collar position.

sure, there is many white collar jobs out there in the white collar field that pay leagues more than call center operators make. Just the same, certain construction foremans assigned to key construction projects are likely to make a fortune on their paycheck that rivals or even surpasses some the most highly paid white collar positions.

there are high paying and low paying positions in both white and blue collar.

This post has been edited by mireaux7: 10 June 2007 - 07:40 PM

[Slade]

Heh. I don't think he would take offense. He's only working there because where we live, there are literally no jobs outside under-paid complete grunt-work (i.e. call centers, fast food, waiters/waitresses). We were still in a recession during the Clinton presidency, when apparently the country saw an economic boom, and everyone who gets an education gets the hell out as fast as possible (including yours truely). The rest go to community college then end up filling up said waiter/cashier/sales clerk for Staples jobs. Whee.

[Deepsycher]

I wonder if there is a no collar job where workers don't have to wear collars.

[mireaux7]

I wonder if there is a no collar job where workers don't have to wear collars.

yep, sure is..its called self-employed. you set your own hours, decide how much to pay yourself, when to take your lunch, breaks, vacation..do your own taxes. its a pretty neat thing, from what ive been told. and in a lot of cases, you get to choose your own wardrobe/uniform too.

This post has been edited by mireaux7: 12 June 2007 - 01:27 AM

[Deepsycher]

Yes I know about self employment. One downside other than a possible struggle for finding or waiting for work is bankruptcy but isn't that better than being conned out of a job where someone at the top becomes greedy and puts the business in liquidation.

Do you know what my uniform would be?

It won't be dressing up as a decoration with coloured tapes around my shirt neck.
Oh no. It would be getting the job done perfectly.

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 12 June 2007 - 03:32 PM

[barend]

both white collar and blue collar jobs are very bad for your back.