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My Millennial Nightmare at Work Is Talking on the Phone
I don’t think it gets much worse for an introvert like me.
Somehow, I’ve worked over six months at my job without having to man phones. Projects and department losses have allowed me to go under the radar in this regard, even though I knew the inevitable would come.
The reprieve has come to an end with shifts in which I enter a “queue” and answer questions that come via my phone extension at my desk.
Sounds simple, right?
My first day working this queue, I had all my materials out and ready. I had the list of extensions for transferring calls, and I even had a little blueprint of what all the buttons on the phone did in case I got flustered and lost my head a little in the process of trying to answer questions.
The hour-long shift — I know, it’s a laughably small amount of time, considering — went so smoothly that I found myself afraid of what dangers might await me for the rest of the peak season at my job.
Given that the phone calls dealt with prospective and continuing college students, maybe I figured that many of them would be first-timers who were clueless about the process. Somehow, however, everyone on the other end of the line was patient and, dare I say it, kind. When does…
