On the 11th of August I received a job offer, my first in years, and I was so very excited for the role. It was a work from home role where I would answer customer queries in regards to their online grocery deliveries.

Thanks to COVID more people are buying online, and thanks to our constant state of lockdown here in various parts of Australia more people are getting their groceries delivered to their homes instead of going out in public.

Due to that particular circumstance, more and more support workers are required to handle customer issues. The role was ripe for the plucking. 38 hours a week, $28 an hour, 6am to 2pm on weekdays so perfect for my school pickups and having my afternoons and weekends free.

I breezed through the training. As a very computer literate person, I downloaded and installed their programs with ease, and for the most part I understood them. However, we didn't get as much training with the programs as I would have liked due to a few impossible people in my training group with whom we spent several *hours* each day doing tech support for them rather than learning things.

As a result, I feel as though the trainers were unable to train us to the best of their abilities, and instead chose to introduce us to the "guide" on the website and told us to look up whatever we needed on that if we had issues. Because we want to be reading guides for 20 to 30 odd minutes when attempting to help upset customers who don't want to be on hold. And to top it all off, we weren't allowed to log on and read these things out of hours to get a proper grasp on things due to the system thinking we were online and working.

Yesterday afternoon, they decided we were ready for live calls. We were meant to do text based (emails, sms, webchat) only but voice calls came in unexpectedly also. Thrown into the deep end, I began to sink, but I tried to power through it.

We were told that there would be a chat available with several people in it to help us. Obviously since we're all brand new, all twenty of us needed help at the exact same time and only the two trainers were in the chat-room. Two people quit within the first twenty minutes. Within two hours they told us to finish up all of our calls and get back into the Microsoft Teams meeting where they could instruct us on the more difficult calls we had faced.

I still didn't feel trained or confident, and after a night of anxiety and barely-sleeping I got out of bed at 5 and prepared for my 6am start.

Those of us who remained were on our own.

There was no help in the chat room for the first half hour of the shift. We had to work things out ourselves but couldn't. We were untrained. Unlearned. Didn't know what the hell we were doing. Finally help arrived in the form of one, lone person. Who, apparently, was helping four different training chatrooms so couldn't be dedicated to us.

Not only was I sinking, but now I was drowning too.

My first break was scheduled for 8 but, after one very stressful call I put myself on break at 7:40ish. And burst into tears.

I couldn't do it.

I didn't have proper training, I didn't know proper protocol, there was only one person available to help god knows how many people sitting in four different chat-rooms... and honestly, I don't have the right personality for the job. I'm introverted, anxious, take everything personally, have too much empathy. I'm sure a couple of the people in my training group will survive, but I have a feeling a good chunk of them will drown just as I have.

I am disappointed in myself, so very disappointed in myself. I'm exhausted, tired, emotionally drained, and sad that I have failed.

But I can also understand that this role was just not for me. I loved the idea of working from home, having good hours and good pay, contributing to our finances properly, but irate and upset customers yelling at me and demanding answers that I don't know or have and am not getting answers for... I couldn't do it.

I'm not cut out for a call centre. Maybe I could have done it if we were in an office, with physical people around to help, the 'floor-walkers' the trainers referred to them as. But I was alone. At home. Afraid. And there was no help available even though there was meant to be.

I spent the entire morning in tears. And I spent the day in a sad haze. And now that it's almost bed-time again, I'm starting to feel somewhat normal again. Disappointed. But normal.

*Sigh.*

I will find something eventually.
And I am still studying.

What will be, will be. Everything will work out in the end.