Money makes people crazy. This is a well documented fact that’s been true as long as people have needed money to survive. The more barriers you put between people and their money, the crazier they get—sometimes for understandable reasons, sometimes for absolutely no reason at all.
You get to see this first hand when you work for a financial institution. You definitely get to see it when you work for thirty different financial institutions that all have different rules about how to treat people and their money. I’ve been at this call center for five months so far and it’s still such a wild ride. You never know what kind of call you’re going to get when you pick up the phone. The best you can do is just hope and pray it’s a simple issue with a person who’s not going to yell at you.
For the most part, I like the job! We are the first line of defence for several Credit Unions across the country, answering and assisting the basic tasks and passing people on to the credit unions for anything more complicated. I couldn’t tell you how many online banking passwords I’ve reset or debit cards I’ve reported stolen. It’s a small thing, but people are often incredibly appreciative for the help we can provide!
I also quite enjoy the people-watching aspect of it. You can learn a lot about someone from their finances, especially when you’ve got them in your ear trying to explain themselves. I’ve heard some of the most interesting voices and names and had some of the most difficult and also most fun conversations! Several times I’ve been given advice from people whose faces I never saw, but their words have stuck with me. I’ve been told marvelous bad jokes I will never forget. I had someone tell me that I have a “joyful spirit and a song in my voice,” because of the way I sing/talk while I work. They made me promise to never lose that spirit. Once, a gentleman once asked me what ‘Sam’ is short for. I told him it was short for “Samariel,” as I’m named after an angel.
“That must be it then,” he said, “you must be my angel.”
This is the part of the job that I love. But unfortunately, I can’t always help. When things are more complicated and there’s not much we can do, people don’t appreciate that.
I was warned several times that as we got closer to Christmas things were going to get crazy. It hasn’t really been true, oddly enough. Things have been the standard amount of crazy, which is plenty enough to deal with—especially for the Saturday shift. Saturdays are equal parts difficult and easy as there’s very few calls because not many of the credit unions are open Saturdays. Unfortunately that also means there’s very little we can do for larger issues because not many of the credit unions are open Saturdays.
So when a woman called in on a Saturday to get her debit card fixed so she could buy $400 dollars worth of groceries for her Christmas party that night, I had the enviable task of telling her I couldn’t help her. She was. furious.
“What do you mean you can’t do anything?!”
“The credit union is closed m’am. Normally I would pass you to the card services team or escalate this as an emergency, but there’s no one there who would see it. Not until Monday.”
She didn’t swear at me, which I appreciated, but she was angry. She said she was going to pull her money from the credit union, she was going to yell at anyone who was in charge. My heart hurt for her. I could picture her life in this moment, thinking how upset I would be—having to tell my friends or family I couldn’t host because of some flipped switch on behalf of a system that neither she nor I, a faceless representative of that system, had any access to.
She let me put in a request to have someone call her back on Monday for assistance but made sure I added that she was very upset and would likely be leaving the credit union over this. I understood and made my clumsy conversation dismount of “have a great rest of your day!” I regretted it as soon as it left my mouth. She just hung up. I couldn’t blame her.
The day went on. It was a normal, quiet Saturday. I was getting to the end of my puzzle book when someone sent a message to the Saturday Team chat.
“Ms. ___ with ____ credit union called back to apologize to the person she spoke to earlier. She felt really bad about how she treated them. She knows it wasn’t their fault and wanted to say sorry.”
I recognized the name immediately but was honestly surprised. I’ve had much worse people yell at me for less. I understood her frustration. I couldn’t blame her. But the fact that she had called back specifically to apologize was honestly unheard of.
“That was me,” I typed back. “That was so sweet of her! She had a rough situation, I understood.”
“Yeah,” they responded. “She said it’s Christmas for everyone, and she would have hated to make someone upset for the holiday.”
As much as I heartily disagree that it’s Christmas for everyone, it was very much the thought that counted for me. Call centers are no one’s favorite thing and as we are faceless representatives of financial institutions, we are often the punching bags for the institutions’ issues. There are quite a lot of downsides to this job—more than enough, frankly. But the thing that I do truly love about it are the moments where the people shine through: where people think to give advice to the voice over the phone, offer a compliment, or even apologize—where people still see the person on the other end as a person.
I am the last man alive who needs to be waxing about what Christmas “really” means, but I do think at the very least it is that: the time of year where people remember to think of the others all around them as people. So if you do nothing else this season, let that be the challenge to you: to remember the humanity in everyone; even the people you don’t like, even the people on the other side of the world, and even that faceless voice on the other side of the phone.
Sam is unsure what exact words describe them best: Lunatic has been used, Gothic Romantic is apt, and Big ol’ Nerd is reductive but true. Mostly they just like stories in whatever form stories can be found. Sam specializes in Frankenstein, running “The Uncanny Productions” on YouTube, but they also dabble with podcasts, singing, and theatre as well. They have a DVD collection that’s long outgrown its shelf, a coffin they use as a desk, and an unrelenting joy for things that are spooky, ridiculous, or magical.
