Tales from the Pipe- Call Centers on Crack

While I'm making light of a serious situation (Einstein on Crack), the unfortunate reality of substance abuse and specifically "Crack", will play a larger role at CallCenter, USA.

As various reps had attendance issues, I began to learn more and more what drove these issues. HR, as you know loved drama, and made sure she kept herself in the middle of it. Not only was she a smoker (the normal kind), which automatically increases ones level of situational awareness, but her relationships with reps outside of work only added more knowledge to her vault.

Crack Tales…

HR began to open the curtains and shed some light on the sites dark, addictive little secret. She shared that we had a small population of our most tenured agents who were fully functioning (functioning is a relative term) crack heads. HR's flare for drama (Please reference the Emergency in the Women’s Restroom) always made it a challenge for me to decipher fact, opinion, or over-reaction, so I took this news like I had to take all news from her, with skepticism.

Through tenure and personal observation, I soon understood how real the issue was. During payroll Friday, that same group of reps would have the tendency to leave early or if they didn't leave early, they would usually miss Monday, or come in very late.

SL is a big enough challenge without throwing crack into the picture. We initiated the progressive counseling process, but the real issue here was that it took each agent 8-12 months to complete the licensing process at a cost of $20,000 not to mention these reps performed a mission critical task for our client.

Now the obvious question is what moron decided to License crack-heads… that credit I leave to my predecessor.

The Real Deal…

If one was missing, usually I would have a least one rep that would report seeing them walking around downtown all cracked out. These guys were the real deal. I actually had one rep that was at a party, and ran into one of them lighting up.



After a weekend coke binge, their appearances would be completely altered. They would age 20 years in 3-4 days, but the real tell-tell sign was in their eyes. I could never quite put my finger on it, but somehow their eyes changed. They usually would be dirty, and un-kept, but by Wednesday, that would be back to normal. They would be clean, kept, and look 20 years younger. I had never seen anything like it.

Smoking in the boy’s room takes on a whole new meaning…

It was clear that HR was not exaggerating and this was a very real issue in my site. Upon more investigation, it turns out that one of the more notorious crack heads was actually caught smoking rock in the bathroom.

When I asked why he wasn't fired, everyone said that my predecessor didn't mandate it. What kind of environment would need a "mandate" to term someone who got caught smoking rock in the building?


On a lighter note…

In an attempt to reach the floor and make a real connection, we built a suggestion box. It had a "help me help you" logo on the front. After a few days I decided to check the suggestion box. It was filled almost to the top with little strips of white paper, and this box wasn’t small.


Before commonsense set in, I really felt I had finally found the medium that I could use to reach the floor. I grabbed the box, and took it back to the conference room and eagerly began to dig through the suggestions. My excitement turned into agitation when I realized that someone thought it would be funny to make a hundred copies of "Pay us More", and fill up my suggestion box.

I was angry for several reasons. For starters, someone used my copier, and someone else (my staff) allowed him or her to do it. Here we were, again, trying to make a difference, and someone else was trying to be funny.

As for real suggestions, I received probably 10-15 suggestions asking me to end favoritism like is was State Sponsored, and believe it or not, I had probably 3-5 suggestions to stop hiring crack-heads.

Stop hiring crack-heads...now that’s a fine idea!


The problem was not just in my site, it was also in the families of my employee’s.

I was at the site for just over a month, when I saw one of my reps looking visibly upset. I asked him if all we well, and he said, "No not really, they just found my uncle dead... He overdosed on crack".

And the hits just keep coming…