Vantaggi
I was on a call while the command center people were announcing the winners of a fashion contest among the teams. Everyone who weren't taking calls were cheering the winners as I was desperately thumbing down the mute button because they were loud and my caller was having trouble hearing me. But my caller appreciated the atmosphere, which he described as very positive. He simply laughed at me, realizing how distracted I was at the time. That's the kind of atmosphere I enjoyed at SITEL. The calls were hard enough and everyone has their share of arrogant, irate customers. So management comes up with just about anything to get your mind off the difficulties of your work. Sometimes it's a bag of candies in your station, sometimes it's gift checks, most of the time it's after-hours parties. Although because we're on the night shift, that meant beer in the mid morning hours.
Svantaggi
The higher up you go in the ladder, it seems, the less professional your colleagues become. Our campaign is populated with 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds who see Business process outsourcing in general, and call centers in particular, as an easy grind in terms of managerial experience. Take a few calls, get promoted in six months, pirate other teams' best members, get all the perks and good ratings for your team, stab other team leaders in the back, suck up to higher management by betraying your team and working them to the ground to get better grades, get promoted again, stick to your AMO position for years, and retire only when you're in your early 30s and there's an opening in some bank's senior management team. That seems to be what everyone's after. After all, in their 20s, they have a lot to look forward to career-wise. The earlier they make it to the top, the better for their career, even if they leave a trail of bad blood and karma in their wake.