One of the part time
jobs I had done before matriculating into NUS was to work at a call centre for
XYZ government agency. Many times the work was emotionally draining, partly due
to the large volume of calls and partly because of long call time with
extremely annoying customers.
As our call centre was
underperforming, there was a change in management to troubleshoot the team’s
performance. Under the new management, it was required that all agents,
regardless of part timers or full time stuff were to answer a certain number of
calls per hour.
While I was
consistently meeting the quota, there was one day that I had to deal with
multiple long call time with quite demanding customers. This caused me to fail
to hit the minimum quota for that particular day. As a result the new manager
chided/lectured me over my poor performance at the end of my shift.
Feeling emotionally
drained after my shift, I shot back at the manager challenging him to fire me
since he claimed that I was under performing. While I was not fired, needless to
say for the rest of my employment term, I was given the cold turkey treatment
by the manager.
In retrospect, I could
have easily communicated the reason for my poor performance instead of assuming
that the new manager knew about it. I believe the reason why I was
confrontational that day was because I may have misinterpreted my manager’s
comments. What the manager could have meant was that I should improve on my
performance, yet after a tiring day, I let my emotions take over and
misinterpreted his comments that I was too incompetent and therefore I should
resign from the call centre.
When I related this act
of ‘bravado’ to a close colleague of mine, he simply couldn't believe that I
was foolish enough to pull off such a stunt. This was because no one would
benefit from having such a confrontational attitude especially when it comes to
career advancement. Instead, he advised that in situation whenever a superior
is pointing out certain errors, the best course of action is to apologise immediately
and offer a brief explanation for the error followed by a promise not to repeat
it again.
Needless to say, I
learnt a huge lesson from this incident. Not only would I need to be more aware
of my emotions in order to communicate my message effectively but also by
placing aside my ego would I be in a better position to diffuse conflicts as it arises.
So do you agree with my
colleague’s approach in dealing with such situation and what other approach do
you think I should have taken? More importantly, what kind of approach do you
think I should have taken in diffusing the cold turkey treatment from the boss?
