People who have a day job usually have an office or a nice desk that is assigned to you. Just you. You’ll even personalize it to express your individuality. If the desk comes with a computer, you might even have a different wallpaper than the others. You’ll also have lots of other things in your desk. Organizers. Pictures. Figurines. Stuff toys. The like. You love your desk. You love your office.

In a call center, there are certain seating arrangements that needs to be followed. You might change locations once every 1-2 months. As of today, I have switched stations 5 times since August 2006. Being a supervisor, I am pretty much the most stationary when it comes to desk changing.

I moved two floors down today and now I’m sharing stations with a different account. Gah. I spent months decorating my team’s whiteboard and now I can’t bring it down. Apparently, it does not belong to me. Our Assistant Vice-President named John (who we fondly call Boss John or Boss AVP) told me: “It does not belong to you. It belongs to the desk.” It belongs to the friggin’ desk!

Bleh.

I was very happy with my previous station. It was near the printer, the bathroom, the huddle rooms, the lounge, the elevator, my lateral locker, coffee dispenser, water dispenser and fire exit. Now I’m stuck near HR where we always should be in our best behavior, for obvious reasons. Plus they have this annoying door that beeps continuously when left open. EXTREMELY ANNOYING!

*sigh*

Changing stations frequently is serious reality in call centers. I heard the term Hot-Desking from Gary a few weeks ago. In his department, they lack so many seats that no one has a permanent seat. So they Hot-Desk… meaning they look for an available station anywhere in the floor and have no permanent seating arrangement. But of course, the planning department had already foreseen this and knows for a fact that there will be an available station for everybody at a given time based on their schedules and the number of seats in the production floor. Agents should just be disciplined enough to log in and log out on time. I’ve heard stories from friends working in other call centers that this is very common and can actually lead to many problems if not resolved.

Moral lesson that I have learned today:

“DO NOT FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR DESK/OFFICE/WHATEVER AREA YOU WORK ON.”

For those who haven’t seen a call center’s production floor, this is pretty much the usual set-up. And no, this is not where I work now. Mine is more colorful.