#@*&$%$*%$ you!! There is a whole lot of swearing that goes on in the call center. I’m sure that there must be some rule in a manual somewhere against it, but it certainly is not enforced. The supervisors cuss, when people get off the phone they cuss, we cuss at each other, and when we can’t get off the phone, hand gestures have to suffice to communicate varying levels of pissed-offedness.

I read in a magazine once that psychiatrists have determined that swearing come from the same place in the brain as crying, they also went on to say that women cry to release stress and men swear. In my experience women do both, and men only cry when there aren’t other men around. Psychiatrists not withstanding, most people will agree that nothing really expresses the special sort of frustration you get from dealing with irrational people like cussing does.

I was raised to believe that cussing is a sin, and therefore very interested in it. I have a love-hate relationship with cussing. I would rather that I did not do it as often as I do, but sometimes there just aren’t appropriate words to communicate how incredibly frustrated I get working here. You see, I’ve known people who used the word fuck as an noun,verb,adjective, and adverb all in the same sentence. Now that’s ignorant. A good cuss word should be more of a douse of hot sauce-used sparingly.

But the really funny thing about swearing is that while it shocks you if someone swears at you, it doesn’t really hurt your feelings that much. No, the real words that hurt are more plain, more cutting, more distinct. Being told that you are a son of a bitch, that’s insulting to your mom, but that’s really about it. But its so common, and people say that jokingly that it really doesn’t seem like much of an insult. The things that hurt more are words that go to your worth as person.

The things that really get people pissed off in the call center are more subtle than words, the customers that make us furious are the ones that either through their condescending tones, or belittling attitudes make us feel like we are ignorant, or don’t matter.



  ¶ 1:23 AM