It's really weird working in such close quarters with the same people day after day. The work brings us together. Sometimes, the din on the floor and the yelling back forth to pick up this line or that makes it sounds like a trading floor. We can't read the paper, or sleep, or watch tv or listen to the radio very loud. All we have to keep us sane is conversation. I guess in that way it is a lot like prison. We are united against our common enemies, stupid customers and management we can't comprehend. We help each other with customers and cover for other peoples mistakes, or if we dont like you, go out of our way to tattle on you.

That being said, I still don't like everyone. There is still tension, and cliques, and the usual trash talk between the shifts. Everyone assasinates everyone's character from time to time. There are people I feel fairly close to, I have only seen a couple of them outside of work, I'm not very good at making very close friends.

There is an incredible amount of making jokes at each other's expenses, of picking on each other. Which is really standard among men. You rarely hear men talk about feelings, and relationships. If they do, they put it out there in a different way, sort of like "Damn, my wife is really giving me a hard time lately!" . The women I work with like to talk about relationships, and children, and feelings. I'm not trying to reinforce stereotypes about men and women, but this is how the people in my call center actually behave.

When I first started here, I felt like an incredible outsider. They had their own language, and jokes, and ways of doing things. Now I feel fairly comfortable, and seem to fit in. It is a lot like a family, realistically so, because though you care about them, they have the ability to make you crazy and annoy you, and you them...