Most call centers have an IT person or multiple IT staff. From computer, networks, phones and phone monitoring systems, call centers are a technology based industry.

We have an IT person at my call center, she is a woman of indeterminate age, 40 to 55, from somewhere in the northern midwest. I am not sure if she is professionally trained or not. I suspect she may be a hacker that got lucky because someone thought she knew what she was talking about. She used to work on the floor, and was management at one time.

She has become one of my least favorite people in the center. When you have a problem, or need something fixed, you dread talking to her. Either she explains in a condescending, annoyed tone that you either have no need to be able to do something like use corporate email to send a customer a report the asked for, or she almost cries because she is so incredibly stressed out.

The few times she has come on the floor and helped out it has been a fiasco. She will take a bunch of calls and then get too stressed to handle the job of actually arranging what the customer asked for, and then the rest of us will have to clean it up.

When she complains to all of us how stressed out she is and acts like she is going to cry, I really would like to say, "Are you crying? Are you crying? There is no crying in Call Centers!".

Look, it's not because she is a woman that bothers me. I work with some strong, intelligent women who do a better job than men do. It's that she can treat us lower than dirt when we ask her to do her job, but when she's having a tough time she gets to have a nervous breakdown and we are all supposed to be sympathetic. If I could get a hold of her resume I would send it to Radio Shack, she may have what it takes to sell 9 volt batteries, but it might be a stretch.