“How Can I Help You?”

A [post]modern manufactory

‘Despite what the privileged kids of journalism might think, a working-class woman in a call centre, trying to raise a couple of kids and having to negotiate with her manager about time off when her childcare lets her down, might have a different experience than a posh young MA student who is “forced” to take a job in a call centre because daddy has pulled the plug on the monthly allowance. Working-class mothers cannot afford to put a foot wrong, which often leads to them being targeted by sexual harassment and unfair treatment. It is not a game or an “experience” for them; there is no way out.’ - Paul Embery

Work
Buy
Consume
Die

So much writing on Substack is abstraction. Analysis and commentary shorn of personal experience as if the writer is hiding in some redoubt far from quotidian concerns. This is the life of a call centre worker. An office drone, a fungible identity unit as Fassbinder had it in World on a Wire.

I work in a call centre. For a small East Anglian town the money I’m paid isn’t too bad but we bloody well earn it. It was sold to me as something else; when I moved back to my home town after 30 years in London I needed a job. At the interview I was told I’d be assessing documents and there would be reading - I have spent most of my working life reading - and there would be no phone interactions, just purely clerical work. This morphed and twisted and now I take 50-60 calls each day, sometimes from people in deep distress or high on hopium. I was chosen for my ‘empathy’,  I’ve been told; a perfect fit for what is euphemistically labelled ‘emotional labour’ in a public-facing role.

The job has its compensations aside from the money which slips into my bank account every month. My colleagues are great and every day I realise the value of social bonding, solidarity, of being part of something greater than just a fly trapped in a bottle of darkness. My natural inclination is to help my brothers and sisters even when that help falls short as it so often does. Sometimes I can actually help; sometimes I comfort them, tell them it’s alright, offer condolences - short of expressing love, the love which I’m commanded to give and the hardest commandment to fulfil. That is not allowed, not in the workplace; save it for the dogs and cats on the street. But despite the compensations I can’t help the nagging feeling that I’m in enemy territory, a captured space, a reptile in a vivarium, observed from on high, monitored and noted on a shoddy Excel spreadsheet.

If you liked school you’ll love work.

“Labour is external to the worker, i.e. it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself.” - Karl Marx

Marx, his theories made redundant in this [post]modern landscape, could not have foreseen the onward progress of work, the introduction of Fordism,  time-and-motion studies, the advent of computers and the micro-management which they facilitate. His focus was on the manufactories.

According to UK government statistics “in January to March 2025, the manufacturing sector accounted for 8.7% of total UK economic output (gross value added) and 7.9% of employment”. The first industrial revolution saw farm workers and independent artisans such as weavers and cobblers moving off the land and out of the villages to the dark Satanic mills of 19th century cities. In the 21st century workers have moved from factory to office, supermarket/retail outlets, call centres, out-of-town strip malls, non-place urban fields, providing emotional labour and harvesting data for the 4th industrial revolution, where data is the new crude oil to be processed by office drones and sold on to the highest bidder.

The alarm wakes me at 7:30am and I stumble to the kitchen, drink strong coffee, smoke a couple of fags, have a shit, wash myself, get dressed in the ‘business clothes’ which mark brain workers from manual workers. I shake off the dreams which touched my unconscious/subconscious sleep; dreams of flight as a human-bird hybrid, dreams of threat and a struggle to escape. Dream of the Devil and wake in fright. A stray summer fly buzzes, the impertinence; I take a towel and swat it, mutter “tell your mates” and, in pathetic remorse - I am a master of remorse and guilt and shame - think of William Blake:

Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

I swear these [post]modern flies are harder to swat; they’re more cunning; elliptic flight paths mocking my clumsy humanness with their freedom buzz. 

I check the leccy is off, check I have my reading glasses in my backpack; keys, entry-card, cash-money, baccy in the pocket, stick my nose outside for the weather, lock the door of the flat, and walk down the steps to the road below. An elderly biker garbed as a Hell’s Angel is usually revving his bike prior to taking off for his workplace and I nod and smile and move on, kicking the litter off the pavement, sometimes picking it up and chucking it in the few bins provided. I have no cause for complaint as I choose not to pay the laughable council tax tribute. I will collect and dispose and do what I can and ignore the useless authorities.

The walk takes around 30 mins to get there and 30 mins back.  I haven’t taken a bus since I took this job more than 2 years ago. The towen is small enough to walk from one end to the other yet most folk drive. Fair play to them; I have my way and they have theirs. I cross the oozing river, gain digital entry to the workplace, sit down at my desk, fire up the computer, put on the headphones, and take calls. We are advised - no, commanded - to be desk-ready by the start-time of 9:00 am. To achieve this means at least 10 minutes of setting up for which, of course, we are not paid.

The calls back up relentlessly. Most callers are polite but unapprised of the complexities of an industry the protocols and rituals of which they know little but from which they expect everything. I manage their expectations. I field questions. Sometimes callers sound like demons and sometimes like angels. Here comes everyone. I’ve been threatened with violence, screamed at, insulted, all with no recourse. I’ve become hardened and blasé. 

The interface is a panopticon and calls are measured in microseconds, keystrokes, all discourse recorded and stored, all breaks noted, transgressions upbraided. Every caller has to pass initial questions for compliance with the Data Protection Act 2018 which enters them into contract and the majority comply willingly. Granular data is given and recorded, supposedly protected by closed software systems and VPNs. 

Understaffing, which is to be expected, means holidays - annual leave - is fought over and granted grudgingly by an unseen HR department staffed by boss-girl archetypes chosen for the mystical caring and compassionate female qualities; empathy on proud display until their positions are threatened or even questioned. Time off for many is home leave from the front, convalescence spent in triage, a ronde of Netflix, forever-food snacks, microwaved dinners and a bottomless prosecco Sunday lunch with mates. 

Weekends are free. I sit at home and brood, read books, listen to Brahms and Boards of Canada on the CD player, cook curries and casseroles in batches, enough to last the week; in the background ambience wood pigeons coo and foxes shriek as cars on the road below growl and tyres hiss in the rain of an English summer,  buzzing like flies around stale cake. 

In the back of the mind a nagging thought that next Monday we’ll be sitting with headphones on, polite patter script on tip of tongues, calls back-to-back from the good, the bad, and the ugly. The trudge back, brogues clicking on the street, alert for the dog shit and occasional lunatic, motorised scooters and electric bikes sharing the evening pavements glistening with summer rain.

Stills from Jacques Tati’s 1967 film Playtime