Work in a call center with knowledge of English in Krakow – why I refused

I am not one of those people who divide work into “prestigious” and “non-prestigious”. From childhood, certain things and stereotypes are put into our heads, especially at school: if you study well, you will be an office worker, if you study poorly, you will go to do hard physical work. I think this one-sided approach is very wrong, and often even offensive.

For example, if a person masters, for example, the profession of a welder or driver, he or she can earn many times more money than the average office worker who works 8 hours a day, and besides, enjoy respect and privileges as a specialist that the world needs.

Of course, there are exceptions in the office sector, such as IT professionals, translators, lawyers, advertisers, and others who also earn a good money. I mean, often working in an office is considered more prestigious than, for example, working in a restaurant kitchen. And often foreigners, when they come to work in Poland for the first time, view work here through the prism of “prestige”.

I personally have worked in many places both in Poland and Ukraine, and so I can compare. There are advantages to office work, and there are advantages to working in a factory or in the kitchen. For me personally, I often changed jobs when I was “saturated” with the previous one. You could say that I am constantly in search of myself.

Let me give you a personal example from 2015. After leaving my office job in Ukraine, I went to Poland for two weeks to cut stoves in a damp, wet basement, then worked at 2 factories, then worked in Poland in an office at a labor agency (developing their website), after that I worked as a salesman at a ski resort (selling hot snacks and drinks on the mountain in the winter season), then I did the same thing only in the summer season, then I tried to be a kebab seller on the Baltic Sea for a month, and now I’m working in an office in Krakow again. I can’t judge why this is happening, because it’s not the point of this article.

I wanted to work in the Krakow office and started actively use job search sites. As I already know, more serious vacancies for specialists with foreign languages or in a certain intellectual field are posted on such Polish job search services as pracuj.pl, europa.jobs or gumtree.

I was looking for jobs on another site, which mostly does not require certain skills, or offers jobs in the service sector, looking for handymen, students, etc. And even then, many ads are posted by Polish or Ukrainian intermediary job agencies.

At that time, I was ready to take any job, because I had just rented a small apartment in a semi-basement in Krzeslawice District of Krakow. I got a phone call and was invited to work in an office for a well-known airline, as I was told.

9 reasons why I refused to work in a call center after the interview?

1. It was not a job for a well-known low-cost airline directly, but for a call center intermediary.
2. The job was to be in the complaints department. That is, you have to work all day with dissatisfied customers of the airline. It is morally difficult. You will be exposed to tons of negativity, which you have to let through one way or another.
3. Working in English in a Polish office. That is, all day long, you communicate with dissatisfied customers, and in English.
4. However, the main reason why I refused is not listed in the previous three. The fact is that I was supposed to be hired in a department where I would have to respond emails to customer complaints and requests. During the interview, I was told that I might have to help “on the call line” sometimes, i.e., wear headphones on and talk.

When I was at home, I went to a well-known Polish employer review site GoWork and found something that literally stunned me. In the reviews, my predecessors described the entire interview procedure, just like mine, and then said that in a few days those who were supposed to answer emails were transferred to the call center.

I was a little doubtful whether it was true, because competitors can write such reviews, but there were other factors why I refused, and besides, the description of several people was so accurate that it inspired my trust.

1. After the interview, I was not yet hired, but was offered a 2-week trial period, for which they promised to pay 500 PLN (for 2 weeks), but only in a month. That is, for 2 weeks in June 2019, I was supposed to be an intern for 500 zlotys (not that I would have been hired), then I would have to work all of July, and I would receive my salary for July, as well as 500 zlotys for the internship in June, on August 10. Such a promising prospect for Krakow, no?
2. I was hired for contract of mandate (Polish: umowa zlecenia) ,12 zlotys net per hour, plus some extra for working on weekends. After calculating everything, including working on Saturday and Sunday for 8 hours, I had to be present in the office for a whole week to earn from 2800 to 3200, and that’s assuming that I would have those hours. These were my personal calculations, and they may not be entirely correct, but I think they are somewhere near the truth.
3. Strict rules at work. Any time you leave the office is recorded with a card, and these minutes are not included in your salary.
4. I always listen to myself. I don’t always do what my heart tells me to do, but I try, and this time it was just such a case. I felt that I didn’t want to go to work there after all. So I didn’t go. I asked myself, if I didn’t need the money, is this what I would want to do. The answer was ‘no’.
5. Then I thought – if it’s about 2800 zlotys, then I can earn it in another way, where there is less stress and I won’t have a “square” head from dissatisfied customers, because working with clients and people is always difficult, and even more so – with dissatisfied ones. So it didn’t work out for me with the call center work in Poland.