(08 Feb 2014, 10:11 pm)nk55 wrote You maybe able to answer this question within the next few days, how long do call centre staff remain "live" before they have a break, some of our duties have us in the seat for 3 1/2 hrs or 4 1/2 hrs or if we're really lucky we'll be in close to the maximum domestic hours rules, before we get our 35 minutes off.
Not too dissimilar to drivers to be honest.
Callcentre environments can be tough, with any time 'off the phone' recorded and used against you.
So if you need the toilet, you need to get a drink of water etc, it can boil down to you justifying where and where you have been.
There was an advert a few years back for car insurance and it featured battery hens answering the phones...
On the topic of good drivers vs bad - as a passenger using buses in the North East for 30 odd years, I can safely say the negatives outweigh the positives.
Yes, there are good examples and I have mentioned them on here (haven't mentioned the bad ones that I have experienced or witnessed) and there are the ordinary examples of a driver doing his/her job without any dramas.
Based on my journeys on the Coastliner services around York, I can safely say the drivers were absolutely fantastic.
Granted, I haven't used them for 30+ years, but I haven't had a bad experience and based on percentages, they out performed their colleagues in the North East.
There could be a whole range of reasons why drivers have the reputation they do and apart from the experiences they get from the ungrateful punters, there are others which we wont go into.
Whatever reasons there may be, there is no excuse or justification, for a public facing representative of an organisation to go on like they have done in the examples above.