Yesterday I was fired from my call center/operations/service type job. Honestly when I think about it there wasn’t anything I didn’t do for that place. (Payments, Arbitration, IT, etc.)
I started off Part time and got this role after being laid off from another at my previous company. They made me full time less than a month after I started, I adapted really quickly to everyone’s surprise. Compliments and opportunities to collaborate were abundant. Everyone in leadership for my former department asked for me to be made full time and those above approved it.
I started in late 2023 and fast forward to 2025, I’ve been there about a year and learned a lot. Come yearly review time I get a lackluster breakdown of my performance and a measly one dollar raise. Everything I wrote about myself on my review is in my supervisors review of me, it’s like they didn’t even try. Their words are the ones I wrote about myself.
By this time I’m getting checked out, why try anymore I feel but I need the job to get paid. I try reframing and restructuring how I work. If I’m not passionate then I’m curious, if not curious then I’m setting a goal I want to meet to stay on track is how I was doing it. I have been job hunting for a bit of time while having the old one.
It’s been really hard for the past few weeks and I talked to my supervisor last week about some ideas I had for my role. The conversation went well, and then today a user overheard me angrily ranting about their issue when I put them on hold. My coworkers and I have been telling management that the hold button doesn’t work always, I also like double mute myself after putting someone on hold just so that they can’t hear but today it didn’t work. They heard everything I said, said they recorded me and request led to talk to my manager. The persons in the wrong, and I’m tired of having to be verbally abused when explaining things to people.
My manager then calls me into a meeting hours later, I arrive and see HR. My manager couldn’t even look me in the face, says they’ve been trying to train/coach me for months on empathy and that I’m fired effective immediately due to my unprofessional conduct. I didn’t say what I said to the person directly but I get being angry at hearing those things. I tried to apologize but at that point they didn’t care and I don’t blame them. I vent on held calls all the time and it’s worked in almost every other instance. There have been a few dropped calls or moments where the voices still come through on hold but leadership swears the things fixed.
Funny thing is this is the first time I’ve ever had a call like this, and the second time empathy has ever been mentioned to me. It wasn’t even a call, it was what I ranted about and not to the customer. I get compliments on my calls, good CSATS and my performance has been solid. My direct supervisor told me I’m 50% more productive than necessary, I don’t even try to be - I’ve slowed myself down a lot and it’s improved my quality I feel.
I’m really hurt, and I know a job isn’t everything or my identity. But I tried so hard, I did so much and they couldn’t even be fully honest with me in the end. I wasn’t even worth a PIP. They never put me on one before either. The coaching they said they gave me they didn’t even really do that. I’ve been feeling like they’ve been looking for a reason to fire me, and I gave them that unfortunately. We also recently did a company survey and mines wasn’t glowing, it was honest- they said it’s anonymous but I think they probably pinned anything negative coming from my department on me. This is just me speculating of course.
I just feel so ashamed and angry at myself. I also admit to feeling relief because that place was killing me. Having to take responsibility all the time for people who’d speak to me with such disgust was a lot. It was so hard to smile or be normal at work outings, meetings, etc. Everyone’s just so good at pretending and I’m not. I was so sick my first year, many fevers. I know this was posed as a rant but, if this has happened to you or something like it what have you done to make it better? What advice would you give? Am I being too dramatic? Did you find a new job soon when this happened to you? Thanks for listening
Edit: Edited for clarity, spelling errors