The next alienating incident wasn�t on such a grand and tragic scale. It was over a book. But it was just as unpleasant. I�d noticed that while waiting for calls to come through staff would either chat or read. Most tended to read women�s magazines that basically reflected their narrow obsessions - clothes, image, movies, men. I was a dissident in comparison. My light reading included �New Scientist� and books on quantum mechanics. But this time I was caught reading a book on customer service called �How to Complain�. An operator sitting near me mentioned it to my trainer. She laughed and promptly called me an idiot, in front of the other staff near me. This was a thoroughly humiliating incident and one that made me feel even less a part of the AGL culture.
But the most disturbing incident occurred when I was called to see the supervisor. He said that I had been seen outside the building at tea break time. Immediately I realised that eyes were indeed on my every movement. I felt like saying �I didn�t know this was a zoo� but bit my tongue. His pathetic excuse was that insurance wouldn�t cover me if I had an accident. I didn�t bother to ask why lunch was covered but not tea breaks. I didn�t think it would be a good idea to mention that I didn�t like the food in the AGL cafeteria either, whether it was cooked by natural gas or not.
The second matter he raised was the length of my conversations with customers. He wanted to know why some of my calls took more than the regulation three minutes. In short, he was saying I was as slow as a koala. I merely said that I wanted to give the best service possible. To this chief koala, the only thing that mattered was the number of calls you took per minute, not customer service. While being lectured at, I was shocked to notice a series of meters behind his desk. There were forty in all (I counted them!) and they ticked away slowly as I watched. Rigged to our phones these silent sentinels recorded how many calls we took. It was just like Watergate but we were the ones being bugged! I knew I would never feel comfortable again, knowing that Big Koala was watching.
It wasn�t long after this �pep talk� that I was told I was being moved to a new section. At first I thought this might be a promotion, but my new environment was actually worse than my last. Answering customer enquires all day wasn�t exciting but at least it was better than stuffing checks into envelopes. This was a definite step down. Neither were the new staff warm and friendly. And they were as dull as the others. The boss took an instant dislike to me and the feeling was mutual. It was all downhill from there.
Dress regulations at AGL were as strict as �feeding times�. All men had to wear a tie. I couldn�t see much sense in that, considering that customers couldn�t see what you were wearing over the phone. I�d never liked to wear a piece of rope around my neck, and even less so in this environment. To spite this tyrannical dress regulation, and my new Stalinist boss, I decided one day to buck the system and not wear a tie to work. But I was careful to wear a sloppy joe over my shirt collar so it wasn�t possible to tell if I was wearing a tie or not.
Being slow and dimwitted, it took the supervisor till lunchtime before he asked me if I had a tie on. When I said no, he sent me home immediately to get one. This wasn�t a very intelligent manoeuvre. Instead of being a punishment it was a relief from stuffing cheques; I�d probably get out of doing two hundred! With the short break I made sure I took my time travelling home and back. I even managed a trip to a bookstore for a leisurely browse � all on company time.
Unfortunately I was to find that such pleasant interludes were few and far between. The cheque stuffing became more and more monotonous with each passing day. The intervals between �feeding time� seemed to stretch to eternity.
The �end� when it came, was a relief. It happened when I returned from lunch, one afternoon, a year and four months after joining AGL. I immediately noticed something was up because someone was in my chair stuffing those damned envelopes. The envelope stuffer told me to go and see the supervisor, who was with the boss in his office. I knew something was up.
After a brief interview I was told that I hadn�t stuffed four envelopes (out of thousands) into the correct envelopes. This comment was so stupid that I would have laughed if the situation hadn�t been so serious. I was dismissed with, �We have no further work for you�. I still can�t believe that I said �thankyou�, as I closed the door quietly.
I had been culled from the pack. But I was free. There would be no more boring staff with their bird-brained conversations to endure, or endless cheques to envelope. I felt as high as a koala who�d eaten too many eucalyptus leaves
While it�s been years since I stuffed my last cheque for AGL I�m still reminded of the place everytime I see a koala. And it�s not just AGL�s ads. Any koala does it. A koala backpack, a picture of a koala in a tree, even a stuffed koala. They all remind me of my time in the AGL colony. Perhaps one valuable lesson I picked up from AGL was that people are very similar to koalas. They�re not always cute and cuddly and sometimes they bite and scratch. But watch out, as I learned when I was kicked out of the communal tree - if they really don�t like you they might even piss on you!
