I was doing some Spring cleaning, when I discovered an old box. Inside, were what remained of my time working as a directory assistance operator. I worked at a Verizon call center, that had 350 reps taking at least 800 calls per day. Since this is a site focused on finance and business among other things, I was reminded of the man who brought it all crashing down.

His name was Ed.

Now picture this. Ed was this bean-pole skinny guy, the very picture of a nerd. He had an odd habit when distracted, of slowly shaking his head from side to side like one of those bobble-headed dogs in the back of someones car.

He was one of those guys that never held a position of authority, but here at Verizon, he wanted it. Bad. Now, I'm sure you all know "that guy" (or girl) at work, known as the management kiss-ass. That was him to a tee. He was a horrible operator and could never remember how to find the proper listings, even for the local malls. Many times he'd have to lean back and whisper to one of us in order to save his bacon. Ed was always being written up and threatened with suspension, due to his horrible job performance.

Hall monitor Ed

The pencil-necked coward would always turn the other reps in to management, in order to take some of the heat off of himself. Mind you, many of these were people that had helped him to keep his own job, but he didn't care. One day, we all saw him called up to a "coaching" meeting where he was warned that he had 30 days to get his numbers up. We all had to take at least 800 calls per day and he was nowhere near that.

A couple of weeks later, he had risen to about 350 daily calls and seemed to plateau there. It was beginning to look like curtains for our little butt-muncher, when a gift from the Gods fell right into his lap.

At the front desk near the managers, we had a little desk area. This was for people we called SOS's. Their job was to help operators with tough calls and while they weren't supervisors, they sat next to management and were the next best thing to it. One day, one of them got arrested, suddenly there was a vacancy being hungrily eyed by Ed...

The good thing about this position, is that you didn't have to take any calls, just assist reps. The rest of the job involved answering the phone and working with Excel, you know, general office-drone stuff. So, there he was, two weeks away from being terminated, when he makes a Hail Mary pass, by throwing his hat into the ring.

People snickered as this dude was not known for his brain capacity, but he was smart enough to know he had to get off of the main floor and away from the 800 daily calls requirement. The SOS slot was his ticket out. His competition? A morbidly obese girl named Debbie.

She had over 30 different personalities and one of them was a Demon Baby! Sometimes on the phones, her child alt would take over and begin spewing the most vile, satanic slurs at the callers. The managers would come running! I adored her, but because of her weight, and penchant for wearing plastic clothes, she left a malodorous stench in her wake like a putrid swamp. No one wanted to be near her and many found it amusing to picture her sitting up front, in close proximity to the three other SOS's and the much-hated managers.

Management was not amused...

Suddenly I get called over to meet with the head muckety-muck in the office with a couple of her lieutenants. I thought I was in trouble, but since I was a good rep who made my call quotas, they wanted me to be the next SOS. I howled with laughter, telling them everybody hated the bicycle-seat-sniffing management wannabe's and I sure as hell didn't want to join them.

It turned out to be the biggest mistake of my career.

As the day drew near, we were all thinking Debbie would get the job. She wore the same stained brown "pleather' jacket every day and never washed it. The thought of the despised managers having to smell that regularly, was like a little slice of Heaven to us. It was about time they got a little taste of what we dealt with every single day. Because of course they'd have to hire her, it sure as heck wasn't going to be loopy Ed, right?

Wrong. It was...

We all gasped when he was announced as the new SOS. This guy couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. They picked him precisely due to the fact that Debbie was hygiene-challanged and then he started going to town. The position went straight to his pointy little dome. He became the head snitch as he wanted to be a manager so badly. They promised him he would be considered if he "helped" them clear out the "bad" operators. Of course, he readily agreed.

Being a rep is one of those jobs that's easy to learn, but hard to master. It takes years to become proficient at quickly finding the right listings. So the last thing you wanna do is to get rid of those good veteran employees. The company was pushing a new contract. Turns out we had 100% insurance coverage and annual raises. After a strike, they bribed the workers into agreeing to a new agreement. Any future employees would be under the new deal with almost no benefits, while we old contract workers were grandfathered in under the original one.

I'll bet you can guess where this is heading, right?

That meant we ended up being expensive to keep and they could save a lot of money by pushing us out. This is where fast Eddie comes in. He became their spying eyes and ears. The douche developed “Little Man Syndrome.” Carrying a stopwatch, he'd time our smoke breaks, bathroom visits and report just about anything else in order to get a rep fired. Over the next few years, we went from more than 350 operators, all the way down to less than 35. Ed sat there listening in on calls (only managers were supposed to do that), peeking around corners and reporting every little thing to the higher-ups.

When it all goes up in smoke...

I warned him when we were approaching 100 reps left, that once we dipped below say 75 workers, there wouldn't be enough call volume coming in to keep the place open and the entire center would risk being shut down. He didn't care, telling me he was finally on the cusp of being promoted to manager. Well, you can imagine how this story ends. Once there were only 75 people left, seeing the writing on the wall, I took an early buyout. Over the next three years, due to Ed's constant spy reports, the employee numbers plummeted to 35 and then dipped below even that paltry number. But Ed just kept on going, once he got a taste of power, he couldn't stop.

One day they called an all-hands meeting to announce that the center was closing it's doors. Everybody was being terminated except... Ed. They were happy that he'd assisted them in clearing out the old expensive contract workers and were taking him along to yet another office in order to do the same thing all over again...

The managers continued to dangle that fat promotion in front of him like a tasty carrot to a horse, but of course they never delivered. He would go on to help them close three other offices, before he was of no further use to them. Then the managers themselves were fired and Ed, right along with them. That’s what it took for him to finally realize he'd been used all along. Right before COVID hit, I learned the he was working at some menial job near Allentown. He never became a manager. Have you ever known someone like him at work? Have you ever had an "Ed" in your life? If so, I sure hope he wasn't as toxic as ours was.

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How to Ruin a Business

Hall monitor Ed

When it all goes up in smoke...

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