On Empathy and Ethics
A missive on empathy, ethics and leadership:
I love call centers and I don't like that they are considered unskilled labor. The job is all about enduring constant verbal barrages, from barely there voices to booming assault in 5.0 stereo. It's rapid, rhythmless noise and feeling, flung from multiple mental angles by entitled agitated people, with the requirement that the employee show constant empathy.
My top three instances or high level empathy working in a call center are:
● Talking a suicidal/homicidal person down.
● Multiple graphic accounts of rape and assault taken as messages.
● Explaining that soap is necessary to remove odors and dirt from laundry.
Each call is a different kind of uncomfortable, with staggeringly different mental costs. Even so call center employees handle them daily, while digging deep to do the emotional labor that makes each caller's day just a little bit better, if only for a few minutes. It's important to remember that we aren't born with a conscience, ethics, or empathy. Each is a cultivated skill that must be taught.
Sometimes it's obvious leadership has not been taught, and so cannot be teaching, any of these things. What sticks out is an interview I did with a local cannabis company a few weeks ago. During the discussion they let me know they have a call center in the Philippines.
Remember all of that weird stress from calls earlier? It can be anything from verbal sexual assault, to being told you're more horrible than a Nazi. People have even shown up to a secure, 3rd party office to argue a bill while screaming through a security door. Through it all though, I have never had to worry that talking about my job could get me shot in the head. So, I asked "...why the Philippines?"
"Because they pretty much do whatever we tell them."
By the end of the call we both knew I wouldn't be a "good cultural fit."
Since it bears repeating: Profits are not a good enough reason to risk people's lives! Make no mistake those employees are risking their lives to take cannabis related calls. A single misperception that any of them are involved in the sale of an illicit narcotic by anyone, and the entire office is set for a justifiable extrajudicial execution/murder. The reality is, that's their daily baseline.
We are still in the middle of the Covid-19 outbreak, and a new chapter of the civil rights movement is being written as this post is. Please consider what you, as a person, are asking of the people that work for you. Are you asking them to risk their lives? If so, what for? What are your personal ethics, and where do they stand? Would you die for what you're doing? Are you ok with being the person that makes the decision that will cause yourself and others pain, illness, and death? What are you doing to help make things better?
