Pexels/Negative Space. Some rights reserved.Most of us only get a glimpse into call centres when we are bothered by cold callers, or perhaps through something like the recent BBC television series The Call Centre. But we rarely understand what the work is actually like, or get any sense of workers’ agency in these conditions.
There is no call centre in the world that would willingly let a critical researcher in to study the conditions of work. Even if they did, it is unlikely you would get an accurate picture of how the work is organised. So while writing up my PhD on casualised and precarious work, I took the decision to find work in a call centre myself, and enter undercover.
The first step was signing up to a job website and letting the process – one that many other people undertake – lead me to a call centre. After leaving a telephone message, I was invited in for an interview, and started work only a few days later.
