Without going into too many specifics, for starters, their training times are in MT while I am in CT. This means that instead of an 8-5 training, I had to endure the ever so dreadful 10-7, and because I've never worked from home before, I haven't had a desk in years so I improvised a desk with a folding chair we had lying around and one of those tray tables people use to eat their dinner. Sitting in that chair was hell on earth, but I hate getting ahead of myself so I wanted to wait to see how this three week training thing went before buying a proper desk and office chair.

how it went: Mentally exhausting. Ten pages filled with protocols we absolutely had to follow verbatim because (as I learned later) you'd get in trouble for not doing them exactly as they're written because your calls would be monitored not only in training, but well into the job and having too many points against you was grounds for eventual dismissal.
Three hours or more worth of scripts practice with a whiteboard only, endless vocabulary words stretching over many industries I had no idea the company even covered. Compliance training, quizzes, lessons, acknowledgments and a seven part test done by an employee after the first week to determine whether or not we got to continue with training. They encouraged us on Day 1 not to miss any of the three weeks because everything would be so fast paced and missing a day meant missing a lot. I had no idea that day just how much they meant that because it ended up being so true.
I've always thought that job trainings are where you really get to know what you're getting into- Not the 10 minute over the phone initial interview, not the assessments they give you 48 hours to complete and not even the final interview where you only touch on what shift preference you'd like and what days off you'll have and when you can start. The surprises start on your first day and that's when you'll know if the job really aligns with you as a person, your core values and the work-life balance you want to create. Having the ability to work from home is a good perk but it will never determine overall your ability to want to stay long term.Yeah, it's cool that you don't have to sit in traffic or see your boss in person but my other long term jobs have been in person and didn't make me feel the way this new job did in the most negative of ways after only one week. I didn't want to see it at first because I wanted and needed to put my best foot forward, but little things came up every now and then that made me go "Hmmmm" like the fact that both my trainers YM and RR kept repeatedly emphasizing the importance of the verbatim issue when practicing scripts and that it needed to be exactly what was written on the sheet and I just kept thinking how the Client and the Non-English speaker wouldn't even give a shit about a verbatim protocol but the company would and that if you messed up enough out of rapidity or habit, they focused more on the little word you missed and not on the important takeaway like being a conduit for a person who needed you. It was clear to me from early on that they were focusing too much on rules and not the human aspect of the job. It wouldn't matter that either the client or the person loved you, because if you added an extra word to the verbatim protocol at the beginning or end of your call, you were immediately sent a "Needs Improvement".

Another red flag was something that constituted a Work-Life balance issue for me that stood out because it was disguised as a good thing between the in charge adults on this Zoom call but I wasn't buying it. They tell you initially that you have a set schedule and when grown adults tell you that, you expect them to make good on it. Yet, it doesn't seem so. If your shift ends at 3PM, you expect to clock out at 3PM, but apparently in our case, you always need to be set to Available. So that means: If it's 2:59:59, you better be set to Available and if a call comes in and it happens to be 2 hours long, you have to take it and finish it. When RR said "It's a good thing because you get over-time, right? And who doesn't like over-time?"
So... kids, appointments or commitments to spouses or wanting a life outside of work will have to wait. I didn't find that at all appealing. If it's the end of your shift, you should be able to transfer that call to someone new because the technology to do that is there.

I found myself coming to terms that in three weeks, these people expected me to have the extensive knowledge and vocabulary of a Doctor, Nurse, Insurance Agent, Loan Officer, Road Side Assistance Agent, 401K planner, Medicare/Medicaid Agent, IRS, Police, Lawyer, 911 Operator, Disney Associate, Travel Agent, Utilities CSR, Surgeon, Psychiatrist/ Psychologist and God knows what else... all while navigating 2-3 people at the same time and their various quirks and nuances while also being micro-managed by monitors and holding points over your head if you do the slightest thing wrong in a very stressful situation.

I knew this was going to be a crucial decision whether it happened on week 1 or week 3 and I just needed to have the wisdom to understand when I was going to make that choice. My brain was fried every day with so much information, so many rules and protocols and so many expectations that did not match the pay. So I decided to stop in the name of sanity and as soon as I went to bed that night after making that choice, the weight that pressed against my body was gone, the headaches disappeared and the only reminder of what I went through were the things i left hanging around like the 10 pages of protocols, the notebook filled with pages of hand-written notes, passwords to get into their systems, the whiteboard with the black marker, the schedule that I wrote down that I had chosen that I never got to do and the ID number assigned to me that I no longer needed to remember by heart.

But I slept so well that night because I chose my mental health and probably avoided so much stress that would have eventually followed me had I continued when I knew almost from the very beginning that it wasn't the right fit. Hopefully the next place will be the one and I hope it finds me well.... and soon.

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