I used to work for a “large telecommunications provider” – where my job was basically to make nuisance calls on an industrial scale.
I worked in a team working shifts managing the predictive diallers for a 2000 seat call centre. Theoretically these things were supposed to automatically adjust the dialling rate based on the number of agents available, average talk time etc, In practice the technology was in its infancy and they needed near-constant tweaking to avoid silent calls (and the resulting wrath of the regulator) etc and to maintain the hit rate.
The kit itself was hosted offsite and at the time filled most of a gloomy hangar-like bunker in Swindon – getting in there was like getting into the Roswell airbase and nearly as strange.
We’d target specific demographics and parts of the country at different times of the day and week. Had a wall of tellies in the office so we could crank up the calls at peak times around certain TV shows- we’d get a fantastic hit rate in places like Eastbourne and Southend just at the end of Cash in the Attic!
It was really well paid as it was shift work (we worked overnight to process data etc), and got loads of free time during the day when I was on lates, but can’t say there was much in the way of job satisfaction and it all left me feeling a bit empty. A classic case of a job where you don’t actually feel you’re doing anything useful.
On the positive side, it got me a foot in the door into IT, which I still work in, so I guess it wasn’t all bad.