Taking Calls

My job title is "Credit Representative", which means I take calls in the department that handles payments. Except that I haven't taken any calls in about seven and a half years. Instead, I am on a team responsible for reporting and administering worklists.

A month ago "they" decided that one of the groups in our department needed more people taking calls, and they asked for a person from my center. Instead of giving up a person, "they" decided to have each of us take calls for 4 hours each week.

At least, that is what we were told. Most of us suspect there is a more political motivation behind this decision. Regardless of the why, I will do what "they" ask of me. However, even though I am being asked to do 4 more hours of work each week, I am not getting any reduction in the other work I am expected to accomplish. Some weeks, I can get it all done, but others are so busy that I can't even get my stuff done much less 4 hours of another team's work.

There are several other issues we have with this, but basically it feels like we are expected to do plenty of extra things all the time and that suddenly that isn't good enough. Some of are going to stop going the extra mile, whether we realize it or not.

Anyway, today was my first day taking calls. It was pretty much what I remember, answering questions and not getting many payments. But there were several things I did not get done today because I only had about 5 hours to do them, and on a normal Monday I have at least 7.