Call Line Rants and Raves

So sick of call takers who say “we’re out of time” then go on to talk more.  If we’re out of time, great, I’m out.  Why is there more time for them to talk?

The last time this happened, when the call taker started talking after she said we’re out of time, I said, ok, bye and hung up.

I was feeling down, called a crisis line.  When I told her about how happy I was that a couple people had agreed to call other lines so they knew what it felt like, she told me that if I get people who are nasty not to take it personally.

She then spent the next 10 solid minutes without a break telling me about how overworked they are, about how understaffed they are, how they only have small cramped quarters, not enough funding and other lines push their callers on them.  She told me about how her co-volunteers take things personally and get triggered by callers and then quit.

I even asked if she really meant that the caller should not take their personal call personally while call takers took calls not about them personally.  But it didn’t faze her.

Over the past couple days, a couple really nice call takers have encouraged me to continue blogging about the things I’ve experienced with the call lines and the mental health field.

I’ve been reading these posts from the past years.  I thought they would sound hyperbolic.  If anything, they sound too accepting.  Some of the things that happens on these lines are so way past unacceptable.  Even from this view, when I’m not as upset about it, the things people have said are way past unacceptable.

I’m glad that I wrote this down back when it happened.  Some of it is so beyond toxic.  I don’t even remember all the details of how toxic much of it was at this point.  I also notice that many of the people who said the toxic stuff aren’t around, or I haven’t heard their voice in months or years.

I had been calling the CA warmline a lot.  There was a girl who always had to have the last word in.  She would disagree with what you said right at the end.  If you wanted to say that you didn’t agree, she would cut you off, saying time was up.

I told someone else on the line about that and told her that my plan was to ask how long I have to talk.  Then I would talk to that amount of time and hang up.  Then I wouldn’t allow that girl to invalidate my entire call at the end of it.  That person agreed it was a good idea.

The next time I got the girl who had to have the last word in, I asked how long the call would be.  She wouldn’t tell me.  She said that she got to decide.  I took the shortest time possible - 10 minutes and said that I would talk to 10 minutes and hang up.  She told me that she could hang up before that.

I said that I wanted to make sure that the reason for cutting the calls short wasn’t to help more people but to give control to the call takers to cut you off when they didn’t want to talk to you or to get the last word in.

She reiterated that it was up to the “counselor” to decide how long the call is and when the call is over.

I asked for her manager.  She said she could give my phone number to a manager.  I told her that I would be playing telephone tag, so was there somewhere else I could call, she said no.  Then she hung up.  Before the 10 minutes.

One girl was silent, and I could tell she had tuned out.  She hadn’t heard a word I said.  I could hear her typing.  I asked what she was typing.  She said she was typing her lab report.  I asked if I was in the lab report.  She thought she was reassuring when she told me that the lab report didn’t have anything to do with me. 

She didn’t think about or care about that she wasn’t listening to me, the only thing she was supposed to be doing.

She even tried to convince me that typing gave her more focus to listen.  Only problem was that she had completely tuned me out, so she didn’t know a single think I said.

When I asked her to give my email to her manager, she couldn’t repeat back my email address, probably because she wasn’t writing it down.  I never got an email from anyone. 

Some call taker felt the need to tell me that I need a reset and that I need to ignore some problem in my life instead of taking the action that I’m taking.  But she only knows 10 minutes of the situation and then pretends like she has all the answers.

She has already admitted to treating me like her Rotweiller puppy and finding the need to tell me what to do to make sure that I’m cared for.  Bunch of baloney.  She’s just a fixit and a blowhard.

But I should probably just hang up on her from now on.

I was feeling really down and asked the person that I was looking for encouragement and positivity.  This is what she came up with.

1) You woke up this morning

2) You have a roof over your head.

3) You’re not dying from coronavirus.

That was supposed to make me feel so much better.  I asked her if that would make her feel better and she dodged the question saying that she doesn’t kow what makes people feel good.

I started out by saying that I’ve been disappointed in the lines and was feeling down about it.  So I said that it might be nice to talk about something positive to get my mind off the negative assholes on the lines.

I hung up on a couple people because I didn’t like the way their voice sounded.  I couldn’t really put my finger on what about their voice told me they’d be awful.  Maybe it was the way their voice was so uncaring.  Maybe it was the hesitancy they answered with that made me think they were new. 

I don’t know what it is exactly but there’s an immediate sense when I don’t want to talk to someone.  I decided to talk to the person when I got them again just to see if they were going to live down to my expectations.  And yup, he did. 

I had a feeling he was going to be silent, not talkatie and when he was talkative, he’d be talking about his own interests.  Exactly what happened. 

More and more, the call lines are transferring their calls to call takers in their own home.  I think the trend is great.  I wish they had done it before and asked why they couldn’t do it before.  And now, of course they can.

It’s especially great for certain lines where the office culture is toxic.  One line in particular has gotten a lot better because the call are not made to the call center.  I cringe a little less when I call them now.  They had/have a culture of gossip and ganging up and bullying the callers.  It’s more difficult to do when they’re there by themselves.  I’m sure that the toxic people will still be toxic, but at least they can’t get validation from others about it.  I hope that line improves their other protocols as well.

They have a feedback system on that line.  If they could strengthen that system and hire better workers, that system could be great.

The amount of people talking to people in the office while they’re talking to you is very high on these lines.  People seem to think that it’s OK to talk to other people while they’re talking to you because they’re just whispering.  Then they gaslight you and pretend that nothing is really happening.

When I ask them what’s gong on, they try to pretend they were really listening.

After talking with someone a couple times who told me that I could count on her, she decides that there’s a new rule that I can only talk for 10 minutes because I’m a “regular”.  She then tries to convince me that all the lines do that.

No, they don’t..

In fact, I bet even her line doesn’t do it.  I would bet that if I called that line again, her co-workers would give me the same amount of time.

She was aggressive and nasty, asking if I had a therapist.  When I said no, she asked me if I was going to harm myself.  That’s a BS question.  I had told her multiple times that I wasn’t ever going to harm myself.  But she was in an ugly mood.

She told me in an ugly way that she didn’t think she was helping and that I didn’t even know what I was looking for, I told her I thought she helped in the past, and I had rated her a 5.

Her whole tone and attitude shifted and it was like she was a different person.  A complete shift. 

But by then, she had shown her true colors.  She doesn’t care at all about callers.  She cares about how they make her feel.  If they don’t make her feel the way she wants, then she won’t help them or make up rules or enforce rules that aren’t necessary.

I’m sure that someone would back her up if I questioned this new made up rule.  But I’m also pretty sure it’s not enforced on anyone else.  New “rules” pop up all the time when even one call taker doesn’t get what they want.   And administration almost always takes their word for it.  And you can easily get banned for someone else’s bad night.

Even though I always tell people on the lines that I’m not looking for advice and in fact, I don’t want any, they always give it.  The standard list goes meditation, yoga, listening to music, reading a book and going for a walk.  It’s so standard and cliche that I’m tired of it.

People like to pretend that they have the answers, but they don’t.  They just have trite simplistic nonsense.

I just read that gratitude interventions don’t work for anxiety and depression and yet, I’ve heard people suggest a gratitude journal so many times I’ve lost count.

Every single crisis line person who has recommended a warmline didn’t know what a warmline was.  Everyone single one of them thought it was just a place to chat.  None of them knew that the call takers on a warmline have a mental illness and a couple people argued with me that it’s not true.

Crisis line workers need better information if they’re going to recommend something.

Then arguing with me about something I know more about than they will ever know if super annoying.  Why argue with a caller anyway?

I was telling someone about how another call taker had basically tried to “fix me” every time I said something.  She asked if I was bullied when I was younger.  I told her that I don’t know a single person who wasn’t rejected or bullied at some point in their life.  But for the most part, I got a lot of approval. 

She then went on to tell me that I need to learn how to give that approval to myself.  Bullshit.

No one lives in a vacuum.  We all need some kind of validation at points, especially if we’re starting something new or uncertain.  Pretending that people can get that all by themselves is stupid or naive.

I was calling a warmline. . . a warmline.  Warmlines are lines where they don’t take crisis calls.  But on this warmline, they supposedly shorten the calls to give other people a chance to talk.  But they make the rules up as they go along.

Given how petty and chidish that staff is, I don’t think it’s a good idea. 

I’ve found that people who don’t like you will give you 10 minutes when the normal time should be 20.  There’s not much anyone can say in 10 minutes.

There’s a woman who thinks she’s so clever in telling me every time that they’re busy and she only has 10 minutes for me.  What a stupid, self-important, self-absorbed girl she is.

I talked for 10 minutes and hung up.

In hindsight, I wish I had hung up before the call because it was more irritating than helpful, knowing that she was playing a game.