Suspended with pay.. Will I be sacked?

ConfusedMan999

Recently started a new job working at a call centre. I have only been doing the job around 10 days, after 2 weeks of training.

On Friday night last week I received a call, as the call connected my computer system crashed. At this point I could hear no customer on the line. I took off my head set, put it down on my desk, and assumed I would have to restart my computer. As I was doing this I can be heard, after having to listen back to the call with my manager, saying 'F*cking computer'. Obviously not aimed at anyone, it was just uttered to myself. Little did I know a customer was still on the line, after a long while, as I am trying to restart the crashed system, I hear a customer out of nowhere say 'Hello'. I pick up my headset and reply. He says he heard swearing on the line, wants to complain and so on. I went through the call with him, eventually he asks to speak to a manger, and does.

Now at work today I have been taken into the office and spoken to by my manager and they have asked me what happened, took notes and so on. They then went on to say I am suspended without pay and a discussion about what should happen will next will have to take place and it is considered a sackable offence.

I'm less then a month into the job including training, what are the chances of me keeping my job? I am not hopeful, suspended with pay is usually the 'You are getting sacked' sign, right?

flower77g

Your chances of keeping the job isn't zero. You'd have to be retrained (in case you swore by accident again) so a suspension without pay is about the only thing the employer could meaningful have done.

You should get a disciplinary meeting where you need to appear contrite and apologise, that you don't know what came over you etc. If lucky this would be a (final) written warning with some extra training given. Stress how out of character this is and your good relationships with colleagues in the office etc.

Comms69

Suspended without pay??

Or with pay??

Diamandis

There is a chance you could keep your job but I wouldn't take the risk on someone who had only been employed with us for a few weeks.

ConfusedMan999

Suspended WITH pay.

AvocadosBeforeMortgages

There's a chance you might keep your job, but I'd be using the time to apply for new ones just in case.

jobbingmusician

I think one thing you could say at the hearing is that you are very sorry you swore, but one of the reasons you were stressed was that you were concerned about the customer. It would be reasonable for you to assume that the customer thought that you had put the phone down on them, and this is what upset you. You are devastated that the customer is upset, as the thing that provoked you to swear (and of course you will never do that again) was actually your worry that the call had been broken off without you being able to help them.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

Are we really living in a world where some sensitive soul is so upset at overhearing someone swear that heads must roll for it?

Does this person never go outside their own front door?

While the advice above is no doubt best for the OP to follow, to be safe, the customer's attitude is !!!!ing ridiculous.

TELLIT01

The OP had a natural reaction to a system failure and was extremely unfortunate that not only did a customer hear him but was so precious that they insisted on reporting him.
On the system I worked on the phone system was linked to the computer, so if the computer went down the phone system went with it. The situation the OP found himself in couldn't have happened to us, and it happened all too ****ing regularly! :-)
Hopefully his management will accept that the swearing wasn't aimed at the customer, and that he believed the call had disconnected.

Smodlet

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

Are we really living in a world where some sensitive soul is so upset at overhearing someone swear that heads must roll for it?

Does this person never go outside their own front door?

While the advice above is no doubt best for the OP to follow, to be safe, the customer's attitude is !!!!ing ridiculous.

Unfortunately for those of us who are still human, this reaction seems to be the rule rather than the exception for customers who, of course, never, ever swear themselves, ever. Call centre staff in particular are expected to be robots, imho. My idea of hell. At least, if you are serving a customer face to face, they can see you are not swearing at them but at your computer in the incident described.

Good luck, OP though I would use the time to look for another job just in case. Since you have been there so short a time, if you doubt you would get a reference which did not mention this unfortunate occurrence, you could just omit BT from your CV. Nothing wrong with taking a month's break between jobs.

motorguy

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

Are we really living in a world where some sensitive soul is so upset at overhearing someone swear that heads must roll for it?

Does this person never go outside their own front door?

While the advice above is no doubt best for the OP to follow, to be safe, the customer's attitude is !!!!ing ridiculous.

Exactly.

Thats the world we live in now - customers expectations are sky high and companies jump to their tune.

People do need to get a grip.

I blame the Snowflake Generation