It Takes A Certain Sort

What Do You Mean - Its Over Policed?

So, we had noticed that for certain days there was a small team of 'friends' that were sat in a quiet area of the call centre. The main floor was reasonably quiet, but these guys seems to be really busy. This was making the people on my team very curious as to what may be going on here,

We were smelling the proverbial rat!!

There were two inbound telephone numbers for the centre. This was for disaster recovery purposes. If there were an issue with one number failing, all calls coming into us could be transferred to another number and switched to us via another route.

We were noticing that this small team was receiving calls when there were no inbound calls queuing. We could be sure about this because you can follow the route calls went around the call centre floor and these guys were most defiantly not on our circuit of calls. We got to chatting amongst ourselves during our breaks and realised that our whole team had all noticed this and we were really curious as to what was going on here.

In between calls a number of teams customer service agents started to get more and more curious. We noticed there also more supervisors manning the control desk and monitoring positions than would normally be required. Then another piece of a jigsaw was raised, some of these supervisors were meant to be on alternative shifts as even days off!

Now there is nothing more that a group of call centre staff love than a good old bitch, creation of a conspiracy theory or adding up 2 plus 2 and getting 5.

But what we don't do is question anyone in the management team. Oh no, no, no, don't challenge the system!

At this time there was some civil unrest in the country. There was a huge amount of rioting in a number of the cities around the country. Having said that, the centre of the troubles, the catalyst for all this unrest around our country was based on one high street and a dozen side roads in a certain area within one of the country's main cities.

The media - papers, radio and television were sending out mixed messages. There was a strong belief that the actions around the country were being centralised and coordinated for information to be shared with local 'operations centre's'.

There was also a belief that certain independent radio stations, local papers and tv reporters were receiving detailed information about the timing and locations of incidents around the country.

Now, back to the rumour mongers in our national call centre.

We got too nosey and some of our team members wandered over to the 'out of the way' team and asked them just what they were doing. We were told that they were working on a new sales team project. They were proofing a new concept to see if could be rolled out in a call centre environment.

Mnnnnnnnnn.

Peter, one of the guys on another team was dating Andrew, a supervisor. On our behalf, because we are a group of the nosiest people you will ever meet, but not so bad that we will push for answers, Peter asked his boyfriend, Andrew what was going on.

He was told the same story. A special project team.

Now, that should have been that. We had raised the question with both the 'project' team and a member of the line management group.

However, something was nagging away in the background. Something was not true.

My group chatted amongst ourselves as we just did not believe. Surely if there were a new product being tested by the company, they would have been shouting about it and looking for our support. This led to our main issue, if a special area was being set up, where was the buy in by all the contact teams operatives, when were the interviews carried out for it's members and why were we not asked if we were interested in joining a new team.

Now, what happened next is conjecture, has never been verified or confirmed in any was at all. Andrew and Peter had a long chat. It was put out there that it was possible that the new hidden away team was taking regular calls, but in addition on the backup telephone number, receiving certain 'troubles' information from groups around the country and passing the collated data onto 'The Media.'

Of course, this cannot be proven, but shortly before the end of the 'period of issues around the country' ended, the team was disbanded. The owner of our workplace was a huge media corporation that was used to grey areas and fighting the state. This action may well have been condoned by them, but who knows.

Now, there is one more strand to this story.

Bare in mind that the centre of this story is based on certain events occurring within a specific area in one of our cities. The crux of the issue here was all about the fact that this was a very 'ethnic area' where some of the residents had been harmed by members' of the law enforcement officers. Tension was running high as there was little to no communication between the parties.

It was claimed that the area was being over policed, which was being strongly denied.

I was, at the time, dating Andrea who lived a number of miles away from the centre of the troubled area. One of her flat mates, Clare, was dating Leroy, a member of a certain ethnic group.

We were all together in Andria and Clare's flat one evening, chatting about what was happening in our city and the country as a whole. After quite a number of fingers of a certain whisky we were all loose enough to talk about all the various conspiracy theories being thrown around.

To my surprise Leroy asked us if we really wanted to know the truth, and did we trust him?

Alcohol makes a person or people brave. Andrea and myself said YES. Moments later, with her eyes gleaming, Clare whooped and said, 'Yeh, let's do it.'

Clare's boyfriend then told us that we were safe with him and that where we were about to go, he was known. Leeroy made us all promise that we would just sit and look. We were to stay quiet, not talk, not point and to show no reaction.

This was now very scary. We looked at each other and there was a silent acceptance of the terms.

After we all got into Leroy's car, we drove towards that road and side streets that made up the area that was at the centre of the country's troubles. We drove up in a normal car with just trust in Leroy, Clare's boyfriend who I barely knew. Close to the area he pulled over and asked us all if he should carry on, or turn around and head back to the girls flat.

I looked into Andrea's eyes and we both knew neither of us had ever been so scared in our lives, but we had to take this opportunity and to know.

Clare was on fire with the excitement of what we were about to do. She was sat on her hands to stop them waving in the thrill of the moment. Leroy confirmed to Andrea and me, I am sure Clare already knew this, that he was one of the organisers of these troubles and that one of his cousins was a member of the 'special team' where I worked. I asked nothing more and was given no further information.

We drove into the centre of the problematic area. It was so empty and quiet. As we were leaving the area, we were able to see down a number of the side streets. They were full of coaches seating a very large number of specialist riot police personnel. I was so frightened, my heart was dancing in fear and I had a cold sweat. I don't think I drew another breath until we were a long way out of that location.

I had learned how the state lied to its people.

Not over-policed!!

I went back to work with a deep respect for our owners and the special team for what it was possible that they may be doing.

Nothing was ever proven about any persons or groups being involved in the movement of information during this time. I think when it was all over, the authorities just wanted everything to go away. There was more to be lost by the state than to be gained by investigating this further and prosecuting those involved.

This was both a stomach churningly frightening time with huge dollops of excitement and respect.