Safety…

The call centre I work at expects the agents to work over at the end of the day. For example, if we finish work at 5pm and a call comes through 2 minutes before hand for a sale, we are expected to set up that sale even though it can take anything from 10 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the policy or amount of policies. The same goes if we finish later in the evening.
I refuse to do this if I’m finishing later.

Finishing up to 5.30pm is ok. I catch a bus home, 3 in fact. After 5.30pm the buses are running less often. After 7pm they are once an hour from work, on the hour, into town, which is just over one mile away. Otherwise I have to walk down a road where people have been attacked. Once in town my next bus is every half hour, so I have to wait again. Because of this, if I finish after 7pm I get a taxi. Much safer. However, if I’m stuck on a call my taxi is not going to wait.

I’m not allowed to use mobile phone in the call centre, because we deal with personal details of customers. So I can’t phone the taxi and ask the driver to wait for me. This means I will have to phone for another taxi after finishing the call, and because they probably then have new pick ups I’m going to be kept waiting up to half hour.

I don’t think this is right for the company to expect me to do this. I feel that this is a direct risk to my safety, so I am refusing to do it.

I’m pretty sure that I have a case here against the company if they insist on it.