Anyone who has ever worked in a call center knows one thing for sure – it’s an peculiar environment all unto itself.

It’s actually not that difficult to get to the top of the heap, so to speak, and once there you’ll have plenty of incentives to stay.

OP is one of those people who is good at the job and knows it; her numbers even earned her a promotion.

Context: I have been working in this health insurance company for the past 3 years i recently took another position with better hours and better pay but this time it was to coordinate appointments with doctors and specialists.

My Metrics were always great and the reason i was selected for the new position was due to my metrics.

The only problem is one of those employees we’ve all met at one time or another, of course dubbed “Karen.”

This has been brewing since October 2022. We use to have a coworker lets call her Karen. Karen is this old lady that thinks she knows it all everything she says its right and she often blames everything on someone else(Typical Karen activities).

The first time i interacted with her was back in October when i message her via our work chat because she messed up Prior Authorization for a patient and the M.D office was calling to have the person that created the authorization fix the issue. The conversation went like this:

Me: Hi Good Morning, I have and MD office calling requesting to speak to you in regards a Prior authorization that looks incomplete.

Karen: And you couldn’t help them? This is a call center you’re supposed to help. And i don’t even know who that MD is.

Me: You’re correct this a call center however you created the Authorization and as you know i cannot fix Authorizations that were not created by me. And also they will like to speak with you specifically. (I also provided her the patient record number and the MD office phone number).

Karen: Well im not available to talk to them.

Me: OK.

I went back to the call i specifically told the M.D what she said including the she’s not available to talk. But hopefully she will call them back to fix the issue. I also sent a message to my direct supervisor with a screenshot of our conversation and i simply said “This is unprofessional especially in an environment like ours”

That negative interaction would come back to haunt OP when “Karen” was moved to Quality Assurance.

Fast forward the start of the year an Karen took a Position with our Quality assurance dept due to them being understaffed. I used to work in the QA dept and i knew the ins and out and knew she would be assigned to our dept since she already had experience.

Context: our Quality assurance give scores us from 100 and if we miss something we get points deducted, example miss HIPAA -20,give inaccurate info -10, don’t advise people for our survey -5 etc.

In January comes my first bad score in 3 years in the company it was a 56%, i was astonished because is the first time i’ve had a bad score. But i also make sure this score was correct, our company gives us the choice to listen to our calls just to be sure our just im case the Quality Agent made a mistake.

I listened to my call and i did everything right i completed the information provided good service and i asked if the pt need assistance with anything else and provided closing script. On the Quality note it was stated that i didn’t offered any help and that i didn’t even completed HIPAA.

I sent it to my supervisor and he stated that when i offered the closing script the patient asked something and i reply and disconnected the call. Ok? I still said the closing script and his question and my answer lasted literally 5 seconds.

My supervisor still went to her and managed to fix the score to 95% because she felt like i didn’t provide a survey. If someone has worked in a call center you know that metrics are everything and 1 bad thing will quickly not get your monthly bonuses and on top of that we get our asses handed to us by management because if we don’t achieve the metrics they also don’t get bonuses.

I took screenshots of our conversation and save it in a file then i sent it to my personal email since i know our IT dept is know for deleting anything that is not a working system or appropriate.

The second (and third and fourth) time it happened her supervisor failed to respond, so OP tried to talk sense into “Karen” on her own.

Fast forward to a few days ago.

I had received several scores ranging from 85% to 80% and only one 100% score. The 100 score i received because Karen wasn’t the one who audited my call and the other person found everything alright.

But the 85% looked fishy since the first thing you see if the patient name i quickly remembered the call because the person was funny and i enjoyed the call. I listened to the call and of course i did everything perfectly.

However Karen put on the system thats she deducted 10 points for not telling the patient that he had a copay for the visit and another 5 points for extending the call. What?

I contacted my supervisor and let him know of what happened however i didn’t receive a response. I was confused so i sent a message to a coworker who told that they have been having the same issue with Karen with inaccurate audits and the department not achieving their monthly goals due to it.

Since my supervisor didn’t reply, I did what everyone does when management does not reply. I message Karen.

I sent her a message that just said: “Hey i have seen some inaccurate audits and i would like to know if you could recheck them since i listened to the calls and everything was done properly”.

The reply i received was “all audits scores are final and it cannot be appealed”.

I knew it was a lie since i worked with Quality before and i know it could be changed. I replied” you know i work in that dept for 1 year and i know it could be recheck and reversed right”.

That did not go well, so she forwarded all of her concerns to “Karen’s” supervisor.

Not only that, but she got all of her similarly wronged coworkers to do the same.

Karen said “Your previous position is irrelevant in this matter if you don’t like the score you can go ahead and submit a complaint to my supervisor”.

I replied: “Ok have a good day”. (Knowing that her supervisor knows me really well)

Cue Malicious compliance

I just didn’t create 1 formal complaint i created 1 complaint for each time she scored me incorrectly not only that but i also told my 19 coworkers what she said and advised them that if they would like their scores overturned and rechecked they could send a complaint to her supervisor.

But only to send 1 complaint per bad score also to let you guys know we don’t get 1 audit a month no no we get audited 10 times per month. In the span of 24 hrs her supervisor must had received around 200 complaints from our dept complaining for 1 person Karen.

The first complaint was mine with Karen conversation saying that all decision are final and she cannot recheck or over turned and also saying to submit a complaint to her supervisor.

Her supervisor sent me a message saying that they will evaluate all the complaints and scores and we will be receiving a message.

It finally went in OP’s favor, because everyone knows call centers live and die by their metrics.

That was on Monday.

Tuesday we didn’t get any messages.

Wednesday i couldn’t go to work due to my illness.

But today i received a message from her supervisor stating that my scores have been reviewed and properly scored.

And also stating that my supervisor will be under investigation because any complaint should be submitted to his manager and he never submitted anything.

Also, that the employee has been terminated.

But the best part is logging into our chat and seeing Karen’s profile with no pictures and instead of her name it only said unknown user.

The morale of our group is better and i hope we don’t have issues again.

Does Redd get how big a win this was? I bet so!

It definitely takes a certain kind of person.

Some people should just not be handed any kind of power over others.

Pettiness is not at all uncommon.

Make it make sense.

Faster isn’t always better.

I do not miss my time answering inbound calls.

But I won’t say I didn’t learn a lot.