The Call Centre Lesson
By: Richard O’Shea
"Have you had an accident in the last three years?"
In my early twenties, I worked briefly at a call centre. My job was to cold-call people and ask that simple question. It was not a good job, but at least I learnt I didn’t want to work in sales.
One afternoon at about 2:30, the office seemed to drift into a lull. Nobody was asleep, but nobody was exactly full of enthusiasm either. The energy in the room had dropped. We were minimum-wage workers making the same calls over and over again, and it showed.
Suddenly, the manager stood up and shouted across the room: “There’s no energy! Everybody stand up!“
The room obediently shuffled to its feet. The workers stood. The phones remained. The script remained. The afternoon remained. We simply continued making the same calls while standing up. The experience was demeaning and demoralizing. It made us feel as though we were viewed as animals being herded into labor, rather than as valued employees.
I did not last long in that job, but the memory stayed with me.
At the time, I understood what the manager was trying to do. He saw a room full of tired people and wanted to create energy. The problem was that he treated energy as something that could be demanded rather than something that needed to be nurtured.
Years later, as a teacher, I sometimes think about that afternoon when I look out at a classroom. There are days when students seem tired. There are days when a lesson is dragging. There are days when I feel the urge to push harder, speak louder, or squeeze one more activity into the remaining time.
When that happens, I remember the call centre.
The answer is rarely more pressure. Sometimes the answer is a break.
A two-minute conversation with a partner, a quick game, a chance to stand up and stretch, or simply a moment to stop and reset can change the atmosphere of a lesson. These pauses can feel unproductive, especially when there is a syllabus to cover and a clock ticking away on the classroom wall. Yet some of the most productive moments in a lesson happen immediately after a brief pause.
I have found that students often return with greater focus, more willingness to participate, and sometimes even better ideas. Rest is not the opposite of engagement. In many cases, it is what makes engagement possible.
The call centre manager was right about one thing: the room lacked energy. What he missed was that tired people do not become energized simply because someone tells them to be.
Students are no different.
When people are given a moment to breathe, reset, and reconnect with themselves and those around them, genuine energy often follows on its own. That is one lesson I learned from a job I barely remember, and one that continues to influence the way I teach today.
