To need to leave work on time??

[elliebo]

I work in a call centre for a major high street bank.
I work the late shift, finishing at 10pm. Currently on waiting list to change to working the earlier shift, but could be months.
Call centre located in very rough area. Husband comes to collect me as I don't drive (epilepsy) and the night time public transport is a nightmare.
Trouble is, I can often be still stuck on a call from a customer at 10.10 or 10.15pm. All calls are recorded, so have to read from tedious script and not "skip" any bits of it.... 9 times out of 10, the customer will be complaining about charges, interest calculations etc and will have already had an answer from me and a full explanation. They just want to stay on phone moaning..
Meanwhile, my husband is waiting outside in a really dodgy area at 10.15pm wondering where the hell I am and why I'm not out of work.
I've raised this with my manager multiple times, I blagged a bit and said I need to get out on time because of "caring responsibilities" at home but manager just said bad luck if a customer calls at 9.59pm just as I'm all ready to shoot out of the door! Any other call centre workers share my frustrations?
All I'm asking is to get out of work on time, not for anything else.
Of course, could understand if I was working for the emergency services or other sort of "expect the unexpected" kind of life and death type job... but a call centre?
Any tips for getting out on time?

Expecting you to finish the call you are on, doesn't seem unreasonable. It's basic good manners. If your dh is sitting in reception or outside in his car, he won't come to any harm and on average it won't be for more than a few minutes.Just explain that you maybe a few minutes late out.

I hated this situation when I worked at a call centre. Its all one way. Be in early to sign in and continue to manage a call no matter how long after your end time it goes on for. That and the lectures on toilet breaks, and being penalised for being as little as a minute late.

As others have said, you can be a bit smarter with wrap, i.e. call at 9:45, ends at 9.52, drag out the wrapping, become a master of the dark arts. But there is only some circumstances that this works without becoming obvious avoidance.

Getting another job isn't as easy as people seem to think, but maybe start to progress your development towards a more back office function.

I see what you're saying, but if its a persistent customer and/or a complex query, these calls can go on and on, well beyond "a few minutes". 15/20/25 minutes late at that time of night without any warning is not really acceptable.

Waiting in his car, in a really dodgy area? Intrigued where this 'really dodgy area' that a bank has chosen for its staff to work is, and that your husband would find so intimidating. Sounds like you're topping it up slightly.

You chose to work in a call centre, it comes with the job. Like others have said, find a technique to avoid the last minute calls.

I wish staff on these late calls were empowered to be able to say to the caller at 10pm "we have reached the end of our permitted call time, but I will have an Agent call you tomorrow to pick this back up, what time works for you?"

Alternatively, the company could ask callers to push buttons at the start for the nature of the call, and any that they know need the 5min shpeil are told office closed and those who just have quick queries are filtered through.

At the end of the day, though, if the business still has a volume of calls at that time of night, regularly, then they should be staffing later.

Its just one of those annoying things that you need to deal with in that line of work I’m afraid. I’m in retail and it’s the same there. The number of customers that come in literally 2 minutes before doors close and want to do exchanges/refunds 😬 im in a shoe shop so there’s lots of trying on involved. I’m paid until 15 minutes after the shop closing time to allow me to cash up at the end of the day and fill in takings sheets/do banking etc. But if a difficult customer walks in the door at 5.28pm there’s no way I’m out of the shop by 5.45 🤷🏻‍♀️ It’s just the way it goes!

Thanks for all the replies, some great suggestions.
I've recently started to say something like "the building is being locked shortly so I'll need to go now.." (making it sound as though I'd otherwise like to have kept talking but can't) but that doesn't always work - especially with angry customers. Even on the occasions where fire alarm is going off and we're having a drill, some idiot customers are like "what about my late charges?" or "how did you calculate that interest?" - They don't care that you absolutely NEED to end the call.

In the case of a fire alarm, your phone system should trip into emergency mode, with a recorded message telling customers their call has been disconnected. You shouldn’t waste time in a fire/incident persuading customers you need to go.

Can you take your 15 min break at 9:45? Does your system support handing calls off to a colleague/manager for them to take over? If the problem is just swept under the carpet and seen as part of the job, it won’t be addressed. I mean, it is part of the job, even the best WFMs couldn’t mitigate for all of this, but there should be fair payment for additional time worked, or some sort of mechanism to stop you having to work extra. Agree with above comments that if you aren’t being paid, this should be addressed on a whole-workforce, union type way.

I would not be answering any calls after 9:55pm.

If your boss has an issue with it ask them if you can calculate all of the extra hours worked and come in later one day or something.

I would check your contract though as often it will say something about staying later than you need to.

I’m sure your DH will be safe in a locked car for 10 mins.

I had the same problem. Worked until 8pm,not a rough area but rural. Last public transport from there was 8.10pm. If I got a call at 7.45pm say, you can judge the type within 5 minutes. If I knew it was the kind to get the call done and be off I would drag the call out as long as possible. Systems running slow or make small talk. If it was the kind that I knew would be dragging it out I would wrap it up by 7.55pm, this is what I done, I'm sorry there's nothing more I can do, thank you for your understanding blah blah. On odd occasions this didn't work I demanded to be paid for my time. If they didn't like it, I pointed out I'd paid £8 for a taxi home in order to serve that customer. I had quite understanding managers though.
Failing this your best asking DH to pick up at 10.15, keep track of what extra you Worked because of overlapping calls and after one month ask for it in overtime. Absolutely shitty how they get away with it.

You can't just not answer them though, they come through automatically. We get paid but only if it's 15 mins or more over

I don't think I've ever had a job where you walk out on the minute you finish. Ten fifteen minutes seems normal to me (in current industry it could be hours but it is one of those life or death things). Even in admin , waitressing, retail Jobs, you have to go and get your things, log off etc, sometimes change out of uniform, even most office Jobs you might log off bang on give but you wouldn't be outside at 10/5 whenever you finish. I think YABU

I understand it is a minor irritant, but 15 minutes is not that long TBH.

If you're getting paid, I'd just see it as a shitty part of the job. There are lots of jobs where it's impossible to leave bang on time, but as long as you're being paid for it, I wouldn't get too upset.

Can your husband not wait somewhere safer and you text him when you finish, and then he can drive round and get you if he genuinely feels unsafe?

Just ask your DH to come for 10.15pm.
I'd be really annoyed tbh if I rang and spoke to Customer Services and they tried to get rid of me by saying they needed to lock the building. Appalling Customer service and very unprofessional. So the people who've been on hold 30mins and finally get through at 9.58pm do you expect them to be done in 2mins just because you don't want to keep your husband waiting?
I work in Children's Services and the Emergency Duty Team start at 4.30pm on a Friday, if a red comes in that takes 5hrs to sort out (probably in much worse areas than your office) it's just bad luck unfortunately.

Yeah but in these jobs its only "bad luck" in one direction, isn't it? And I can tell you from experience that this "bad luck" happens frequently. It was all well and good when I had no immediate plans, I'd drag it out and claim the time back, but when I had to be somewhere I was screwed. The employers really should be paying people until 10:45 if the lines close at 10.

Sorry, 10:15 would be reasonable. 10.45 maybe a bit extreme.

This reminds me - slightly different because it was voluntary work. I used to be a Samaritan and the rules stated that there had to be at least 2 of you on shift at any time. The number of times one of us was on a call when the shift finished at 2.00am (and the office was then closed until the next morning so no relief volunteers) and the other had to hang on, sometimes for a long time, until the call finished. When dealing with suicidal callers, you absolutely couldn’t hurry them on,

It's shitty but just how it is. Call control helps somewhat if there's no call swing but if there's swing you're at the mercy of calls coming through in that last few mins.
If this is happening every day then agree with others, get your husband to pick you up a little later. As others have said there's very few jobs where you finish on the dot.
Keep pushing for the change of hours

Personally either don't take a call in the last 5 minutes or if that isn't possible, log the periods you're late clocking out in blocks of 15 minutes (so if it's 20 minutes late count this as two blocks) and then calculate the extra pay you are owed to HR.

It's their choice: they either let you clock out on time or pay you for the extra. Most hourly rate jobs dock by 15 minutes if employees clock in late by a few minutes, so I'd say it works both ways in this instance.

Good luck and stand your ground.

You have an employer problem here.
The answer is make a point/fuss about it. You wont be getting paid 100k a year, so you shouldnt be giving your employer labour time that isnt mutually agreed on.
But it depends on how much you need the job/how shit the employer is as it can get sticky so i realise you might not be able to make a 'fuss' but you can insist on getting paid for it at least.

A smart employer will take people off call queue 5-10 minutes before shift end to avoid paying overtime.
The answer here is to record it yourself (they will be able to cross match with call records) and insist on getting paid/time in lieu. If they say no, ask what you need to do to hand the call over. If they say stay on the call unpaid, ring Citizens Advice on this cos nope.

If they are paying you, you need to flag 'i think this call is going to run over' to the supervisor every. Single. Time. Give them fair warning, like 2-3 minutes. But you need to flag in the moment, not say after 'oh i stayed late twice this week'

@KILM but you can't take people off the call queue before finish - someone has to answer the phone!
I do think you should be paid if it goes over 15 mins, I've been stuck on a call 2.5hrs before. Got paid for it but it was miserable finishing at 5.30am instead of 3am! Nothing I could do though

I’ve been there and left my previous job because they could not guarantee you won’t get that call. I got landed with this prick who was so up himself and was so rude that I went oveR by 35 minutes . ( my hubby was waiting for me too ) he was fuming!, The day after I handed in my notice .

I briefly had a job like this and there was a man that was well known for calling within the final two minutes before we closed. He must have done it for badness/to be awkward as he was retired in his seventies so would have had all day to call. If we ever needed to call him back he’d always say any time the next day was fine.

I had to wait 55 minutes for the next train if I wasn’t out of work on time so it added up to a lot of hours that I’d have been at home rather than stuck on calls or stood on a cold platform. They were also really strict about people being at their desk at 8:45 on a morning to be signed in and woe betide anybody that came back a couple of minutes late from their lunch break. I get that some people take the piss but I’m sure they can work out who those people are.

No advice really but I sympathise. It’s just one of those things you’ve got to suck up in that type of job unfortunately.

Any attempt to train or cajole customers into being brief on a call will fail. Banks have in general been one of the worst at using changing use of technology and Covid as an excuse to reduce customer service to the bare minimum they can get away with.

I used to work near to the House of Commons, and surprise surprise, always got good prompt service whenever I walked in to the bank branch there. A great contrast to any other branch ever used.