9:40pm Thursday 11th March 2010
By Tom Parkes
A DAD who lost his job with Vodafone has written a humorous book about call centre life.
Duncan Stonehouse, 25, was one of 60 staff laid off when the communications giant closed its call-handling base in Wyncolls Road, Colchester, last year.
Although he is still out of work, he has found a silver lining to the cloud of redundancy, by writing In the Call Centre of Things.
The experience of ringing a call centre is often frustrating for customers, with gripes including long waits, annoying music and unhelpful staff.
But Mr Stonehouse’s book provides a wry look from the other end of the phone line, with tales of the abuse he and his colleagues suffered from the public.
He said: “Sometimes, when we were on night shifts, it would mainly be American customers phoning up, and some of them could get quite threatening if you weren’t able to help.
“One guy told a colleague he was going to fly over here in John Travolta’s plane to come and get him.”
Mr Stonehouse, who lives in High Woods with his wife, Laura, and their two-year-old son, Will, added: “Reading the book is like going down the pub with a mate and hearing about all the things that went wrong at work.
“For instance, there was the conversation with a sales girl who convinced me to order so much paper I had a stockroom full and had to make up excuses to use it.
“There is nothing horrendously controversial, but just some amusing anecdotes about what working in an office is like.”
Published a few weeks ago, the book is selling in online bookstores, including Amazon, and has attracted reviews in America.
Mr Stonehouse hopes to get it stocked at Waterstones and plans a launch party, in Colchester, later this month, for friends and former Vodafone colleagues.
Meanwhile, his search for work goes on. The former Stanway School pupil said: “There isn’t a lot about, except care work, and I do enough of that looking after my son at home.”
In the Call Centre of Things is available at www.xlibris.com/ inthecallcentreofthings
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