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Notes -
It was not my first choice, but it was the best out of available options. I got an offer from an MSP in the same city but it would have paid significantly less than $20 an hour. The ISP at least paid a somewhat liveable wage for the area CoL. Plus I've always kinda liked the idea of working for a national infrastructure-type company, which helped me swallow the situation, I just didn't figure I'd end up in a call center. So it goes, for gen z. Those were the only two offers I got in 6 months of looking, though I wasn't grinding as hard as I could have been with applications.
At one point I was considering trying to switch to a field tech role with my current employer, which I still haven't ruled out completely. They are well-compensated in our company (for what the job entails) and can hit well north of 70k (more in HCOL or unionized areas) after just 2 years on the job if you know what you're doing without even having to re-interview just by passing tests, with room to move up beyond that into interviewed positions. I'm not exactly in shape but I'm skinny and wouldn't have any issues climbing utility ladders or working 48 inches below distribution voltage. I'd have to learn how to drill into masonry though. A significant cohort of my call center colleagues are older guys that used to be business class field techs, they say it's a mixed bag.
I could (and have been encouraged to) promote into our Enterprise division tech support for a significant pay bump (~60k starting with room to advance based on test results since I'd be able to stack it on my existing pay grade) but they run that shit like an actual sweatshop, exactly what people think of when they hear "call center", which would be a massive quality of life downgrade from my current department which is run by mostly sane and reasonable humans. I'm hoping that department will cool down and stabilize within the next year and become tolerable to work for, at which point I will make the jump.
And before anyone tries to tell me I'm going to be replaced by an AI agent, yes, I probably am, but not for at least another 10 years because this company is so ridiculously inefficient and nepotistic and incompetent that we're more likely to see AGI first. We are a fucking dinosaur corp. (Not Comcast, the other one. Though I have it on good authority that Comcast is basically just as bad [plus, fun fact, they use the exact same back end biller/accounting-provisioning system that we use; CSG International])
At the very least I'm getting experience with BMC Remedy, which we use for bigboy real problems that are outside the scope of our in-house internal ticket systems designed to cover routine issues.
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