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By suspending the auto parts to be worked on from a chain that moved the parts down a line of stationary workers, there was no need for the constant individual managerial oversight of Taylorism. It was visually obvious when someone wasn’t keeping up, because unfinished pieces started building up at…

“The new guy put cameras legit everywhere. We called him Big Brother for the longest, ’cause he’s always watching. He can even access it from his phone, so he can watch us, like, while he’s at home in bed—and if he sees something he doesn’t like, he’ll rush in from forty minutes away to say, ‘I see…

[...] What are customers going to do—switch providers? They almost certainly signed a multiyear contract, and why go through the huge annoyance of switching to a new company and a new phone number when the customer service there will inevitably be just as bad? Hell, there’s a decent chance they’ll …

“Seriously, just be glad they have wipes now!” says Kaitlyn when I poke fun at the eight wipes she uses every single morning. “It’s so much better than before.”

How so?

“It was really nasty the first time I worked here,” which was a couple of years ago under the old managment, she says. “They…

Q: Your customer-service representatives handle roughly sixty calls in an eight-hour shift, with a half-hour lunch and two fifteen-minute breaks. By the end of the day, a problematic number of them are so exhausted by these interactions that their ability to focus, read basic conversational cues, a…