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The other day I phoned a service provider and the lady’s kid was babbling in the background and a children’s show was playing throughout the call. I couldn’t g

The other day I phoned a service provider and the lady’s kid was babbling in the background and a children’s show was playing throughout the call. I couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. Either invest in voice isolation or don’t work from home. Functionally this lady brought her kid to my home office and blasted a cartoon during our meeting. Is this harsh of me and an unpopular opinion? Yes. I agree that Human beings should be able to have work-life balance and kids are a natural and necessary part of that balance. I just don’t want them in my ear. If the lady had had gangster rap music or 8-bit video game music on in the background of the call I’d have been equally annoyed. Work calls are for doing work.

Aeolun 3y ago
Huh, I have the opposite reaction. Whenever I’m on a work call and my colleagues apologize for their children shouting in the background I’m mostly fine with it. If anything it makes them seem more human when they’re otherwise just some disembodied voices.
- caddemon 3y ago
  I think it depends a lot on the specifics, if the background noise is loud and persistent enough it makes it harder to understand the other person. Hard to tell from OP's description but I'm guessing it was actively impacting the conversation if they're complaining about it.
  - unsupp0rted 3y ago
    Admittedly it wasn’t loud enough to make it hard to hear words. You know when you call your cell phone company and you’re routed to a Call Center in India/Philippines and you hear snippets of other people’s support calls in the background? It sort of throws you off throughout the call. You wonder if the agent is getting everything you’re saying, given the distraction. It was that, but with a children’s cartoon and a toddler.
BossingAround 3y ago
I totally understand the reaction. Then again, people with kids have it hard enough, let alone those that with low paying jobs. When that happens to me, I get annoyed, but then, I remind myself that I get to exit the call while the other person has to stay in that environment, trying to hustle for money, and I try to show them as much kindness and grace as is possible for me in that moment.
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  When this lady applied for the technical phone support job, did she mention that her toddler would be on the calls? If her manager were to “secret shopper” call in, how much kindness and grace would they show for being forced to sit though a children’s cartoon while quoting 5-figure invoice numbers back and forth?
  - midasuni 3y ago
    To emphasise she probably didn’t realise their was background noise. I don’t phone call centra much but the background noise in some is very frustrating.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - oblak 3y ago
    Eh, your initial argument sounded neutral enough but this is bad. Would you jump this hard on the support person if the noise was a office cacophony?
    - unsupp0rted 3y ago
      What is bad? Stating that her company would find this to be an unacceptable standard of service quality? Sharing experiences and opinions on HN that are unpopular? I didn’t complain to the worker, the company, or give her any attitude about it. None of that would have helped me get my task done. They have other agents who are more professional, so next time I could get routed to somebody else. To answer your question: If the noise was an office cacophony then I’d put the blame on the company that tolerates it. The noise was a children’s cartoon and a babbling child. The worker has a responsibility to either get noise-canceling tools or work from a quiet area of the home. It’s 2024- it’s really easy to do either one.
em-bee 3y ago
this is a cultural problem. in asia and africa people take their kids to work all the time. part of this is because parents can't afford childcare, but part of it is also: "why not?". i find our western attitude towards kids disturbing. after living 15 years in china i have come to realize that western, and even more so the european, and especially the german and austrian attitude towards work and school is much more conservative than i thought. and as a parent, i find that very sad. i wish every parent the opportunity to spend as much time with their children as they can. and if that means that they play where the parents are working, then i am all for it. rather that than sending them off to daycare. (there are exceptions of course where the environment is not safe for kids to play)
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  As an intentional non-parent who lived for a decade in several Asian countries: work calls are for doing work. Serious people don’t let their kids talk over their meetings.
  - lawgimenez 3y ago
    Chill with the attitude, you have no idea what she’s been through with her kid. Maybe the kid just got off from a tantrum or something.
    - chasd00 3y ago
      I find it equally probable she just doesn’t give a shit. People bend over backward to give people like this the benefit of the doubt for some reason. /wfh parent of two
      - unsupp0rted 3y ago
        The thinking is if they have a kid then they’re the victims of heartless monsters (e.g. me) who expect them to work at the same level of professionalism as people who don’t have kids.
    - deleted 3y ago
whateveracct 3y ago
Sounds like you take work too seriously.
- caddemon 3y ago
  Eh, some of the people I know with the worst WLB are people that do not take work that seriously during working hours. They end up living at the office basically because it takes longer for them to finish their tasks and they also end up with their social life/break time tied up in the company. In this case, if it is disruptive enough to the call then that makes it take longer to get done what you need to do. The quicker you get done what you need to do, the quicker you are done with work. I'm not a fan of judging things just because they are "unprofessional" but there are unprofessional things that actually make everyone else's lives more difficult.
redcobra762 3y ago
I presume you said nothing to alert her to the issue, of course? Just got emotional about it and secretly resented the woman for having children…
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  Of course I didn’t mention it. What would this have accomplished, other than upsetting her and establishing an adversarial call? I was calling in to get a task done. I got it done as quickly as possible and moved on. Next time if I get her again, I’ll request a different agent by name, who was professional and capable last time.
  - redcobra762 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - unsupp0rted 3y ago
      I didn’t need to address the issue. Sometimes the best escalation is no escalation: get your task done and get on with your day. I don’t have a responsibility to their company to improve their service quality. To me it was a brief nuisance that turned into a shareable anecdote. If this is sufficiently annoying to other customers, they can address it however they choose to, or not… doesn’t affect me.
      - redcobra762 3y ago
        Except it absolutely affects you to the degree that you explicitly stated you would request another person to speak with, should it happen again.
    - dang 3y ago
      Hey, can you please not post in the flamewar style or cross into personal attack? You can make your substantive points without that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
foogazi 3y ago
I've had it happen and my reaction has been "I get it, everyone is going through stuff, it's awesome that they get to be working during the pandemic" I do despise the call center background noise where I'm hearing other people making calls. but the person on the phone has no control over that. I'll take WHF over RTO any day
jvaseniselv 3y ago
I think this is an overreaction. It was likely as simple as hanging up and calling again, if it bothered you so much. Or did you consider providing some polite feedback that the background noise was distracting you, I have had people buy headphones advertised as noise canceling and assume they work well but only realize they didn't until pointed out to them. Or did you even consider that she might work from an office and just had an off day - had a malfunctioning headset for the day or had a sick kid at home and so opted to work remotely for the day. Also, is this even about working from home? I have worked in multiple offices which had open layouts and other meetings/conversations going on in desks around me and very distracting too. Personally, imho, I work remotely and have a quiet room to myself but I also understand that other people I work with have lives too, and if it really bothers me I just tell them that politely, if you are courteous then its likely most people are going to be to you too, and do what they can to help. It makes me wonder if you have already made up your mind about the person you spoke to and about work from home and are finding reasons to justify it.
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  What was an overreaction? I ignored it and got on with the task. My reaction was to comment about it later under a post on Hacker News about WFH.
  - jvaseniselv 3y ago
    What you ignored was a confrontation but made assumptions and judgements about the person, their work, and their ability to work from home and concluded the issue was with working from home, without providing feedback or attempting to learn more about the situation, and then complained on the internet. How would you like it if your work performance/feedback was handled this way? IMHO, I don't think that's a very professional way to handle a work issue/relationship. I would have been more sympathetic to your issue if you had made an attempt to provide feedback or tried to resolve your problem, and if the other party failed to help.
    - unsupp0rted 3y ago
tinktank 3y ago
You can always take your business elsewhere.
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  Because one support agent isn’t doing the WFH thing to my standards? It’s an anecdote for HN, not a nuclear event.
cityofdelusion 3y ago
I'm not annoyed at these things because as I have gotten older, I've realized that society has become fiercely anti-child in the west. You get nasty looks if your infant cries virtually anywhere in public other than a hospital. Again, you get nasty looks if your child acts up anywhere. There are no "safe spaces" for parents of young children other than schools and playgrounds, we've ostracized them very effectively in our current culture. Thus, when I hear a babbling babe, I smile and move on. We're going to have a Japanese population pyramid situation if we keep discouraging parenthood and punishing child-rearing. There are virtually no societal or financial benefits to doing so these days, its a total sacrifice of self.

Aeolun 3y ago

Huh, I have the opposite reaction. Whenever I’m on a work call and my colleagues apologize for their children shouting in the background I’m mostly fine with it. If anything it makes them seem more human when they’re otherwise just some disembodied voices.

caddemon 3y ago
I think it depends a lot on the specifics, if the background noise is loud and persistent enough it makes it harder to understand the other person. Hard to tell from OP's description but I'm guessing it was actively impacting the conversation if they're complaining about it.
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  Admittedly it wasn’t loud enough to make it hard to hear words. You know when you call your cell phone company and you’re routed to a Call Center in India/Philippines and you hear snippets of other people’s support calls in the background? It sort of throws you off throughout the call. You wonder if the agent is getting everything you’re saying, given the distraction. It was that, but with a children’s cartoon and a toddler.

BossingAround 3y ago

I totally understand the reaction. Then again, people with kids have it hard enough, let alone those that with low paying jobs. When that happens to me, I get annoyed, but then, I remind myself that I get to exit the call while the other person has to stay in that environment, trying to hustle for money, and I try to show them as much kindness and grace as is possible for me in that moment.

unsupp0rted 3y ago
When this lady applied for the technical phone support job, did she mention that her toddler would be on the calls? If her manager were to “secret shopper” call in, how much kindness and grace would they show for being forced to sit though a children’s cartoon while quoting 5-figure invoice numbers back and forth?
- midasuni 3y ago
  To emphasise she probably didn’t realise their was background noise. I don’t phone call centra much but the background noise in some is very frustrating.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- oblak 3y ago
  Eh, your initial argument sounded neutral enough but this is bad. Would you jump this hard on the support person if the noise was a office cacophony?
  - unsupp0rted 3y ago
    What is bad? Stating that her company would find this to be an unacceptable standard of service quality? Sharing experiences and opinions on HN that are unpopular? I didn’t complain to the worker, the company, or give her any attitude about it. None of that would have helped me get my task done. They have other agents who are more professional, so next time I could get routed to somebody else. To answer your question: If the noise was an office cacophony then I’d put the blame on the company that tolerates it. The noise was a children’s cartoon and a babbling child. The worker has a responsibility to either get noise-canceling tools or work from a quiet area of the home. It’s 2024- it’s really easy to do either one.

em-bee 3y ago

this is a cultural problem. in asia and africa people take their kids to work all the time. part of this is because parents can't afford childcare, but part of it is also: "why not?". i find our western attitude towards kids disturbing. after living 15 years in china i have come to realize that western, and even more so the european, and especially the german and austrian attitude towards work and school is much more conservative than i thought. and as a parent, i find that very sad. i wish every parent the opportunity to spend as much time with their children as they can. and if that means that they play where the parents are working, then i am all for it. rather that than sending them off to daycare. (there are exceptions of course where the environment is not safe for kids to play)

unsupp0rted 3y ago
As an intentional non-parent who lived for a decade in several Asian countries: work calls are for doing work. Serious people don’t let their kids talk over their meetings.
- lawgimenez 3y ago
  Chill with the attitude, you have no idea what she’s been through with her kid. Maybe the kid just got off from a tantrum or something.
  - chasd00 3y ago
    I find it equally probable she just doesn’t give a shit. People bend over backward to give people like this the benefit of the doubt for some reason. /wfh parent of two
    - unsupp0rted 3y ago
      The thinking is if they have a kid then they’re the victims of heartless monsters (e.g. me) who expect them to work at the same level of professionalism as people who don’t have kids.
  - deleted 3y ago

whateveracct 3y ago

Sounds like you take work too seriously.

caddemon 3y ago
Eh, some of the people I know with the worst WLB are people that do not take work that seriously during working hours. They end up living at the office basically because it takes longer for them to finish their tasks and they also end up with their social life/break time tied up in the company. In this case, if it is disruptive enough to the call then that makes it take longer to get done what you need to do. The quicker you get done what you need to do, the quicker you are done with work. I'm not a fan of judging things just because they are "unprofessional" but there are unprofessional things that actually make everyone else's lives more difficult.

redcobra762 3y ago

I presume you said nothing to alert her to the issue, of course? Just got emotional about it and secretly resented the woman for having children…

unsupp0rted 3y ago
Of course I didn’t mention it. What would this have accomplished, other than upsetting her and establishing an adversarial call? I was calling in to get a task done. I got it done as quickly as possible and moved on. Next time if I get her again, I’ll request a different agent by name, who was professional and capable last time.
- redcobra762 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - unsupp0rted 3y ago
    I didn’t need to address the issue. Sometimes the best escalation is no escalation: get your task done and get on with your day. I don’t have a responsibility to their company to improve their service quality. To me it was a brief nuisance that turned into a shareable anecdote. If this is sufficiently annoying to other customers, they can address it however they choose to, or not… doesn’t affect me.
    - redcobra762 3y ago
      Except it absolutely affects you to the degree that you explicitly stated you would request another person to speak with, should it happen again.
  - dang 3y ago
    Hey, can you please not post in the flamewar style or cross into personal attack? You can make your substantive points without that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

foogazi 3y ago

I've had it happen and my reaction has been "I get it, everyone is going through stuff, it's awesome that they get to be working during the pandemic" I do despise the call center background noise where I'm hearing other people making calls. but the person on the phone has no control over that. I'll take WHF over RTO any day

jvaseniselv 3y ago

I think this is an overreaction. It was likely as simple as hanging up and calling again, if it bothered you so much. Or did you consider providing some polite feedback that the background noise was distracting you, I have had people buy headphones advertised as noise canceling and assume they work well but only realize they didn't until pointed out to them. Or did you even consider that she might work from an office and just had an off day - had a malfunctioning headset for the day or had a sick kid at home and so opted to work remotely for the day. Also, is this even about working from home? I have worked in multiple offices which had open layouts and other meetings/conversations going on in desks around me and very distracting too. Personally, imho, I work remotely and have a quiet room to myself but I also understand that other people I work with have lives too, and if it really bothers me I just tell them that politely, if you are courteous then its likely most people are going to be to you too, and do what they can to help. It makes me wonder if you have already made up your mind about the person you spoke to and about work from home and are finding reasons to justify it.

unsupp0rted 3y ago
What was an overreaction? I ignored it and got on with the task. My reaction was to comment about it later under a post on Hacker News about WFH.
- jvaseniselv 3y ago
  What you ignored was a confrontation but made assumptions and judgements about the person, their work, and their ability to work from home and concluded the issue was with working from home, without providing feedback or attempting to learn more about the situation, and then complained on the internet. How would you like it if your work performance/feedback was handled this way? IMHO, I don't think that's a very professional way to handle a work issue/relationship. I would have been more sympathetic to your issue if you had made an attempt to provide feedback or tried to resolve your problem, and if the other party failed to help.
  - unsupp0rted 3y ago

tinktank 3y ago

You can always take your business elsewhere.

unsupp0rted 3y ago
Because one support agent isn’t doing the WFH thing to my standards? It’s an anecdote for HN, not a nuclear event.

cityofdelusion 3y ago

I'm not annoyed at these things because as I have gotten older, I've realized that society has become fiercely anti-child in the west. You get nasty looks if your infant cries virtually anywhere in public other than a hospital. Again, you get nasty looks if your child acts up anywhere. There are no "safe spaces" for parents of young children other than schools and playgrounds, we've ostracized them very effectively in our current culture. Thus, when I hear a babbling babe, I smile and move on. We're going to have a Japanese population pyramid situation if we keep discouraging parenthood and punishing child-rearing. There are virtually no societal or financial benefits to doing so these days, its a total sacrifice of self.