I started what I thought would be a straightforward customer discovery process a few weeks ago. I’m trying to build a quality assurance platform for contact centers, and like any responsible founder, I went to where the workers are – Reddit communities, Discord servers, forums where contact center agents gather to talk shop.
I expected to find complaints about metrics. Maybe some venting about difficult customers or micromanaging supervisors. War stories about the occasional nightmare caller. I thought I’d gather insights about what makes their jobs harder and build features to address those pain points.
What I found instead has kept me up at night.
The Reality Behind the Headset
I watched people break down in real-time. Not metaphorically – literally describing crying at their desks, day after day. Posts from agents who spent their lunch breaks sobbing in their cars. Threads where people weren’t just venting about a bad day, but actively, seriously contemplating ending their lives.
BuzzFeed collected testimonials from call center workers that reveal the scope of abuse: agents called every racial slur imaginable over package delays. Workers sexually harassed for eight minutes straight while supervisors told them to “try to de-escalate” before disconnecting. People threatened with graphic, detailed violence – “I know where you work and I have a gun. I’m going to shoot people until I find you” – because they couldn’t override a policy. Customers telling agents they hope their children “get their heads chopped off and get kidnapped by a pedophile.”
One agent described a customer mocking their dead parent. Another recounted being told by management they should “never hang up on a customer” – even after sexual harassment. When the agent pushed back, saying she’d be happy to have HR explain why listening to “what color panties are you wearing” was acceptable, management dropped it. But the message was clear: the customer comes first, even when they’re abusive.
What haunts me most isn’t the abuse itself – though that’s horrific enough. It’s the responses.
“That’s just the job.”
“You get used to it.”
“I’ve been doing this for seven years. You develop a thick skin.”
No. Absolutely not. You shouldn’t have to.
What I Got Wrong
My first instinct, I’m ashamed to say, was to think about resilience training. Maybe some kind of program to help agents cope better. Mental toughness exercises. De-escalation techniques. Something to help them withstand the onslaught.
Then I caught myself.
If factory workers were getting injured at these rates, we wouldn’t train them to “cope with injuries better.” We’d fix the safety hazard. We’d change the conditions. We’d hold people accountable.
Why should this be any different?
Verbal abuse is violence. Threats are violence. Sexual harassment is violence. The fact that it happens over a phone line instead of face-to-face doesn’t make it less real or less damaging. And the fact that we’ve normalized it as “part of the job” is a moral failure.
A Precedent for Protection
In the UK, something remarkable has been happening. The Institute of Customer Service launched a campaign called “Service with Respect” in 2019, documenting the abuse faced by customer-facing workers – primarily in retail.
Their data was devastating. By June 2025, they found that 43% of customer-facing workers had experienced abuse in the previous six months – a nearly 20% increase year over year. Thirty-seven percent were considering leaving their jobs because of aggressive customer behavior. Twenty-six percent had taken sick leave specifically due to abuse, averaging eight days off.
And the UK government listened.
Scotland passed the Protection of Workers Act 2021, making assault on retail workers a standalone criminal offense. England and Wales followed with the Crime and Policing Bill in 2024-2025. Now, assaulting a retail worker carries up to six months in prison, unlimited fines, and bans from entering stores.
It’s working. Prosecutions have increased. The message is clear: abuse of workers will not be tolerated.
However, these protections don’t cover contact center workers.
The Legislative Void
Think about the current legal framework around contact centers in the United States:
We have the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which protects customers from unwanted calls. We have the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), which protects customers from abusive collection practices. We have the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), which protects customers from deceptive practices.
Notice a pattern? Every regulation protects the customer FROM the agent.
We also have Title VII and OSHA regulations that protect agents from their employers and coworkers. Sexual harassment by a supervisor? Protected. Hostile work environment created by colleagues? Protected.
But customer-to-agent abuse? Nothing. Zero. A legislative void.
The result is a perverse incentive structure: Companies face consequences if agents step out of line. Customers face zero consequences for screaming slurs agents. And agents are trapped in the middle, often prohibited from disconnecting even the most abusive calls for fear of being fired.
The data backs this up. A 2023 survey by Ringover found that 42.8% of customer service workers had been screamed at or sworn at in the past 12 months. Over 17% had been threatened with physical violence. And 70.6% said these experiences affected their mental health. Perhaps most telling: 84.5% were actively or passively looking for work outside customer service.
Psychology Today reported that call center representatives “typically experience severe and chronic stress and have high rates of medical absenteeism, burnout, and depression.” A 2024 study found that 96% of call center agents reported feeling acutely stressed at work at least once a week.
A Framework for Change
I don’t have all the answers. I’m a technologist, not a legislator or a labor organizer. But I can’t stay silent after what I’ve witnessed. Here’s what I think meaningful protection might look like:
Legislative Foundation
Create a Contact Center Worker Protection Act at the federal level. Make verbal abuse, threats, and harassment of contact center workers a documented and penalized offense, just as it now is for retail workers in the UK.
This could model the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act that has been proposed (but not passed) for healthcare workers, extending similar protections to contact center employees.
The Abusive Caller Registry
Here’s an idea: if someone is repeatedly abusive to human agents, they lose the privilege of speaking to humans.
Think of it like a “Do Not Call” registry, but inverted – a “Do Not Deserve Human Service” registry. Companies would be required to document instances of severe abuse (threats, slurs, sexual harassment, sustained verbal assault). Repeat offenders get flagged. Once flagged, they get routed exclusively to automated systems or written correspondence.
Want to scream at people trying to help you? Fine. You can navigate the IVR system yourself from now on.
This creates actual accountability. Actions have consequences. And it protects the workers who are just trying to do their jobs.
Company Obligations
Mandatory Abuse Tracking and Reporting: Just as companies must track and report workplace injuries, they should be required to track and report customer abuse incidents. Make it visible. Shine a light on the scale of the problem.
Right to Disconnect Without Penalty: Any agent should have the unequivocal right to disconnect an abusive call without facing disciplinary action. No supervisor approval needed. No mandatory “de-escalation attempts” with someone screaming slurs. If a customer crosses the line, the agent can end the call. Period.
Required Support Systems: Companies must provide real mental health support – not an EAP pamphlet, but actual access to licensed counselors and psychiatrists who understand occupational trauma. If your business model involves exposing workers to verbal abuse, you have an obligation to help them process that trauma.
Company Liability for Failing to Protect: If companies don’t implement these protections, they should face the same kind of liability they’d face for other workplace safety failures. OSHA already recognizes workplace violence as a hazard. It’s time to enforce it.
Why This Matters
I know this post might get buried somewhere in the algorithm. I know I’m not the first person to notice this problem or the most qualified to solve it. I’m just someone who stumbled into a community and saw suffering that shouldn’t exist.
But to every contact center agent who might read this: We see you.
Your pain is real. What you’re enduring is not acceptable. It’s not “part of the job.” You are not weak for struggling with it. You are not being “too sensitive.” You deserve to go to work without being verbally assaulted on a daily basis.
And to the rest of us – the technologists building contact center solutions, the executives running these operations, the legislators who could actually change this – we have a responsibility.
We’ve spent decades optimizing for efficiency, for cost reduction, for customer satisfaction metrics. Maybe it’s time to optimize for the humans wearing the headsets.
What Happens Next
I’m going back to building my QA platform. But I can’t unknow what I’ve learned. I can’t unsee what I’ve seen.
So I’m asking: What would meaningful protection look like to you? If you’re an agent, a manager, a labor advocate, or someone who simply believes people deserve dignity at work – what am I missing? What would actually help?
The UK’s Service with Respect campaign started with research and grew into legislative change. They had data. They had stories. They had persistence.
We have the stories. God knows, we have the stories.
Maybe it’s time to build the rest.
To contact center agents everywhere: You deserve better.
If you’re a contact center worker experiencing abuse and need support, please reach out to resources like the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988) or the SAMHSA National Helpline (1-800-662-4357). You are not alone.
Code is Life 
Leave a comment