The county I live in is known as the "breadbasket" of the UK, so there is a lot of food production around where I live and not much else. I started my working life in a combined poultry abattoir and meat packing plant... I lasted
two days, it was the second day they gave the full tour and I got to see the killing line and dismemberment areas... yeah...
Shortly after got a job in a
dried food factory where if there was meat it was already dead and processed. Stayed there for 7 years, would still be there if a new line boss hadn't have been a gigantic anus. He was, and I left going back into further education more to prove to myself I wasn't a dullard than to get skillz to do stuff with.
Got my degree In Media Production (I'm aiming to get a Reliant Mako in game which I will call "De Umbra Machinae" after the title of my dissertation) and after completing got a job with a Temp agency in a call center/customer contact center over the holiday season to make some dough because you can't pay the bills with self respect.
I was kept on with the agency after the holiday season, and again, and again - after the peak seasons I'd be kept on while my Temp Agency brothers and sisters were let go. I can't deny I got some chronic survivor guilt during those times...
Anyway, temped for about 4 to 5 years, and finally got a permanent staff position. Have been in the Contact Center ever since, started in inbound Telesales (there are no outbound which is a total blessing, no cold calls), Customer Care, First Contact Complaints, email correspondence, got myself into the General Admin team that dealt with the issues the Tele staff didn't have time allocated to deal with including most notably Fraudulent Transactions, and finally got onto the eCommerce team dealing with Product.
And that's that, so far. Worked my way solidly sideways.
If you are going to work in a call center, my advice is try to find one that doesn't do Cold Calling.