Call centers reveal Capital’s systemic inefficiency as a profit fixation

Evidence

The closest that most of us come to a direct experience of the centerlessness of capitalism is an encounter with the call center. As a consumer in late capitalism, you increasingly exist in two, distinct realities: the one in which the services are provided without hitch, and another reality entirely, the crazed Kafkaesque labyrinth of call centers, a world without memory, where cause and effect connect together in mysterious, unfathomable ways, where it is a miracle that anything ever happens, and you lose hope of ever passing back over to the other side, where things seem to function smoothly. What exemplifies the failure of the neoliberal world to live up to its own PR better than the call center? Even so, the universality of bad experiences with call centers does nothing to unsettle the operating assumption that capitalism is inherently efficient, as if the problems with call centers weren’t the systemic consequences of a logic of Capital which means organizations are so fixated on making profits that they can’t actually sell you anything. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 131

Categorization

• XREF: Calls back to the earlier chapter claim that capitalism’s growth fetish overrides even basic functioning, and to Kafka’s Castle bureaucracy which Fisher develops next. — connects to: Call centers give consumers their most direct experience of capital’s centerlessness — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 132; Call centers embody capitalism’s centerlessness yet fail to undermine faith in its efficiency — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 131

Related

• Call centers embody capitalism’s centerlessness yet fail to undermine faith in its efficiency (similarity 0.95)
• Call centers give consumers their only direct experience of capitalism’s centerlessness (similarity 0.94)
• Call centers give consumers their most direct experience of capital’s centerlessness (similarity 0.93)
• Widespread service failures fail to unsettle faith in capitalist efficiency (similarity 0.81)
• Capital’s center is missing yet still posited as a responsible agent (similarity 0.79)
• Call center rage is directed at a fellow victim with no effect (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Call centers give consumers their most direct experience of capital’s centerlessness #expands (0.85) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 132