Last semester, for my on-campus job, I had to work as a customer service representative for the university phone lines. Of course, it's hardly a surprise that I got a new job this semester...

You'd think a cushy indoor job where all you have to do is sit at a desk and talk to people on the phone would be pretty easy, pretty relaxing. Wrong.

It's rough. It's tough. It requires infinite amounts of patience, grace and of course, caffeine (haha).

Without further ado, here are five things every customer service worker knows. Far. Too. Well.

1. Nobody wants to talk to you.

I remember when I first started out, I was totally daunted by the whole process. I have to call people? What the heck am I supposed to say?

Worry not, dear friends. Once you've worked the job for a while, you realize quickly that the people you call (or who call you) want to talk to you as much as you want to talk to them...that is, they don't want to talk. At the end of last semester, I had placed around 10,000 phone calls. Over 7,000 of those calls were answering machines.

Maybe that job wasn't so bad after all...

2. People. Are. Rude.

No, I'm not kidding. People are downright terrible over the phone.

I guess it's the anonymity that allows people to think they can just say whatever they want to say without consequence. I can't count the number of times I had been cursed out. Or yelled at. (Especially by jealous wives. Like no, girl, I don't want your husband. I just want his money, lol.)

In customer service, we learn quickly to not take it so seriously. In fact, when I think about it now, it's pretty funny. But on my first day at work, the first time a guy yelled at me, I cried a little. It hurts.

Pro tip: If you don't want to talk, just hang up. You don't have to talk to us, we won't take it personally, and you just saved us a bunch of time. Win-win-win.

3. We become pretty good at talking to people.

Not all of us are amazingly great at conversing, you know.

But work the job for a while, and soon enough, you realize you know how to approach people. You figure out how to start a conversation, what people want to hear and want to talk about. How to make people laugh, how to relate to people. Yeah, maybe that job really wasn't so bad after all...

Ha. Just kidding.

4. The long hours get to you.

Because customer service, again, requires mostly sitting around at a desk with a telephone in your hand, the job seems pretty cushy. Unfortunately, that's what our bosses seem to think, at least. So while we got to sit around taking answering machines, we had to do so for twelve hours each week. (Which doesn't seem like much at all, till you factor in sixteen hours of class credits...and hours spent studying...and doing homework...and doing extracurriculars...yeah, it's a bit much.)

Honestly, it's not all bad if all you get are answering machines each call. But listening to the same monotone answering machine for four hours straight? It's enough to make one scream.

Thank God I'm done with that!

5. Finally, at the end of the day, we just want our paycheck.

We're people too, you know. We're just trying our best to eke out a living and put bread on the table (or ramen, if you're a college kid like me!) For some people, this is just another annoying call they have to suffer through, but for us, it's our job! So be nice and go through it as smoothly as possible. It'll be best for both of us.

Moral of the story: think twice before you snap on a customer service call. Who knows, that could be you on the other side of the line someday.