Unfortunately working in Teleperformance Lisbon might offer you an insight to everything that is badly, badly wrong in the quarter-based global market economy of ours... in mini-size format.
Despite the values written on the wall, prizes and "Best Place To Work"-certificates, the truth is smelling in the air from the first day you set your foot in the office... and you better believe it:
Teleperformance Lisbon is the ultimate example of a company branch that does not actually value ANY asset except those that increase profit on a quarterly basis. And that dough will be kept on flowing no matter how the teeth grind, since that's what the both ethically and morally questionably acting, possibly professionally and lingually incompetent Account Managers are there to ensure.
And you, dear agent or even supervisor, you are just a mere tool to accomplish this, and the next toolset is about to arrive from the Lisbon airport any minute now. So, hush! Get back on the phone and prove your performance.
After all, what can you do when abused or if your salary gets paid wrongly (and it most probably will)? Join a syndicate? There are only a few of them, and if you don't know where to look and or without the Portuguese language it can be really difficult and, in the end of the day, time consuming.
Here are a few thoughts, mind me writing:
Portugal is right now in a situation where money is really tight, scandals of corruption get to the daylight continuously. Teleperformance is one of the international companies that are doing well in this environment, and could be speculated that the country is "just enough impoverished and technologically advanced for a call-center company like TP to flourish and make profit". Being in a "crisis" as Portugal is, without a good social security, having a job is extremely important for survival, but this leads to problems.
A few years ago a local "veteran" journalist publicized in a local magazine "Publico" an article about Teleperformance in a questionable manner. This ended in a dispute where the CEO "counter-attacked" the journalist by accusing him of distorting the actual communicated material. The blog-post of this journalist could not be found any more, but it basically included him saying that "unfortunately I have to say that the CEO [you can look up for the name] is a manipulator and a liar" (Note: might not be exactly word-to-word equal to the original quote).
Ask yourself: what would you expect from a company, if this were true?