Sure, reps have oodles of information on you, but what do you know about them? Kimberly King, president of InterWeave, a Tampa-based call-center consulting firm, whose clients include Verizon Wireless and the Home Shopping Network, offers some insight into the receiving end.

There are roughly 180,000 call centers in North America, employing more than 2 million people.

The number of reps working in a center at one time is often in the hundreds, but it can reach more than 1,500 in the largest ones.

The reps are typically sitting in a large room — sometimes hundreds of thousands of square feet — that is subdivided into cubicles.

Raises and bonuses are usually based on a number of factors, including the average handling time of calls.

A first-tier rep (the person who answers the initial call) makes at least $7.25 an hour, while reps in specialized industries (medical fields, insurance) earn $25 an hour or more.

Employee turnover can be as high as 25 percent a month.