Sure. We were incentivized to maximize a range of metrics, primary among which was average call length, over successive two-week periods. The value of the incentive was tied to the degree to which a given operator exceeded the global average for the call center, and there were some disqualifying conditions such as an error rate exceeding some set minimum I no longer recall. We had access to our own metrics on a daily basis, and the value calculation was published, so tracking incentive value was pretty trivial - this was well before smartphones existed, so I wrote up the formula as a TI-BASIC program that took metric values and gave back how much of a bonus I stood to receive in my next pay packet.

Customer commendations, one of which I received for the call I described, weren't figured into the incentive metric. (Or, unlike customer complaints, into much of anything else; it wasn't a job with a career path, although we did get nice little laminated plaques, the twenty or so of which I received I probably still have somewhere.) So I knew that exceeding the center average by a factor of thirty was going to unrecoverably hose my incentive metrics for the period, and I knew exactly how much doing so would cost me. But, as I said, some things matter.