Guybrielle Madison keeps a stock of crunchy snacks hanging on the door of her pantry-turned-home office, where she works remotely as a debt collector at United Collection Bureau, a family-owned business headquartered in Toledo, Ohio. She prefers crackers, pretzels and cheese puffs. The louder the crunch, the better.
Every time screams start to filter through her headset, she mutes her mic, opens a bag and starts shouting to drown out the noise.
“If they insult me and I eat, I only hear myself chewing,” said Ms. Madison, a 31-year-old single mother who lives in Memphis.
One day, a man started yelling at her after she asked him to verify her identity. He called it a racial slur, she recalled, and said he was going to look it up online. Ms. Madison, who is black, said she was regularly subjected to racial slurs while carrying out her duties.
Ms. Madison is one of approximately 167,000 debt collectors working in the United States today – a workforce that occupies one of the most reviled positions in the American economy. In May, the New York Federal Reserve reported that 13.1% of credit card balances were at least 90 days past due during the first quarter of 2026, the highest rate in 15 years. Credit card debts are sent to collection agencies after 90 to 180 days of missed payments. That’s when the calls begin.
Some debtors have turned to credit counseling agencies or cut back on their spending. Some ignore the calls. Others turn their anger on the person behind the phone. For debt collectors like Ms. Madison, it’s just part of a job that offers what many workers with limited options need: stable schedules, remote work and no college degree requirements — for an average hourly wage of $22 an hour, with the opportunity to earn bonus checks for meeting their goals at some collection agencies.
Debt collectors operate under some of the strictest regulations in consumer credit. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act prohibits them from being deceptive, abusive or unfair to debtors, and they must proceed with caution when raising their voices or ending calls. They must verify their identity before discussing debts, a requirement that often infuriates the people they call. They often experience a daily torrent of verbal abuse, threats of violence, and the legal requirement to absorb it all without retaliating.
Debt collectors say few people view them as human beings who also struggle to pay their own bills, need health insurance and have children to support.
Ms. Madison earned a bachelor’s degree in forensic science from Miles College in Alabama, but the long hours of inflexible field work proved incompatible with single motherhood. She wanted a stable job that would allow her to be present in her son’s life, so she became a debt collector.
She wakes up every morning, logs into her account, puts on her headset and makes hundreds of calls throughout the day. Among those calls, she usually speaks to about 50 people, many of whom mistreat her, she said.
Ms. Madison worked as a debt collector for six years at four collection agencies. At American Car Center, a dealership where she first worked in the collections division, the only thing separating her from customers behind on their vehicle payments was her small office.
About a year into her job, she recalls, a man whose car had been repossessed showed up at her office with a gun. She and three other women she worked with ran and hid in a back room. She heard a gunshot. A few minutes later, the man was arrested. A security guard was shot in the leg.
“The police were already coming because we could hear the sirens,” Ms. Madison said. “He just ran in front of us trying to get away from the cops.”
After the shooting, the company replaced offices with brick dividers topped with bulletproof glass. Employees worked from home until the new barriers were installed.
That’s the extent of the company’s response. No advice. No crisis management support. Just the drink and the hope that they will return to work as soon as possible, Ms. Madison said. In 2023, American Car Center filed for bankruptcy and closed its locations.
A voice on the line
Daran Ransom was also working in collections at the American Car Center when the business suddenly closed its doors.
“I was at work and taking care of my mother,” said Mr. Ransom, 46, who lives in Covington, Tennessee. “And I got a call and they said, ‘Hey, pack your bags. It’s over.'”
Mr. Ransom was introduced to debt collection by a cousin. He was pursuing a degree in music education at the University of Tennessee at Martin, but dropped out a year after graduating to care for his mother, whose health had deteriorated.
After losing his job at the American Car Center and before his mother died, he received a job offer at the United Collection Bureau. He started training just two days after her funeral.
“It was like you had to go to work because you have a mortgage,” Mr. Ransom said. “I didn’t want to lose the house we grew up in. »
Mr. Ransom, who is black, believes that in addition to his race, his gender makes him a target. “I feel like because I’m a man, people are a lot tougher,” he said. “It’s very hard work, I hate it.”
Like Ms. Madison, Mr. Ransom said he had been called a racial slur. He was told to go kill himself, to go find a real job.
When calls get bad, Mr. Ransom puts the caller on hold to give himself a few seconds of respite.
“So they can have a second to decompress,” he said, “and I can have my second to calm down.”
To the people he calls, Mr. Ransom said he is not a man who dropped out of college to care for his sick mother, buried her and returned to work two days later – he is just a voice on the other end of the line asking for money. Debt collectors, he added, have their own financial burdens.
“We are bill collectors who are probably being called by other bill collectors, because we don’t make enough money to live on and pay our bills,” he said.
“It’s taking its toll.”
There is little research on the experiences of debt collectors. A 2015 doctoral thesis from Walden University found that “work is expected to suffer abuse from customers.”
Irvin Schonfeld, professor emeritus at City College of New York who studies job stress and burnout, said that while debt collectors haven’t been widely studied, there are parallels to workplace harassment. Similar to a bullied employee who cannot retaliate against a manager without consequences, a debt collector is legally prohibited from raising his or her voice, hanging up, or similarly responding to a verbal insult. The result is the same power imbalance that researchers have long documented to be psychologically damaging in workplaces.
“This has detrimental consequences,” Dr. Schonfeld said. “This leads to increased depressive and anxiety symptoms.”
Unlike other professionals, such as police officers or social workers, who have colleagues, supervisors and counselors trained to help them deal with traumatic interactions, debt collectors largely shoulder this toll on their own.
“The average bill collector will do this job for about five years,” said Scott Post, director of operations at United Collection Bureau, who has been in the industry for 20 years.
Mr. Post has seen the effects of abusive calls on employees. A new staff member came to him early and revealed that he was suffering from anxiety.
“I was like, you might want to be careful, because this job is not going to help with anxiety,” Mr. Post said. The employee only lasted a few weeks.
He said the company once provided mental health resources to employees, but those were removed because few used them. “No one has ever admitted to me about mental difficulties outside of brand new people,” he said. “They are too proud.”
Mr Post was promoted to a senior role shortly after starting at UCB, but his role still involves helping collectors with calls and dealing with some of the more difficult debtors himself. He thinks he survived because of a woman who keeps him grounded, who knows when to walk away from the phone, and who uses a punching bag on her back porch.
Before landing at United Collection Bureau, Mr. Post spent years at auto dealerships in sales before working his way up to CFO.
“Debt collectors are about as popular as used car salesmen,” he said.
Mr. Post wants to help debtors understand that they should not be ashamed.
“I can take that person who thinks they’re a deadbeat because they’re in collections and tell them it’s OK,” he said. “No one asks for medical debt. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”
