Tag Archives: Work

Pretty Awesome Day, Really, For All Its Slowness

Work, ,

In which there’s really great news! Three times over!

Today has been the longest, slowest day ever. I’ve been here since ten and haven’t even been on the phone for two hours. It’s that dead in here.

Which means that the day has been dragging by with incredible slowness.

But when the day is over, I will officially be on vacation! Which is so awesome I can’t even express it.

But to make it all even better, this afternoon I got a job offer. And I accepted it! I GOT A NEW JOB! I GOT A NEW JOB! I GOT A NEW JOB! I GOT A NEW JOB! I GOT A NEW JOB! *snoopy dance* Whoo hoo!

Oh, and on Tuesday, my bento article will be in the paper – perhaps as the main feature in the Food & Lifestyle section of the Union-Bulletin!

Cross your fingers for me. Do it.

Work,

In which it went really well!

I had an interview today at 1:30 at an ISP/CLEC1. It’s about four blocks closer to my house than the company I work for now.

I did well in terms of enthusiasm and communication. I probably took a little too much control of the meeting overall, but I always do that when I’m nervous in interviews. They liked my résumé. They liked my experience. They’re growing, and there’s growth opportunity.

They said they’d let me know by Friday.

I think I may have flubbed up once: the leader was trying to end our overly-long meeting by explaining that they did have other people to interview. I replied, ‘Oh, of course you do, of course you do. It’s just that you’re not going to like them as much as you do me,’ and he kind of gave me a weird look.

But other than that, I think the interview went really, really well. I liked both of the guys who interviewed me, they more or less told me that I’m perfect for the job, and I’m certain the guy who would end up being my direct supervisor wants me in his department in the worst way.

Here’s hoping I get a call on Friday from someone offering me a new job!!!

—
1 ISP Internet Service Provider. CLEC Competative Local Exchange Carrier (small telephone company).

A day in the life of a call center drone.

Work

In which I give you a peek at an interoffice email I just sent.

This really happened, and I really sent this email to my boss.

Hello M—,

Friday evening I hung up on a customer. Twice. Here are my notes:

6/19/09 Cust put new CC on file. He wished to argue with me about how expiry dates work, I disconnected the call when he began to yell. He called back and told me I’m “full of shit” and that he intends to get me fired. I gave him my name and my supervisor’s name and hung up on him again. -mm

In the first call, I thanked him for putting his new card number on file and tried gently to terminate the call. He wanted to explain that his card had “never expired” (although in the same breath he told me he’d received a new one in the mail) and that B– is “the only company” who is unable to run charges against an expired credit card. When his pointless lecture escalated to the edge of abuse, I said I was not interested in arguing and that I was ending the call. Then I hung up.

When he called back, he told me I’m “full of shit,” said I didn’t know what I was talking about, called me “young lady” with contempt, and said he would “get me fired.” He proceeded to argue with me again about our stupidity in not being able to charge an expired card, and didn’t slow down at all when I asked, “Do you really not have anything better to do on a Friday night than yell at someone who makes minimum wage?”

I told him to call in Monday and report me to my supervisor. I gave him my name, and I gave him your name. I refused to give him my last name when he demanded it (or yours, for that matter). Then I told him I was ending the call, and hung up on him again.

He has called back in at least eight more times – and hit all the queues: billing, reception, tech, and sales. I have not answered any of them.

I forwarded the one voice mail message he left to your box.

Cheers,
—
Michelle M—–
Support Technician
B— M—— Internet
http://www.—-.net
(800) 485-XXXX xXXX

P.S. …before I managed to send this, he called back YET AGAIN, this time from a different number. I answered with my name, and he said “Hello Michelle, I need to speak with someone in billing that’s NOT YOU.” I said, “There is no one else. I’m the only one here.” He said he’d call on Monday and hung up on me.

I’m sure he felt very powerful when he did so.

Of course I don’t actually make minimum wage. but he didn’t need to know that.

Seriously, how many people with MBAs yell at call center drones and don’t understand that you can’t run a credit card without the correct expiration date?

It's Friday!

Work, , , , , ,

In which it’s another entry full of random crap!

Friday means free lunch and two hours out of the queue for the weekly company meeting. It means an hour-long afternoon nap at Teh BF’s during our lunch breaks after the meeting.

It also means I get to sleep in tomorrow!

And after I do, I’ll be sewing. All day long. Swear to God. I am. Totally. Sewing. I got plans for some fabric!

Speaking of clothing, here’s my new Etsy dress:

New Etsy Dress

I can’t decide if it’s awesome or hideous. Either way I’m gonna wear the hell out of it.

. . .. … . . ….. . . . … ..
The Curse™ arrived today.

It sucks to be me.

. . .. … . . ….. . . . … ..
This town has a really high percentage of geriatric citizens and I think it’s affecting me. I spend too much time idly wondering when and how I’m going to die. This can’t be normal.

. . .. … . . ….. . . . … ..
Finished the Friday meeting, clocked out, and went to Teh BF’s where we both promptly crawled into his bed and passed out for 45 minutes. I love Friday naps!

. . .. … . . ….. . . . … ..
Now I’m back at work, and naturally my first post-nap call is a crazy bitch that Qwest dropped on me who reads me all kinds of non-relevant shit off her screen, has fucking Vista on her computer, and won’t stop talking long enough for me to tell her what to do.

When I told her to reboot her computer, she didn’t, and then lied to me that she had. She also had an IP hard coded, and lied to me about that as well.

…of course, I’m such a brilliant social engineer that I have not only gotten her DSL modem reconfigured, connected, and authenticated in spite of herself, I’ve also got her apologizing to me for being such a non-listenin’ idiot.

Lesson: when you call tech support, shut up and listen. If they want to know something, they’ll ASK YOU.

Did I mention The Curse™ arrived today?

. . .. … . . ….. . . . … ..
My second call is a drunk-sounding old lady (I say “drunk-sounding” because who knows, maybe she had a stroke or something) who doesn’t have menus visible in her mail client and will not let me tell her how to restore them. This means that we cannot get into her account settings to see if they’re fucked up.

So I’m telling her it’s broken and sending her to a shop. Because seriously, how the hell am I supposed to fix something when my customer can’t get into the damn application’s settings?

. . .. … . . ….. . . . … ..
Mmm. York peppermint patties.

. . .. … . . ….. . . . … ..
I still have three and a half hours left of my workweek. It sounds like an eternity.

My Day Job

Work, ,

In which WT flying F, people.

I was on the phone with this one guy for over twenty minutes verifying his wiring, and his DSL modem just would not train up. His connection had bounced about 25 times the day before and I figured it was either an improperly conditioned line or a bad DSL modem. So I let him go and got Qwest on live chat and asked them to check the circuit, and lo and behold the DSL came up and there were no errors on the line. None.

How did it suddenly come up? Probably that’s about when the customer went ahead and did what I’d asked him to do, which was make sure his damn modem was plugged into the damn wall jack… or maybe Qwest fixed something. Or maybe gnomes did it.

I called the customer back and we reconfigured his modem – he probably really had pressed the recessed Default button, even though he claimed he hadn’t when I asked him – and it authenticated and he was online and his email downloaded and it was like Christmas and the Fourth of July all rolled into one.

One of these three things is true:

1. The customer lied to me about his wiring configuration and fixed it after we got off the phone.
2. The Qwest tech fixed something and didn’t cop to it.
3. The DSL came up miraculously by itself in a totally unrelated way.

The weird part about my job? Is that I will never, ever know which.

It’s amazing I can even sleep at night. Srsly.

In other news, if you were losing sleep yourself wondering about the über-phallic banana keeper from last week’s bento explosion, it’s on the wall next to my desk:

Banana Keeper

Feel better now? I figured you would!

Secret Things… Shh.

Admissions, , ,

In which I don’t talk about things because too many people I know IRL actually read goblinbox.

My posts have sucked for awhile because I have a lot to say that I can’t say (I’ve been writing awesome posts in my head, though!) on two topics in particular:

The first topic is work. I could go on and on and on about work, but since management reads the ‘box on occasion I’d probably get fired because you don’t talk about your company’s solvency on the Innartubez.

I have lots of backseat driver observations about how things are done that I could recount in acerbic, witty prose and we’d all enjoy my cleverness… but since I want to stay employed, I will recall to myself that I’m a drone and not a manager because I’m a drone and not a manager.

In a nutshell, though: the economy, it’s affecting our customer count. Which means I’m worried about my job security. And since we all are, I think it’s okay to say at least that on my blog and move on.

The second is the band. I could go on and on about how I ‘only turned down one lousy gig and haven’t been called back since!’ and how I’m all offended that I essentially got fired before I could quit, but the guys have been known to check in here and I don’t want to burn any bridges especially since I get the impression all I have to do is call the band leader and say I’m still interested. Can you say run-on sentence? I knew you could.

In other news, um… well, there is no other news. I’m not doing much lately. Haven’t even gotten my vacation schedule for the year figured out yet, but I’m certain it involves a visit to NYC! Oh, and I bought another bento box. Yes, yes, I know: I’m a freak! I’m sorry!

Oh, and the third is the relationship: I suspect it’s in bad taste to compare one relationship to another in public, so I haven’t gushed about how nice it is to be with someone who doesn’t {insert scathing complaint about ex here} and always manages to {insert cute thing current BF does here}. But trust me, there’s a lot of that going on in my head. Apparently, if you hook up with someone that likes you, they do shit like bring you coffee in bed in the morning, and they don’t think you owe them for it. It’s way cool.

This is only a working title.

Introspection, ,

In which there’s, like, not much.

Apparently my brain is broken. I mean, I’m doing stuff – making bentos, knitting a hat, doing Xmas shopping online – but I can’t think of a single thing to write about. All my creativity is going into my tweets, I guess… there is a lot to be said for brevity (pun intended).

This dearth of stuff to write might be due to what I’m reading, which is pretty much nothing. In the past week I’ve consumed few nice sci-fi shorts and some cheesy erotica, but not enough to get my brain going. (I can tell I’m not reading enough when my in-use vocabulary drops to twelve single-syllable words.)

In keeping with the aimless, disjointed tenor of this entry, here are a few unrelated items:

– I want to buy a tiny little Christmas tree and hang tiny little lights and tiny little ornaments on it, and then plug it in and stare at it. For about nine hours. In the dark. With a cup of hot chocolate. Yeah.

– I need to figure out something to bring for the potluck tomorrow. Suggestions, anyone?

– Since I can no longer read anything more than ten feet away, I’ve decided it’s time for new contacts and some glasses. I have an eye appointment on Monday. It’ll probably take about two hours because I’m 40 and have astigmatism and floaters, which means A FULL EXAM WITH PRESSURE TEST AND DILATION. I seriously hate having my eyes dilated, but I’ll get to pick new frames for the first time in twenty years.

– It’s so slow at work today that I can barely keep my eyes open. But I’ve noticed that if I pick up my knitting, the phone will ring within eight stitches.

– Freaked out about the number of hits I get from people googling “my little pony porn,” I googled it myself. And it’s this. Naw, just kidding! It’s actually a game where you try to determine if a name belongs to either a My Little Pony item or a porn star. While I understand why my site is the first hit when people google the phrase (because GOOGLE IS MY BOYFRIEND), what I can’t figure out is why everyone’s googling it IN THE FIRST DAMN PLACE.

Surprize again!

Wishlists, , , ,

In which I never got anything this cool from an employer before.

Today during our weekly company meeting, admin announced that we wouldn’t really be having a proper Christmas party this year – only a luncheon – but then they got all giggly and ran into the back and then came out and proceeded to pass out “early Christmas presents.”

We all sat in the meeting an ripped into our little brightly-wrapped boxes.

They contained custom-engraved 8Gb iPod Touches. For EVERYONE.

And then they turned on the wireless, so we could all spend the afternoon installing cute applications on our new toys. It was so hella fun!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Apple has got the cute form factor market cornered. OMG. From the Newton to the iPod to the Wii to the iPod Touch – they’re geniuses.

I'm Too Damn Loud, People!

Work

In which having a strong voice is more of a bug than a feature.

Depending on how closely you read the ‘box, you may or may not be aware of the fact that I am now sitting in what is my fifth location at work. In only ten months! I started in the back room, got moved to the front room, moved again in the front room (because of the glare of the skylight on my monitor), then was moved back into the room I started in, and am now tucked comfortably in the back hall next to the inventory/modem room.

I like where I sit now, for two reasons. One, even though where I now sit is technically a hallway it seems kinda like a little office. Two, my boyfriend sits at the opposite end of the hall, so I can throw things at him. (I never do, but I could!)

My Desk at the end of the Hallway

Well, today I was sitting here minding my own business when my supervisor came over and screwed a divider to the wall right next to my desk, effectively putting me in a boomy little cul-de-sac. I hit mute on my phone and hissed, “Jeeze! What are you doing that for?!”

He shrugged. “Mom told me to do it. You talk too loud, apparently.”

I opened IM and texted Mom immediately. “I really dislike these dividers. They’re boomy. They’re made out of the wrong materials to dampen sound. Help!”

She explained that when management barges in on the new hire’s calls, I’m HELLA LOUD over her headset, and so they want to make me quieter. There was some mention of moving me back into the front room! Ack! I complained more over IM. My supervisor moved the divider about eight feet away.

I still can’t see Kaje, but at least I’m not locked up in a little box.

Watch me learn to whisper!