This fucking sucks.

Warning: Personal shit ahead.

I don't know why I ever decided to go out and have sex again. More importantly, I don't know why I decided to try to have a relationship again. I guess it was time or something after four years, but Jesus H. Christ, this is hell. My chest has felt tight and like I can't breathe, and there's been a lovely burning sensation, for more than a month now. I cry every day (oh, wait, there was ONE day I didn't). I feel lost. I just don't know how to handle this. What do you do when you start to really fall in love with someone, and that someone decides they're "not ready for a relationship?" Yes, I know that's a horrible cliched kind of thing and all my friends say it's bullshit, but knowing his history, and seeing him choking on the words and almost crying, I think he actually meant it. Anyway.

Normal people have been through this before, but I have zero idea how to cope with it. I mean, it's gotten a little better. I have occasional moments of normalcy (or else I wouldn't have posted anything in weeks). I can function and do my job, 99% of the time. I don't burst into tears if I get a call from a customer with his name. I can generally maintain a conversation. But other than that .... I don't laugh, I don't smile, I don't listen to music or really watch tv or read. I mean I do, but I'm never actually focusing on it. In the back of my mind is just a constant murmur of his name, a constant flow of little, biting memories. Sounds melodramatic, probably, and a feel like a weak fool. But I can't seem to help it.

Lost.

Have you ever felt like who you are is lost somewhere deep inside yourself? I feel like that. Like my real personality, the part of me that's sarcastic and witty and fun, is buried somewhere I can't access anymore. Everything around me feels kind of unreal. It makes it difficult to function, let alone write. I know I've had hilarious calls. I can't remember them, but I know they happened ....

Being rude to customers.

I love listening to Frat Boy take supervisor calls. People think talking to a supervisor is going to get them what they want, or that the supervisor has magic powers. And sometimes, that might be right. But it's rare. I know the company's rules, and I know situations where those rules are bent. I confirm that with Frat Boy if the customer gets bitchy, and ask him if there's anything we can do. If he says no, I apologize to the customer for the inconvenience and repeat the company rules. If they insist on going to a supervisor, then okay, off to Frat Boy they go. If I can manage to avoid calls to listen to him talk to them, I do, because it is fucking hilarious.

The last time I did that, he did his usual greeting and when the woman launched into her rant (she wanted us to just send her a brand-new piece of equipment she didn't have the correct setup for, because she absolutely refused to have a technician in her house), he cut her off. "I know what the situation is, and I know what my agent told you. She gave you all the correct information, and there's nothing else I can do for you."

Holy shit, my manager actually backed me up? No fucking way! I literally do not remember the last time that happened in a restaurant.

Yesterday I heard him talking to someone else's idiot customer. He explained a policy to this person again, and when the customer started to get an indignant, Frat Boy goes, "Oh, don't act so shocked!" I fucking love it. Another time, "You can yell at me and repeat yourself as many times as you want, it doesn't change the fact that you signed up for this service, you used it, and you will be paying for it." And another time, "You did not cancel your HBO channels, and this charge has been clearly printed on your last five bills. If you didn't look at that, that is your fault, not ours."

Or yesterday, "I'm not giving you anything free. What else can I do for you?"

Makes me want to be a supervisor.

Possession is not nine-tenths of the law.

Normally, this kind of story I would write it dialogue format. But here's the problem ... I couldn't understand half of what this man was saying. He was from a French-speaking African country, and I think I'd have understood him better if he'd spoken French to me! When he would speak slowly, I could understand. But when he got upset ..... not so much. It took forever to even figure out what was going on.

Basically, he had an upgrade done on his equipment. And he was throwing a complete FIT because the technician who did the install took the old equipment with him. Said equipment was owned by the company, but he was absolutely fucking insisting it belonged to him. I tried to explain that his other equipment was leased, and so was this particular item. He went off into a tirade about how it was his, the guy shouldn't have taken it, he's been with the company for three years, so that item was HIS! He just kept saying "it's MINE, it's MINE!" over and over.

I tried another way. I told him that if he had actually bought everything for his installation, he would have paid almost a thousand dollars, but he didn't pay for it, because it was still our property. "No! It's MINE! I've been with you for three years!" he said. I told him that doesn't matter, there was nothing in his contract stating that the equipment became his after a certain time period. He went into a rant about how he had another cable company, and when he left them he kept all the equipment. Again, I said they might have had different policies (bullshit, he bought it outright, he had to have), but he never paid us for that equipment.

"It's MINE! He should not have taken it! It's MINE!"

So I offered to send him to the department that deals with contracts, and could send him a copy of the contract so he could see exactly what it said about the equipment. Insert tirade repeating everything he previously said here. Again I apologized he was upset and said again that I could get him to the contract department. Insert tirade repeating everything he previously said here again. I finally stopped saying I could transfer him and just said I was going to do it now. "Okay," he said, "insert tirade repeating everything he previously said here again." The next time I just said I was doing it and hit the button right away.

Normally I'd have put him on the line with Frat Boy ... but he was home sick, so my entire team was flying blind. Because I already knew the contract department wasn't going to tell him anything differently, and technically they could put me down for an incorrect transfer. But this guy wasn't going to be satisfied unless I got him to someone higher up.

When the contract department picked up, the agent started making small talk and asked how my day was. I said fine and asked about his, and he said, "It's been ...... interesting."

I laughed. "Oh, it's about to get more interesting."

"Oh god, what now?" he said. When I told him there was a long silence. "But .... it's our equipment."

"Exactly. He thinks after three years it's his, which is why I thought if you sent him the contract maybe it would prove that, because he just won't listen."

The guy laughed and told me to send him through. I love the contract department. They're never bitchy to me! 

I'm really not always a bitch.

I realize that I am very negative sometimes, and you all might already have the impression that there's nothing about my new job that I like. You might think that I still hate people ... and you're right. But not always, and not all of them. Some of them I even like and want to give special treatment to.

Problem is, in the restaurant, it was easier to give stuff to the people I really liked. I knew the tricks, I knew how to weasel discounts and free food or drinks for people who were actually nice to me. At the call center, it's a lot harder, because someone can always be listening and they keep a record of all discounts given. I'm really not allowed to give somebody something free just because they were nice .... although sometimes I do.

I had a woman yesterday who just wanted to do something simple, correct a simple mistake in her installation -- so something that was our fault to begin with. Unfortunately, it was something simple I wasn't authorized to do, and Frat Boy had fucking run off. I ran around to different supervisors trying to find someone to set up this incredibly simple thing, and by the time I found someone, and got it set up, the woman had been on hold for ten minutes and the total call time had been almost half an hour. And she was so sweet about it, kept saying not to worry -- even though I could hear her kid hollering in the background and this was taking up way more time than it should have. I gave her several free movie certificates, just for being nice. If someone was listening, they'll probably scold me for giving things away to someone who wasn't upset, but freaking hell, the woman had the patience of a saint.

Another guy called in this week wanting to restart his service, which required paying a month ahead of time (one of those pay-as-you-go customers). When I told him the amount, he said he had exactly one hundred dollars and said all he wanted was a certain set of channels, and asked if there was any way to make that happen. So I made the changes .... and it was $101.50. Removing a dollar isn't a big deal, but I know a lot of my coworkers would've basically told him he was out of luck.

Then there was the lady last week who called in to lower her bill because her fiance had been hit by a truck and killed. I nearly started crying because I could tell she was barely holding it together. And yeah, people lie and maybe she was faking, but I don't think so. She had just recently added insurance, which normally has a cancellation fee, but I removed it and waived the shit out of that. Then I gave her half-price on a bunch of stuff and tossed in another ten bucks a month off her bill for six months. I felt good about myself because I managed to save her a whole bunch of money without actually affecting her service.

We have service plan that includes six different channel groups. Every couple of days, I'll get a call from someone who I noticed has five of six. I fucking love it when I see that -- because the price for 5/6 is the same as the price for 6/6! So then I get to give them something absolutely free, not a limited time offer but actually just free, and that always makes people happy.

Tonight someone called in wanting to get four more televisions in her home. I found a way to get her better equipment than she'd actually asked for, plus an upgrade on something she already had, totally free, no installation fees, no selling her soul for four years, nothing sneaky at all about it -- and totally in line with the guidelines. Her bill was going to go up by a pretty substantial amount for the extra televisions, but that was going to happen whether I got her the better equipment or not. But she didn't bitch about it at all -- in fact, when I told her the amount it would cost her to get programming on eight different televisions, her response was "that's pretty good!" I liked her so much I gave her half off one of her services for a few months. If QA was listening they'll scold me for offering it when she was already happy, but I was having a really fucking shitty day and she was so damn nice I wanted to do anything I could for her.

And it's not that I'm looking for praise or anything, because this is something of a morality tale. The common thread to these stories is simple: they were nice to me so I was nice to them. When I asked for account verification, they gave it to me. When something wasn't quite what they wanted, they didn't scream at me. When I asked questions, they answered without sounding like I wanted their left kidney. They said please and thank you. And to me, in these shitty times, that deserves a reward.

Casual racism.

A long time ago, my company used to offer yearly packages. People would pay for their programming in one installment, and get one month free for doing so. We don't offer than anymore, thank god, but about once a week I get a call from someone grandfathered in to that program, and they are always a MASSIVE pain in my ass. They want to change to a cheaper one, but get pissed off the same offer isn't available. Or they have monthly charges for extra equipment, etc., and haven't paid it in months because it was such a low amount and they got a late fee every month.

This particular hillbilly asked what he paid every year. I told him $450 for his programming, plus every month he paid $15 in additional charges.
"Well I don't wanna pay another dime until next Feb'rary, what do I gotta pay!"
"Okay sir, let me do the math on that for it. Every month you pay seven dollars for an extra receiver, seven dollars for your local channels, and 93 cents in taxes. That's $14.93 cents per month. If you multiply that by 12, that's $179.16. Plus the $450 for your yearly package, and that equals $629.16 for one year of service." I've learned to list everything for these fucking people, because they don't fucking get it. But I figured that was pretty cut and dried right? Ohhhhhh, no.
"Well! That ain't right! I only paid $450 last year, so there's a nigger in the woodpile somewhere!" The racist fucking idiot kept ranting but I was honestly so shocked I didn't register the exact words. Once I managed to speak again, I know my tone was less friendly as I advised him he paid $450 last February, and then paid around $179 in May so it was the exact same.

Surprise, he was still pissed. I was just shocked. Who the hell says something like that to a total stranger? I wanted to do something nasty to his account just because he's obviously a terrible human being.

Maybe one of my favorite things about this new job.

We have something like 20 million customers. When I talk to someone, it's virtually guaranteed I'll never have to speak to them again. I have had a couple of people that I wished I could talk to again, who I spent a long enough time on the phone with to feel like I actually knew them. But most of the time, a call ends and I never have to think about them again. It's pretty damn freeing.

I officially have Internet again!

Well, fuck. Now I have no excuse not to write regular posts. Except for the rest of my fucked-up life.

Dis is booshi'.

I try not to make fun of how people talk ... too much. I am aware, after all, that not everybody has good educational systems where they grow up, and that different regions have different accents, etc. But when somebody's screaming at me and being an idiotic bitch, she's just made herself fair game.

I'm sure we're all aware how contracts work when you rent equipment from a cable or Internet company, or, you know, any company that hands you a piece of equipment that costs hundreds of dollars without making you pay for it. In that contract, it's going to tell you that if you don't return it, you're going to get a bill. Some even ask for a credit card to put on file, and if you don't return the equipment, they'll charge the card. Fairly standard. Now, I'm sure there are instances where people are unfairly charged. This is not one of those.

"Thank you for calling, my name is Lavender Gooms*, how can I help you?"

"Yeah I just got a letter saying you're going to charge a card for a hundred and fifty dollars, and you better not, the girl I talked to said the two fifty I paid was all I owed," this is where she got upset and started sounding hilarious, "and this card has nuttin' to do with dis so youse bedder not charge it cuz dis is booshi'."

I'm sorry, it just makes my brain hurt trying to type like this woman talked. I can't do it anymore. The weird part was how she'd speak in a perfectly coherent voice and pronounce things correctly, and then suddenly start sounding like that. Anyway, you'll mostly just have to imagine the flickering in and out of her speech, because it seriously makes me feel dumber just trying to type that way.

I already had no patience for this woman, because she'd already ranted at me. But instead I was polite and asked for her name, since her phone number wasn't pulling up an account. Once I found her account, I saw immediately what the problem was.

"I'm sorry for any confusion, Ms. Bitchypants," I started. "At the time you closed your account, the $250 you paid did cover the early termination fee you owed. The extra bill is for the equipment you didn't return, and that's why you received that letter."

"I don't care, she said all I owed was $250!"

Sigh. "As I said, that was right, at the time. However she would have advised you that you needed to return your receiver, and we did send out a box with a return shipping label on December 3rd. We also sent a reminder letter---"

"I didn't get it, that's not my fault. You're not going to charge that card, it's not mine, dis is booshi'."

"I'm sorry if you didn't receive the boxes, ma'am." Bullshit, we send the fuckers by UPS so when people try this shit we have a record. "I have an address of 1234 Go Fuck Yourself Lane, is that correct?"

"No it's not! I moved after I canceled my service! Ya'll should know that!"

I was starting to hope this would be an easy fix. Maybe I should just send her a new box and it'd be okay. Sadly, that wasn't the case. I updated her address, but we weren't going to be able to get the empty box to her and her get the receiver back to us before the date we'd charge her for it. I actually kind of took a bitchy joy in that, just because she was so fucking rude and bitchy updating her address. Besides, what kind of fucking moron moves and doesn't think that maybe they should send back this box with a company logo on it? And we sent out several letters before this one she finally called about, warning her this would happen, and they would have been forwarded by the post office.

"Okay ma'am, I've updated your address and sent out a new shipping box. You'll receive that within a week and can use the included return label to send it back to us." I debated whether to mention she'd get a bill for the shipping (hey, UPS charges us. We don't charge any more than what they charge us.) and decided to first see how she'd react to my next statement. "Unfortunately we won't get that in time to prevent the card from being charged, but once we receive the equipment we can process a refund."

"You'd better not! I'll make you pay! That card isn't mine and it has nothing to do with this, dis is booshi' and you know it booshi' and you'd better not because .... because you better not, I'll make you pay! I'll call the credit card company and report you! I'll make you pay!"

"I'm sorry, Ms.  Bitchypants, but the contract you signed does state that charges for equipment would be charged to the card you gave us."

"I didn't sign no contract! Dis is booshi'. You better not charge that card or I'm gonna sue you, dis is fuckin' booshi' and I don't care about any contract. That card isn't mine and he didn't sign it and you can't charge it! It's not my fault I didn't send the box back and you better not charge the card because dis is booshi' and you know it's booshi' and I'll sue you if you charge that card. She said all I had to pay was the $250 and dis is goddamn booshi'."

I'm not even kidding when I say she continued on, repeated variations of the same things, for five minutes. I'm lucky QA wasn't listening because I lost my temper a little bit. I'd been up all night crying because I'd been dumped the day before, and I got pissed and cut her off. "MA'AM! I would appreciate it if you would stop swearing at me. This has nothing to do with me, I have not spoken to you before, and I did not set up this account using someone else's credit card." No, I didn't toss in that could be construed as fraud. Go me. "You were given this information when you started your service, and when it was installed you signed a contract saying this card could be used for these kinds of charges. Now. I'm going to get you to the department that deals with contract disputes. Please hold."

Honestly, I'd probably have been perilously close to being fired if QA had heard that. I didn't even care. I hit the transfer button and got on the line to the people who deal with this shit. Any time someone says they're going to sue, we can immediately transfer to this department. Lucky me! I had to wait on hold for a few minutes before a very nice, pleasant-sounding woman answered.

"Hi there. I have Ms.  Bitchypants on the phone. She canceled her service, then didn't update her address so she didn't get the shipping boxes and never bothered to return her receiver. So she just got the letter saying we're charging her card for the equipment she didn't return, and she's upset because apparently the card isn't hers. So she says she's going to sue us."

The lady laughed. "Because it's all our fault, right?"

"Yep." I actually kind of smiled at that point.

"Go ahead and transfer and I'll take care of her." she sounded like she'd take some bitchy delight in it, too. I liked her.

*What can I say, I love the show Psych.

Checking in.

So I was supposed to get real Internet access again this week. Except Comcast's local installer is a lazy bastard and made up an excuse to not hook me up. And I know it was an excuse because it's my job now to know these things. Anyway, I also got new phone service, and the 3G on this network at my house is bullshit do I can't even tether through my phone anymore. Hence the lack of posts, I just don't have to patience to wrote whole posts like this on my phone! So, stories to resume once bloody Comcast does their job.

For now - Fuck My Table emailed me saying she had been unable to post comments. If you are also having this problem, please email me at slightly cranky at hotmail. That I can check here! Fucking Comcast ....

Sent from my iPhone

Narrow margins.

During training, we had an entire section that was just about our call statistics and how we could make money off of sales. I pretty much figured it was bullshit. I mean, of course they're going to try to get us to sell crap and make them more money. But the examples they used seemed ridiculously high. They were all things like "Joe Bob took 1000 calls and had 200 sales, putting him in the highest sales bracket where he gets $6 per sale. Plus his customer scores were at 115% so he gets a 15% bonus on top of that. So Joe Bob made $1380 from selling!"

I just rolled my eyes, because honestly, I am not a sales person. And it doesn't matter how much you sell, if your other statistics aren't in line, you don't get jack shit. So honestly, I didn't really even try last month. I was still struggling to get my calls over quickly, and I figured why take the time to sell if it's not going to do me any good?

Well, goddammit, now I wish I had. Because somehow, by some miracle, I did meet the goals. You have to be at 100% of goal for four different statistics to get a bonus ... and I made it by the skin of my teeth. One of them, I was only at 101%. But hey, that 1% gets me both a performance bonus and a sales bonus. I'm getting a huge check this week, and that's after taxes. And I have another, regular check this month.

Watch, this coming month I'll actually try, and then I won't meet my stats and I won't get jack shit.

Can I help you, 'customer'?

Thanks for all your comments, guys. You made me smile and laugh, which I really haven't been doing much of lately.

Also, someone asked why customers calling back can get us fired. We have four statistics we're graded on: call handle time, customer survey scores, quality assurance department scores, and repeat calls. If our statistics are consistently below goal for any of those, we get talked to, have someone sit with us and lsiten to calls to figure out where the problem is, given help, and if we still can't manage to improve .... "up to and including termination."

The first three are fairly simple; even the survey scores don't worry me much, because the company actually isn't trying to fuck us over on them like restaurants tend to do. It's actually a very fair, simple scoring system. The repeat calls, though, bug me. The company's theory is that if I do my job, if I'm confident-sounding, offer them "self-service" solutions like using the website, offer them an upsell (in case they were thinking about it and forgot, I guess), and resolve the issue they've called about, then my customers won't need to call back within a certain number of days. They do allow for a margin of error on this, I think it's 20% or something like that, but if I consistently have half of my customers calling back, and can't fix it, then I could get fired. Of the four statistics, that's the one that they put the least pressure on us about, but it bugs me because I also feel like it's the one we have the least control over.

Time for a co-worker rant!

The Russian drives me crazy. Sometimes I end up sitting next to her even though I don't want to, just because there's not another desk available. But the way she talks just drives me crazy! She always tells customers "I'd be more than welcome to look in to that for you!" and she always says "go ahead" as "goh-head" -- and she says it a lot. But what was driving me bonkers today was when she'd ask customers if she could call them by their first name.

When I ask (which isn't often because I hate doing it), I say, "And may I call you Diane?" The Russian always asks "and is it alright if I goh-head n call you by your first name Diane?" But the thing is, her inflection is fucked up, and it sounds like Diane is in quotation marks. "Is it alright if goh-head n call you by first name 'Diane'?" It sounds like she means to say "by you first name which is Diane", like the customer needs to be told what her name is. It just grates on my nerves horribly.

Not to mention, she's been there at least three months longer than me, and she sucks at her job. She asks dumb questions, she can't explain bills, she doesn't know how to handle tech calls. Today she told someone we don't have 24 hour customer service .... which is true for our particular call center, but 18 out of 20 call centers are 24/7. And she's fucking loud! Not on her calls, but when she's in between she'll stand up and yell stuff to Frat Boy, or be talking to someone on the other side of me, so loudly I can't hear my customers. And when I ask her to be quieter she just looks at me.

I'd be more than welcome to help her put a sock in it.

Nice try.

I love talking to hillbillies. Now that I don't rely on them for my tips, that is. But now? Now they're just fucking funny. Today's gem called in saying he wasn't going to pay his contract termination fee because he told us for months he was going to cancel if we kept charging him the "wrong" amount.

See, he had signed up for automatic payments. And apparently he thought all his bills would be exactly the same, month to month. Which would be right .... except for when you order pay-per-view dirty movies one month, and add HBO one month and remove it a week later, and then order a new piece of equipment, and oh look, more dirty movies ... it tends to affect your bill! But he had canceled his service 15 months early because we were charging him "wrong" every month. And now he was refusing to pay his contract termination fee because he "told us" what would happen if we kept charging him "wrong."

I asked Frat Boy what to do; he told me to tell the guy they were valid charges and then send him to the contract dispute department if he wouldn't give it up. So I did; I told him we had charged him what his monthly bill was every month and that wasn't a valid legal reason to terminate the contract without penalty.

"Well, you can't hold me to a contract! I'm illiterate!"

Whatever, Cleetus. *transfer*

Thin-skinned.

People get offended over the dumbest shit. I had a lady ordering two remote controls, for two different types of receivers, and she asked why we couldn't put them in the same box instead of charging her two shipping fees. It's a good question, a logical question. And I had a logical answer: The remote boxes only hold one remote, and the next size up is a huge box for a receiver. But I figured she'd just get snotty with me about that and ask why we couldn't just personally get her a slightly bigger box, so I gave her the second reason. The fact is, we're a huge fucking company. So we have call centers and warehouses and installation offices all over the fucking place. So what I told her was that they're two different types of remotes, so depending on where things are in stock, they might be coming from different warehouses and there was no way for me to check that.

"Oh, please! Don't insult my intelligence! 'They might come from different warehouses,'" she mocked me. "Please. Like that happens. I've never been so insulted, just send me the remotes in one box. Do you think I'm stupid? I don't have to stay with you, you know. I can just snap my fingers and go to your competitor!"
You're lucky I can't snap my fingers and show up to cunt-punch you, you dumb bitch. I thought. But I put her on hold for a moment and asked Frat Boy if I could waive one of the fees. She lost some of her attitude after that.

Then there was an older woman who was setting up to lease a very expensive piece of equipment from us. We got her set up, and then I had to run through all the standard disclaimers, one of which is that if you don't pay your bill and we shut you off, and you don't send the equipment back, we'll bill you for this.
"Ma'am! That is a insult to me! I pay my bills. I have never paid a bill late in my life! You can't talk to me like that! What makes you think you can say that to me!"
Luckily she seemed mollified when I told her it's just a form I have to read to everyone.

I just wonder how these people function in the world if they get offended that easily.