Monday, October 29, 2012

Finally, something to write about!

Yep, this job is as devoid of stories of bitchery as I predicted. On one hand ... it's totally awesome. I've been there a month and a half, and I've only been yelled at once. ONCE! In a month and a half! It's kind of shocking when you think about it. I still don't like waking up in the morning -- I fucking hate mornings - but I don't dread going to work.

Of course, the other shoe could still drop at some point. I'm not very happy that they've suddenly decided to limit overtime to only three hours a week  - I have to find a second job now because of that. But that's minor compared to not loathing the place!

Anyway, I finally do have a story of a genuine numbskull. We do stuff with credit reports, but we're not a credit bureau. This gentleman called me, all in a hurry, from a bank. He was trying to get a woman approved for a loan right the fuck now, but she had five too many open credit cards. He kept telling me he had five signed letters and asking "how do we make this happen." It took about ten minutes but eventually it turned out that he needed a complete credit report showing these cards were closed. Within a couple of hours.

Anybody who's had to do anything ever with the credit bureaus knows that shit doesn't happen.

I explained that he would have to wait for the banks to tell the credit bureaus that the accounts were closed, which would take a month or more, or use a service that would cost about $500 and would still take significantly longer than a couple of hours. He kept insisting we'd done it before. I said no, there's no way we'd done that before, but we could verify the accounts were closed and provide something to that effect. I thought we'd solved the problem, hooray ... until he mentioned again these "five signed letters" and asked how soon I could get the accounts closed.

I told him I wasn't sure what he meant about signed letters, and he went on a loud rampage about how he'd had this woman come in and sign five letters, and how did he get them to me for me to close the accounts.

"Wait," I said. "These accounts aren't even closed?"
"NO!" he screamed. "Why do you think I'm calling you! I need you to do it!"
"Um." I was actually speechless. "I can't close her accounts for her."
"Why the hell not?"
I had to take a moment to modulate my tone. "Because it's illegal."
"No! No! No it's not! Your company has done it before!"
"No, sir, we have not." I said firmly. "It would be completely illegal for us to do that. We may have verified they were closed, but we did not close them. That is against the law."
"Well this is just a bunch of bullshit! How the fuck am I supposed to get this woman her loan?" He continued ranting and raving and swearing for another five minutes, telling me I was incompetent and my company was really going down the drain, etc. etc.

I had to take my headset off and giggle for several minutes after getting off the phone.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Still a former waitress.

The new job is going well; but I'm hesitant to write much about it because the last time I wrote about something really good in my life, I lost it literally the next day. Superstitious, who, me?

On the old restaurant front, Fud got fired for doing something everybody's done for years. When we got stiffed, most of the managers were very understanding and would discount the ticket by ten percent to at least cover the tax/tip-out factor. If they'd left a card out, we'd just do it. Well, Fud got caught doing it without permission by the new manager, who informed her that was theft from the company and canned her ass.

I also have a better idea of why he wouldn't let me come back to work there. I went over to Mistress J's for margaritas the other night, and she told me that he'd been trying to get rid of her for a while too, because before Chicken Little left, she had filled half a notebook with notes about all the employees and past employees, as well as customers she did and didn't like. Since the new guy had just started when I tried to get my job back, that would have been fresh in his mind.

Of course, the company got bought out by a new corporation that is completely uptight. They're changing uniforms back to black slacks, long-sleeved button-up black shirts, no tattoos, no piercings except ONE in each ear, blah blah blah, changing all sorts of rules about how things work, took away everybody's seniority -- Mistress J has been there for six years, so she had three paid weeks of vacation a year, and the new company said that because it wasn't with them, it's gone. I think there have got to be some laws about that.

Anyway, the new job is much better, and the new company that owns the restaurant sucks, but I do still miss my friends. And the cash would have been nice. Oh well!