Hearing is Not Believing

When my body changes from the chair I’m sitting in, you know I’m having an issue.  Standing up, and leaning towards my desk, I found myself, repeating to my client, Alla, that what I was seeing, was correct.

What she was hearing, was something she did not want to hear.

With credit card payments, its really frustrating to convey that something didn’t go through.  Some people have this belief, that we can magically snap our fingers, and the decline will appear to be an approval.

For instance, the people who insist that I must be typing the number in wrong, and that they have money on the card.  And it continues to decline.  There must be something I am doing really wrong, so I must seek out my supervisor to tell them EXACTLY the same thing, I am doing.

With Alla, it was telling her what exactly “unable to access funds” means “declined.”  I even had to go as far as telling her what “declined” meant and what I was looking at, was possibly wrong. 

“Are you sure?  Can you have a supervisor look at this for me?”

“Ma’am,” I stood up from my chair, “My supervisor is going to see the same thing I do.  We were unable to access funds.”

“What does that mean?”

“Card was declined.”

“Can you look at that again?  How do you know for sure?”

At this point, I didn’t care if it was being monitored or not.  “Ma’am, why would I lie to you?  What purpose do I have, to tell you, that the card was declined or accepted?”

“Lets do the card again, I think you entered it wrong.”

After three times, and reviewing exactly the SAME thing, all three times, she still was not convinced I was doing it right.

“I want to speak to your supervisor.”

This time, I had it.  “Alla, you aren’t listening to me.  We have tried this card, three times, I have repeated it back to you, three times, and you STILL insist, I’m doing something wrong. I wouldn’t be able to PROCESS the card, if it wasn’t right.  I don’t know WHY we are unable to access funds.  Maybe you should go back to your client, and have them contact the bank.”

“Can you contact the bank?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not my card.”

“Then why is it declining?”

“I don’t know.  It says decline.  It could mean, over the limit, closed account, etc.”

“Does it say that?”

“No, but its an assumption. We do not know WHY it is not accepting. Have your client contact their bank.”

After a run around of five minutes, one is so inclined to tell the other to fly a kite in a thunderstorm.  It baffles me, when someone is processing a credit card, the person who is processing it, MUST be doing something wrong.

I had to be ever so lucky.

When you are wishing there IS a hidden camera, there isn’t.

How One Can say “No” in a Twenty Minute Conversation

Customer service is a necessary evil of making a living.

Oh the ties that bind and gag us together.  This is one easy way to make friends at work.  It’s just our human nature to reach out and bitch to someone.  There’s a huge flood of relief that you aren’t the only one. You know you’ve done your job long enough, when you start nicknaming certain evils at your job.

Here are some of my wonderful WTF moments, that I’ve learned to make fun of.

My favorite one to make fun of is, the ”Serial Holder.”  I’m not talking about that cute plastic bowl that holds Captain Nasty Crunch your kids eat every morning. This is for those people who do not know how to get all their information BEFORE calling.  I’ll just say, I work as a middle man, selling the product to the other middle man.  No, I’m not a drug dealer, although, at some times, with the high prices of things, I sometimes wonder.  Anyway, these people will come on the line, have this short, sweet introduction, ask for the product, and then ask to place you on hold.  Three long minutes after listening to rejected elevator music, they come on and ask another question.  What takes, seemingly, two minutes of research, they put you on hold again after finding the answer.  Two more long minutes go by, and you swear you heard that last song on the last hold.  They come back on the line.  Ask, another question.  This one is easy.  Three seconds later, they place you on hold.  They’re thinking, this time, it’s ok to place you on hold without even asking first.  They believe you are smart enough to realize that this is the way they run the show, and you’re smart enough to recognize a pattern.  This time, five more minutes of rejected elevator music, and you start contemplating about the other times clients have placed you on hold with music you actually wanted to hear.  Isn’t the whole idea of hold music, is to entertain the person while they are waiting, instead of annoying the person so much they contemplate making a nuece out their own headset?  When you are about to hang up, they come back on the line.  Low and behold, they are in a rush to complete the phone call.  Surprising?  I think not.

Now, do you……

A. Take your time and pretend this is your first day on the job.

B. Go as fast as you can because you can’t stand this sorry ass anymore, or

C. Do the call as you normally would, ignoring the heavy breathing of anticipation for you to finish.  Which, oddly sounds equivalent to someone anticipating a sex act to be over with.

Or  D. Kill them with kindness.

Like I would give them the gratification of doing what they want.

I’ve done everything from, the computer crashing on me, to “I can’t hear you, can you repeat that”, and oh, my favorite, “I think we have a bad connection, I think you might want to call back.”  And if it’s a super freaky busy day?  Yank!  Oops, my foot slipped.  Cord comes out, and I hurriedly plug the cord back in, look around, and know that I can only use that sucker once every four months.

Another one we hate at my job is the “Simon Says” calls.  These are the calls I have marked as “I am not taking your word for it, I want to talk to your supervisor.”  Simply put, Simon didn’t say it, so she aint doing it.

Now, I know MOST jobs don’t have the luxury of having supervisors that take their employees sides.  At my job, we do have that luxury.  (Yeah, you can hate me later)  First of many jobs I’ve had, where, I get the pleasure of “Ok, I’d LOVE to get my supervisor for you. OH SIMON!”  What took you five minutes of “I’m sorry, we don’t/can’t/won’t do that,” gets quickly rectified with “Well, my name is Simon the Supervisor, and I say, we don’t/can’t/won’t do that.”  That conversation, lasted a measly 30 seconds.  Now, in most cases, the customer in question, won’t argue back.  In other cases, I’ve heard of one conversation going on for three days.  No joke.  This person called back, requested the same supervisor, and there were three days of notes in the product reservation that made even the superior of the supervisors contemplate a restraining order on the harasser.

Which brings me to “How to say no in twenty minutes,”  I’ve learned saying, no, gets you nowhere.  As in, someone saying “It looks like rain,” and you ponder back “Its a clear blue sky.”  In other words, a creative way of negating what the other person said, without, sounding negative.

I can’t tell you, how many calls, I’ve had to repeat myself, and rearrange the wording as I said it.  For a distinct example unrelated to my job, but purely for the purposes of showing what I go through on a daily basis, we’ll talk about odd colored matts.  Just an example of something people don’t really need, but it’s a luxury item the crazed lunatic over the phone MUST have.  Yesterday, is when they wanted it.

“I want red, green, and purple matts.”  My response is, ”I’m sorry, but we are all sold out of red, green and purple matts.” and then they would ask the question again, “Are you really sold out of red, green, and purple matts.” and I reconfirm them “Yes, we are temporarily out of the red, green, and purple matts.” Then they retaliate, as if this is going to solve anything.  Complaining that you don’t have any, red, green and purple matts, and saying that there was a flier that went out yesterday, that stated you had, red, green and purple, matts.  They carry on to how it was unfair we didn’t have any left.  How could this be? How this is just bad customer service on your company.  Maybe it’s denial or they think they’ll get their way, if they bitch louder. I kindly state that fliers are made six months in advance.  There is no way for us to predict that such a sales product would be so high on the market.  This does not make things any better.  It just escalates it even more. 

Oh, my bad.  Do I really want to get the supervisor?  Oh no.  I silently gasp to myself, thinking, this is exactly what I want.  I want them to get a supervisor.  Yes, I am that devious.  “I want to speak to a supervisor.” Mentally, they think, Oh, this is going to make the red, green, and purple matts magically appear, and they will walk away victorious because the ssupervisor, is just that;  Super! Ooooh, I’m scared now.  Shaking in my boots.  Now, for the first time in the phone call, I’m rejoicing to myself, silently, of course.

Supervisor comes on the line, and one minute later, the call has ended.  This is the “Simon says” call and “How to say no in twenty minutes” call in one nutshell.

I have learned, long time ago, you kill your customers with kindness.  MOST of the time, the call goes smoothly.  Then I get some ass I later make fun of in a blog later that night.  And after about five asses, it becomes a benchmark for a stereotype.  Like “Bobby from New York”, the woman who’s smoked since the age of three, and had too much vodka the night before, and is complaining it’s your fault the call isn’t going right. To piss her off, I’ve “accidentally” slipped up a few times and called her “Sir.”

I have to give Stephen King some credit for my sweet sweet revenge.  He must not have had a lot of friends because there were rumors that he killed off parodies of the people he did not like.  He killed off a LOT of people.

I just don’t kill people off.

I make fun of them.

Square in Round Hole

In every office environment I have worked in, I have came across an employee’s manual. My job has the equivalent biblical proportion of employee training guide that makes the Phoenix phone book weep with gratitude that its not the heaviest book I own.  Sad thing is, the phone book makes more sense then the training manual does.

I think, my unconscious goal at my job is, to find every possible answer that can not be found, in the employee manual.  What I despise worse is hearing  “Have you checked the manual?”  After I tell them yes, they still insist, “Well, did you look here?” Yes.  Then I hear this audible pause, and three minutes pass.  My resource has to consult their resources because I’ve found the impossible of the impossible.  After they find the answer, I then I ask those magic words, “So, where did you find that?” and to only find out, that it’s not in the employee manual.

I love proving to believers of the mighty manual, that not everything is in there.  What I find, disruptive, is that, if we find something wrong in the manual, to bring it up to the powers that be, to fix the issue.  I’m not kidding.  So, its upon us, common folk, to eradicate the mistakes that the upper management have approved to be put in there.  So, you taught me, and I’m going to teach you, what you have in there is outdated.  That makes about as much sense as telling a paper training dog to fold up the paper and put it on the coffee table after when he’s done using it.  I hope Fido wipes his paws, thoroughly.

I have a strong inclination that the person who wrote the manual, is left handed.  Not that I have anything against left handed people, but the whole training process, was kind of left handed.  Not backwards, just a different way of thinking.  “Lets not show you what we are going to talk about first, lets talk about it, then show you.”  I’m the kind of person who, you must show me, then walk me through the steps, not the other way around.  We had a month of this.  Its amazing I passed.  I am very ambidextrous after this whole adventure.

What I find, fun, and also frustrating, is the way of thinking, in the on-line employee guide.  I was looking for extensions, one day, when I first started, and believe it or not, they have it listed under the tag “transfer” as in “extension to transfer the call to.”  There’s a few other weird ways to find other things.  Someone, must have skipped a thought process.  It makes me feel like I’m intruding in on someone’s conversation with themselves.  Like the beloved little man that followed four short men with really large hairy feet on an adventure with a wizard that rhymes with Randalf. 

“Mike wants coffee…..yes, me wants Coffee……….Mike likes Coffee……yes…..Mike likes coffee very much…….me likes coffee………precious……lets tag that under “Bean” to see if anyone gets it’s for Coffee, as in Coffee Bean…….yes……lets shall, me wants too………my precious…….” 

“One manual to rule them all.”

Yeah right.

Makes me want to fling the whole darn thing in a volcano of Doom and call it an adventure.

The Albino Black Spider

Rumors are not my forte’.  I hear something, I either, one, difuse the bomb from my end of the string, or go directly to whom the rumor is about and ask them indirectly.  I normally call rumors “getting it from the horse’s ass” because getting it from the horse’s mouth, is, getting the truth.  Getting it out of their ass, is getting a chewed up, digested end of the truth.  You know it came from the horse.  Its just, that version of the horse is more readily easier to find, easier to mulitply, then the actual horse itself.

I once found out, a woman I worked with, was pregnant.  Well, by the time I found out she was pregnant, she had already had the baby and it was now five months old.  Same goes for my family telling me about having little cousins.  By the time I hear about it, they are starting kindergarden.  That’s one lesson I have learned, to not believe everthing I hear.

Another time, someone had told me a co-worker got accepted for a job offer they wanted to get into for the longest time.  When I turned to congradulate them, I had found out, that very same day the news was given to me, that they were turned down for the promotion.  Not only that, it was their last day and they were transferring out of state. Either the telephone lines were crossed somehow and I have a bad connection, or someone was playing an awful trick on me.  That last part, usually happens.

There was another instance where I had worked with more then one person with the same name.  True story, I worked with ten Christines, all spelled differently, in one of my old stores.  Once again, I went over to the Christine whom I had learned was going to be leaving our store.  I told her I’d miss her, only to find out, she was trying to leave and was denied transfer, and it was another person, in another dept, that had left, two weeks prior.  The sad thing was, their name, wasn’t Christine.  It was Crystal.

After a while, I’ve learned to just keep my mouth shut, and to not ask questions to the horse where excrement’s of their ass is being spread around for office fertilizer.  Avoiding this, is not always as easy as it sounds.

Like the Albino Black Spider, reining terror in the women’s restroom.  By the time it got to me, that thing had grown three inches bigger, and surprised Miss Muffet sheeting her curds and whey.  This was when I worked in Bank of America building, and decided, for a week, to use the bathroom on a different floor, and not on the floor of where I worked at, all because, there was a giant, albino, spider.

One day, I had no choice, but to use the bathroom on the same floor.  Upon turning to leave, a coworker had came in, and let out a blood curdling scream. Low and behold, there was a spider, on the wall.  I walked up, closer to it, examining any discriminating marks, that would make this one more dangerous, then any other spider out there.

This guy was big, I’ll admit that.  The leg span was smaller, then how the girls were describing it to me.  They were giving him six inches wide, and I was giving him an estimate of three inches in circumference.  Big difference.  I looked at that spider, and thought, what a peculiar looking spider.

It was a black spider spider all right.

He had a smudge of white paint, on his thorax.

How that paint got there, and how he managed to get to the tenth floor, is beyond me. And how they got, “White spot on a black spider” into a “Albino Black Spider” will still baffle me to this day.

Lucky for me, it wasn’t a giant albino black spider.  The walls in that resteroom were white.

 

So, instead of calling rumors “the excrements of the horse’s ass”, I call them “Albino Black Spiders.”  Its easier to say.  To me, its that one speck of truth, that human fabrication, that creates a monster.

Excremental Affairs

We are so privileged, to have our company pay for, two fifteen minute breaks, during the day.  At this time, you may rise, dispose of any waste, and regain fuel, as you must endure another two to three more hours, then do it all over again.

A fifteen minute break, is basically, move as quickly as you can.  Get to the candy machine, pray nothing eats your dollar, or spits it out, and nothing gets stuck.  Having any one of the above happen, and ten minutes of your break is easily swallowed up.  You’re lucky if you can take one or two bites of your precious treat, before going back to your next task at hand.  Never mind the fact that your desk always seems farther away from the break room, and you feel like you have to move like the monopoly game piece.  Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars, go directly to, the candy machine.

Never mind the fact that, while there, it’s also a communal gathering for the talkative, or the strange.  Its like waiting in line for the movies.  You know what you want, you know how much it is, and you just wish the other person in front would make up their mind as well.  The person in front of you, has the desire to turn around and talk to you, while the person behind you, is standing a little too close for comfort and you could have just sworn you felt him do a silent bowel movement.  In either way you look at it, it both stinks.

Our breaks and lunches are highly monitored at work, that if you are over five seconds, it counts against you.  I asked my boss the other day, what happens if I used up both my breaks, and I have to use the bathroom?  Hold it in.  I’m like, you’re serious?  I wanted to tell him, in that case, do you have money so I can buy some adult diapers and I’ll ring a bell and you can change me?  Like, I’m actually going to have a conversation with my excremental behaviors and tell them “Hey, look, I’m working right now, so, please, do your thing anywhere between 11:30 and 11:45 or between 4:00 to 4:15pm.  If you disturb me any other time during the day, I’m going to be really pissed off.”

We’re never going to use the bathroom, at the time our job wants us to.  Its funny how you have to rearrange your bowels for whatever job you work at.  And they wonder why they have disgruntled employees.  Using the bathroom is considered an unscheduled break.  Having my pants around my ankles around other people doing the same thing I’m doing, is not considered relaxing, if you want to call a break “relaxing.”  Sounds kinky, though.  Sitting behind a door that has a crack a half inch wide going vertically down the side, where you can see people and they can see you, is not what I call, relaxing.  I’d rather be at my desk, working, then have to deal with that half-naked anxiety. I get enough of that at the Dr.’s office when I’m getting my throat examined and they are asking me about my sex life.  That’s another story.

I’d Like to Displace a Vowel.

I talked to a woman today who, literally, made my ears hurt.

What was worse, she had this Russian accent, spoke 50miles a minute, and I understood three out of ten words she was telling me.  It sounded something like this “askfjas;dklfasjdfkjCheeseburgeraskdjfhas;d   askdjf;askldfjasDucksauceljalksdfj;asldfElmer Fuddyakjklajsdl;fkjas” Imagine that, plus a sound similar to nails on a chalkboard.  My ears, literally hurt, and I was turning the volume down as much as I could.

Translating foreign language into our language, is phonetically challenging.  Russian names and words, in particular, do not translate well into the English language, where you have more constants the vowels, and even pronouncing it in English, you still have sound like your spitting.  You don’t make that R sound right, well, you’re going to be ridiculed in having to repeat that rolling R sound.  Instead of pronouncing the difficult name, I just spell it out.  It saves me less time if I spell out that 20 letter last name, then try to pronounce it.

Another popular one is where there are letters in there, but they are silent.  You add two letters together, to make it sound like another letter in the alphabet.  The French language is notorious of having names, translated into English, and thinking, OK, that doesn’t sound like Fonverg, and it’s really spell Phvonenbvergh.  The more letters you can cram in there, and the more silent they are, the more chances you are going to screw it up, and be another three minutes late getting out on time.  From the extreme of pronouncing every extra letter in the alphabet, to the next extreme of not pronouncing every letter in the alphabet and tricking the brain that three letters together, mean one letter.  I wonder if the French invented algebra?  Too many letters, not enough sense.

Another favorite of mine that I can never figure out is, the translation from symbols to Arabic lettering.  Who decided X was going to be in the popular translation of most Chinese names?  Its like the translators around the world had a bet, and the translators of the Asain languages, lost, they got to use the leftover letters we don’t use all the time in our daily language.  X, Y, Z, Lets be nice and since the Russian’s don’t really use these letters all that much, we’ll let you use an occaisional letter in the middle of the alphabet.  A’s are off limits for anyone claiming, of course.  No one wants to use the B’s. 

The only place you here the B’s being richly spoken about is when Robert turns into “Bob”.  You go into Texas and you hear ”Bubba” enter the conversation every five minutes, and you start to think its a type of drink, or a compliment on the weather.  My favorite, is when Richard, is nicknamed “Dick.” Where the heck did this come from?  Someone names their poor kid, Harold Richard Johnson, and he grows up being taunted “Harry Dick Johnson.”  Its bad when people start nicknaming people.  This poor kid, told everyone to call him Harry, and they found out his middle name was Richard, and Oh boy, they went to town on him.  True story.  And how on Earth did they get “Peggy” out of “Margaret.”  Was there a Pirate named Margaret who walked around with a peg, so they called her “Peggy?”  That’s got to be the anti-French name.  Finding nicknames and letters that aren’t even in the the name.

Then you have, what I like to call, “Letter displacement.”  The “R” in some states, such as the Midwest and parts of Montana, where we “Warsh the clothes.”  My Mom said “Warsh.”  To this day, if I wasn’t taught in school, to say “Wash,” I’d be doing that same displacement thing.  You go to the East Coast, and you have “New Joysey.”  Its like the “R” decided to take a trip to the Midwest and decided, “Ahh screw you, you like your vowels to much.  I’m sitting right in the middle of New Jersey, and you happen to just, pronounce right around me.  New Joysee.  I’m having a new, joy, see.  Being up where I’m respected.  Up north.  Where they include me, in the middle, of ‘wash’.  See.  I’m not last.  Or worst, not pronounced.  Only by those sweet Russian kids that like to pronounce every single letter in the alphabet.  And in some languages, I get to rolled.  So, “R” to you too.  Include me in, and not pronounce me.  Ha.”

If our Alphabet could talk.

Olfactory Gland Overload

Some days, the office I work in reminds me of public transportation.  So many different people, so many interesting smells.

The most common one I smell all the time, now, is scented hand sanitizer.  They use to have that subtle odor to it, now it’s perfumed, Lavender or something.  For those who are not knowledgeable about hand sanitizers, it’s a liquid/gel compound that evaporates on you hands after massaging them. It’s just another consumer product that feeds the economy, because God forbid, soap and warm water wasn’t good enough.  This makes SURE you don’t have any germs on you.  Or three feet from your cubicle for that matter, because the smell alone is a deterrent for germs to even THINK about coming near you, hence the lavender smell.  I refer to this as ” The Second Washing”.  What I find hilarious is when someone has a big bottle of hand sanitizer at their desk, and uses it on a continuous basis, when, no one else touches that desk.  For an entire week, I couldn’t figure out where this smell was coming from or what it was.  I thought it was another neighbors cheap cologne.

Cheap cologne is another olfactory offender.  I call this “The Cologne Wars”.  People think it’s wise to pour on gallons of this stuff, and refresh during lunch hour. I even knew of someone who had a emergency stash in their drawer.  Studies have shown that it creates more of a hostile work environment when everyone wears cologne.  I wonder if it’s a hostile environment because everyone thinks they smell better then the other person.  Or they think everyone should wear the same stuff.  When someone’s cologne is over riding theirs this inturn creates more hostility, for them to layer on more of their stuff.  One person particular, I asked if he was trying to attract a harem, because all the women he walked by, said he smelled ”yummy.” 

Speaking of smells that aren’t so “yummy”, we enter, the lunchroom.  I have found people tend to have this strong need to bring in food that smells up the office, but they claim, tastes so good. Fish, seems to be the number one culprit.  At the office I work in now, people don’t partake in this ritual as much.  Once in a while, you’ll come across an undesired smell, and you aren’t quite sure how to take it.  I’ve made the mistake of saying “Mm, that smells awful” only to find that the olfactory mistake was on someone’s beloved family recipe.  Putting more salt in the wound, they mentioned that it was not only a family favorite, but it was Grandma’s family favorite.  She made it every sunday until the day she died.  So today, is the anniversary of her death, and they are eating it, in memory of Grandma.  I wanted to ask if it was grandma.

Those foods that make a lasting impression on the mind, and in the room.  Like, leftover pizza on Friday, that no one wants to take out, so the whole break room smells like rotten milk and feet.  Mmm…..I dread when we have pizza on a friday at work, because that’s exactly what happens.  The trash doesn’t get taken out, and you get to smell that pleasant “Old roommate that doesn’t bathe” smell for the next two days.

It reminds me of that great day, of our office’s anniversary, when they decided to have chili.  It smells good in from a distance, and when you get closer, and been around it for a while, you either want some, or you don’t.  I don’t, because I call it the “Pre-gas smell.”  You get a hint of what it’s going to smell like when it’s done processing through the body.  I think that’s one of the deadliest things anyone, can think of doing, is having Chili, or any kind of bean substance for that matter, in an office.

I inquired with my next door neighbor over the wall, about this one.  “We’re having beans?  In an office environment?”  She looked at me, and I looked at her. We both confessed we didn’t like chili and not for that reason.

One of my naive co-workers didn’t get it.  “They could take Beano.”  I just looked at her. “Oh, I’m sure two hundred people will have Beano inside their desks.”

Seriously, what were they thinking.  Chili, in an office environment, on a Wednesday?!

I was just lucky I had the next two days off from work.

I kept checking the local news on Yahoo to see if our office blew up from increased flatulence. 

I didn’t even want to think about going near the smokers area.  This was before I knew about Mr Flatulance and Mr Hand Sanitizer.  If I knew about them DURING this event, I might have never returned.

Supervisor This!

The word “Supervisor” can solve anything, it seems like.  For some, a cringe when you hear “I want to speak to your supervisor” and for others, its a Godsent.  To me, my battle has been won when someone asks “Can I speak to your supervisor?”  Sure, go right ahead.  Sucker! 

I always figure, when this does happen, they are disgruntled with what they hear, and they just want reconfirmation they are hearing right.  What was a twenty minute call, now turns into, most of the time, two minute call, and that call, is overwith.  What took me, five times of repeating, too them, 90 perecent less then that.  I think if they threatened to share a sigh over the phone, the person would instantly turn passive.  Then again, it seems effortless to us, when it really isn’t, and I’ve heard calls that lasted for days.

“They were suppose to call me back.”  That was that Supervisor’s polite way of saying, they were tired of going in circles with you and hopefully you’ve calmed down after a week or two to finish that last discussion you had with them.  This usually results in that costumer wishing to speak to a supervisor, and sometimes, you hear the story of them going to the supervisor of the supervisor, because they were never called back.  Those are always fun to be a fly on the wall with.

“I’ve called about this issue, and been on the phone with the last person for over an hour.  I’ve spent all day on this phone call.  I want to speak to a supervisor.”  This one translates into, “I’ve talked to three other supvisors and I’m not getting the answer I want. Maybe this one will give me what I want.”  Sure.  With all calls being monitored now adays, and comments being made in profiles, it’s almost a given that this person is a persistent dick.

My favorite is, when the person doesn’t even say “hello” they just say  “I want to speak to a supervisor.”  You are like, oh sheeet, it’s that bad, huh.  You know this person is terse, and before finding a supervisor, you have to find out exactly why they want to speak to one.  You cautiously ask the question, “Ok, um….may I ask the reason you want to speak to a supervisor?”  This, in itself, can have them ask to speak to a supervisor again, just for asking this very question.

My all time supervisor grudge match, was when I was talking to someone, who had their supervisor on the phone with them, who insisted that I was wrong, and would like to speak to my supervisor.  It was supervisor vrs supervisor.  This was a first for me.  So, they didn’t like what they were hearing, they got their supervisor, they argued with me, and insisted they speak to my supervisor.  Well, hence to say, that conversation was still shorter then mine, and my supervisor, basically told them, the SAME EXACT thing as I had told them.  The even funnier, and entertaining thing is, even when they are agreeing, they are both still yelling at each other, like two umpires at the ball feild.  “FINE, and HAVE your cake and eat it too!”  “FINE, I will.”  “FINE.”

Too bad I didn’t have my own personal supervisor work for me at the gas pumps.

Better Left at The Office

“I’ll always be in love with my initial impression of you.”

I always think of that when I am at work.  The majority of the time, I’m watching, a lot of mighty fine impressions.  There are some people, I know, who are behaving their true selves.  Like the ones that eat at their desk and wipe their face with their sleeve, or burp erroneously when you are on the phone with a client.  Or the one person who decides he’s going to have a sailors tongue in the most opportune moment when the boss walks out of the office.

Lets face it, we spend more hours with our co-workers then we do with our family.  Don’t let this fool you.  That doesn’t mean they would make good friends and roommates.  One, we have no choice but to act that way, and two, this is not their true selves.  I can speak for the mass majority of us who tend to keep our flatulence to ourselves.  Without rules in place, they would be more, like our family.  The ones that we omit from telling our friends about.

Best example is the breakroom.  Many of us have seen that sign “Your mother doesn’t work here, clean up after yourself”  Like, that is a threat.  Most of us, are glad, we don’t work with our mothers.  Does that mean if that sign wasn’t in place, we’d be hearing inconsistent nagging to clean up our rooms and questions if we finished our homework? It always amazes me, no matter where I’ve worked, people tend to leave their stuff behind.  It’s not only trash.  Even the important things, like keys, and my favorite, birth control pills.  Some things, you can’t make up.

You can’t forget about the signs in the bathroom.  “Employees MUST wash hands” or “Dispose of waste properly”, and it points an arrow to a trash can.  There are more females that don’t wash their hands.  Women, by nature, are very clean animals, but how they dispose of things, well, not so much so.  Watching someone wash their hands in water, makes me think of a cat’s multi-purpose tongue.  You can’t help but THINK of where it’s been, and what its going to touch next.  People need to lather soap, with water, to get a good effect.  And people, STILL bypass that sign ‘Must wash hands.’  We learned this in elementary, and it proves that very same point, some people, just don’t learn.

Then again, some people feel, if there isn’t a sign, it’s OK to do it. I’m surprised these people don’t need a sign to wipe their butts when they are done.

If these aren’t indicators enough, that people we work with are better, left, at the job, I don’t know what is.  I’m not saying I work with a bunch of heathens.  I’ve made some really good friends at work.  I’m just saying, the majority of my experiences at most of my jobs, have been the result of me either changing jobs, or zip codes, because someone didn’t do a thorough enough job on someones background check.   It wasn’t an IQ test that got people hired in my last job, it was passing the urine-in-the-cup, test.

I not only support this message, but I, too, am a victim.

I know that initial impressions, are just that.  Initial impressions.  If I knew what I was getting into, I don’t think I would have tried.

I dated my ex boss.

Need I say more.

Last Call!

It never fails.

The call before you go home.  The call that happens, when you prematurely, closed down a few of your applications, and you can just almost taste that long awaited dinner in your mouth.  The last call that happens when you have your keys in your hand, bag on your shoulder, and you are in standing up mode, ready to push that chair in.  One minute before clocking out, “RING!”

You might as well put that bag down, place those keys in your pocket, and have a seat.  You’re going to be here for a while.

It’s that one call everyone dreads.  That one where they don’t have their routing number, they have no idea what date, what time, the where, but they have the who.  If you’re lucky, it’s the partial who, as well.  In the back of you’re mind, you know she’s probably a hard worker as you are, and this is totally last minute.  She’s probably doing five things at once, and you are just one of her little multi-tasks.  Now, in the back of your mind, you are annoyed with this, as if it’s one more thing that can go wrong, but you know, she had no idea you were about to leave for the day.

As you are thinking that, she retorts “I am so glad to catch you.  I didn’t know if you were closed or not.  Someone had told me you close around this time.”

You bitch! you think to yourself.  She KNEW we were closing, and she didn’t think at closing time, we’d be so anxious to get home to our families.  And you’re going to stand there, take the whole call through, and you put on an act.  Like, this is your first call of the day, and you love your job so much, you’re willing to sacrifice eating your meal cold.

You get a message through your email from one of your supervisors, asking why you haven’t left yet, and they realize, you are on a phone call.  Now you have double the pressure to get out of there.  The whole guilt trip that you know they have kids, and you’re holding them back from seeing them.  Great.  Now you have even more pressure to “Wrap it up.”

Not only do you have to bring up the applications that you just closed down, but you have to get something unlocked.  While you place them on hold, you call tech support, and an equally eager person who wants to go home answers, and they too, tell you, in a friendly, yet sarcastic way, “So, YOUR the reason I can’t leave yet.”  Feeling confident that they aren’t in the same office area as you are, you retort back, “No, there’s a few people still here.”  You hear this deafening silence, and then ”Not in the last ten minutes.  You’re it.”  They do you the favor of unlocking whatever program you needed unlock, and you thank them graciously for their time.  Part of you wants to tell them “Like, I’m not the ONLY person to delay you,” but you bite your lip.  However, you do hear the snarky comment for you to hurry it up, he’s missing his son’s ball game.

It’s not like, you are doing this on purpose.

Your supervisor walks over, and gives you that look of “I want to go, can you hurry it up.”

At that time, you are requested to be put on hold.  Great.  She knows, and you know, you can’t just, release the call.  This call is probably being monitored.  You have patience, to a point.  The supervisor wants you to release the call, but they too, know the chances of you being monitored right now, is extremely high, so the decide, no, not a good idea.

After hearing possibly the most obnoxious elevator music over the phone, she comes back on, as perky as ever, and you start to wrap up the call.  And as soon as you feel, that you are about done with her, she asks those magic words.

“Can I have your extension? I want to get you back again.  You’ve been so nice and so patient.”

 

I give them my neighbor’s extension.  Kelly, Carrie, we sound the same over the phone.

But shhh….don’t tell anyone…..