No work today: well, no work work. I did laundry. Nice to have an off day once in a while. June is in the books, and I finished a day early. Nice.

I'm now off until July 5. I'll check in between now and then.

I just heard a customer that called from her bathtub.  She programmed the item number she was given into her phone.

 

I've heard it all now.

That's it.  I'm done.

 

10 hour day, only got up for bathroom breaks and 1/2 hour lunch.  Lunchtime was spent sitting in the sun, hoping my poor arthritic, carpal-tunnel plagued hands would feel better.  It helped, believe me.

 

Time to head to the house and hit the bed!

With.  One simple, easy word.  I will go with you to the store.  May I have some peanut butter with the jelly?  You know, that kind of thing.

 

I am so tired of hearing this nice, simple, innocent word being pronounced wit' or which.  Even better is the combination "whichoo:" I will go whichoo to the store.  Of course, with you would not be the only thing messed up here.  It would come out, "Go whichoo ta da sto'."

 

The poor English language,  What did it do to deserve this?

I was right. Friday was Not Good. Nothing I can really pin down: just everything seemed to go wrong. I think our crew has Spring Fever just a little late.

On another note: I can't believe that people wouldn't realize that a blood glucose meter needs batteries.

I can't believe that people who use pen lancets don't clean/sterilize their equipment. I can't believe that people don't use one time safety lancets. I can't believe that people who use the safety lancets throw them away in the regular trash when there are sharps containers available. Don't they know what diseases blood can carry?

Lots of things I can't believe. Sometimes, I swear, the human race is getting dumber by the second.

Oh, well. It's the weekend. I can relax now!

Well, I was right about today. It wasn't bad. Pretty easy, actually. Except for the CSR who had no freaking idea who he was talking to.

The customer calls in, as they often do, and I think he wanted to order something. His name was Andre. Nice name. Pretty simple, right?

Not for this CSR. He called the customer Jim. Then he called him Andrew.

I can see the connection between Andre and Andrew. Not much of a stretch there. But where in the heck did Jim come from? "He's dead, Jim: you take his order, I'll take his wallet." Sheesh.

Monday sucked. Yesterday was great. Today sucked. I hold no hope for Friday at this rate.

The day started with one major blinding migraine. It was almost impossible to concentrate at all. Add to that the fact that I had to do three write-ups on my first four calls. I didn't think the headache was going to go away.

It did, finally, around 1pm: after some quiet time and a massive amount of medicine. I shall reemphasize this point now: if you say you are going to call a customer back, FOLLOW THROUGH. That one point caused more problems today than you could ever imagine. How would you like it if someone promised to call you back with information, and never did? Has it happened to you? How did you feel? Take your feelings, and then imagine the stress you've just caused the customer. Bites, doesn't it?

Right now, it's good to be home and relaxing with the family. Hopefully, tomorrow will be fantastic, and Friday will break the curse. If Friday doesn't, then I'll have three great days next week to finish up June.

Nice day.  No major malfunctions here.  But at least we still have power.  My better half works about 5-6 miles north of me, and his business is closed.  No electric in the whole area. 

 

We had an awesome thunderstorm to come through here, so that's why the power is out.  It was fun watching it go through.  So nice to have an office with a window.  :)

OY. What a day. I am so glad I'm home, and it's over. Now I can decompress, destress, and share the day. It was fun: at least, I think it could have been fun.

Pronunciation rant, part 1: Come on, people. Type or write the word credit. Do you see a K or a hard C at the end? No? Then stop pronouncing it cred-ick. That drives me crazy.

Part 2: The word breasts is not pronounced breasteses. How many do you have? Are you a total freak of nature? All you need is two, people. Breasteses indicates at least five.

Part 3: We sell items individually. I don't mind if you say we sell by each, or by the each. But when you say, "we sell that by the eaches," my skin crawls. Seriously, guys. This just sounds totally wrong.

Bad day, part 1: If you are going to transfer a call, let your customer know first. Don't ask the customer to hold, then transfer the call to the operator. This is just a blatant slap in the face. This is what happened on my first call this morning.

Part 2: If you can't find an order that was supposedly placed for a customer, then at least tell the customer that no order is in the system. Don't let the customer think that there is, and hang up. That's not cool. This was part two of my first call this morning.

Part 3: Don't call a customer, internal or external, dog. I actually heard someone say today to a sales rep, "But, dog! I mean..."

Part 4: If you see a price for an item that you think is high, the proper response is not, "WHOO! Golly!" That reminds me of when I heard a CSR say, "Goshamighty dern!"

Okay. That's the end. I really hope tomorrow is better. I don't think it can be worse.

Happy Father's Day to my better half. I love you, sweetheart. :)

Switching over isn't as easy as I thought, sadly. I know a good bit about computers, but I'm completely self taught. I think I know what I'm doing, but my hosting site doesn't recognize Blogspot or something. I'm waiting for the helpdesk to get back to me.

It's nice to be off work so I can get some work done. :D

This is pretty good!

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/bing/0706/quiz.crazybosses.fortune/index.html?cnn=yes

You can find out just how crazy your boss really is. Mine only scored a 21 out of 100. IIRC, that meant, "So your boss is a little bent. Who isn't?" And that's pretty true.

Not a bad day.  Nothing memorable, really.  After the first call of the day, I ended up doing about an hour of research to find out what the heck happened.  So I was behind most of the day.  I just now got a little space to breathe, thankfully.

 

Someone else came into my office today and started ranting about cell phones in the bathroom.  I'm so glad I'm not alone in my disgust.  That alone made me happy.

 

I'm loving Cafe Press.  There are some really cute QA things in a couple of the stores.  I'm in love.  (squeal!)

 

Hopefully, this will be heading to www.callcenterqablues.com soon: for my birthday present, I got a domain name.  Pretty sweet, I think.  So tonight I'm going to play with it and see if this blog will work under the new name.  Wish me luck...

What a day.

 

Come in to work this morning, and find out the boss is leaving the call center.  He's staying with the company, which is an awesome thing: but he won't be here anymore.  Sad.  He has singlehandedly done more for this call center than anyone we've ever had.  He believed in me, and believed that I could do the job I do now.  I will miss him greatly.  I hope that someone good steps up to lead us and continue down the road we're on as a company.

 

The first two things I learned upon walking into training at my first call center:

 

#1: The only thing constant is change.  Ain't that the truth.

 

#2: You don't have to know the information off the top of your head: you just have to know where to get it.  If anyone around here knew everything about the industry, I swear their head would explode. 

 

The rest of the day has been quite good.  No major malfunctions, no weird calls.  Just normalcy.  Peace, quiet and tranquility.  Very nice.  Signing off until tomorrow.

It was a good day, and I'm a little less behind than I was yesterday. It's so difficult sometimes to keep on track. I find myself going out to the floor to give messages and help to the CSRs. I love what I do, and I don't want to see them do anything wrong. I am very fortunate in the fact that we have an awesome group of people at our call center. It's a really close family. Weird to say for a call center, but true. It's a lot like Callahans: where shared joy is increased, and shared sorrow is decreased. Read it sometime if you haven't: Callahans Crosstime Saloon, by Spider Robinson. It's a good read.

This is a test to see if this blog-by-email really works.  I hope so.  :)

Busy day, although not as much QAing as I'd like. Ended up having to do a couple of other things, which took a little time away from the actual job. But it was a different day, and a good day, and I'm not *that* far behind.

What a boring day. Everybody did so well, I had nothing to complain about. Pretty awesome.

Well, almost nothing. Heard another great pronunciation gaffe today. I listened to a caller from Lebanon, KY. Now, normal people would pronounce this LE-bun-un, or even Le-buh-NON. This CSR made it French. Lay-BAN-on. Sheesh. And the customer pronounced it correctly at least THREE TIMES! I tell you what: listening skills are not what they used to be.

But on to the main section of my rant for today. The women's bathroom in my call center has 10 stalls and eight sinks. Every single time I go to the bathroom, there is someone in there talking on their cell phone.

What do you do in a situation like this? First of all, our call center has a pretty liberal personal call policy: everything is fine as long as it isn't abused. Why in the world would people who spend eight hours a day on the phone want to be on it constantly during their breaks? On my break, I love to go sit outside and bask in the sun. I don't want to be on the phone constantly. Heck, I don't even answer it at home during the week.

But imagine: you're sitting there, minding your own business, when the person two stalls down starts having a conversation. Yeek. First of all, you don't want to eavesdrop: but unless you have your Ipod on Sonic Blast, you can't help it. You hear everything on their side of the phone. In my job, I have to keep secrets. But I can promise you, not everyone can. Or will.

What do you do when you have to flush? Do you wait until the call is over, or do you just go ahead and do it? I mean, you have the possibility of conversations like...

"I love you, honeybunny."

(FLUUUUSSSSSSHHHHHH!!!!)

Or...

"Yes, Doctor, I would like to move my appointment to...

(FLUUUUSSSSSSHHHHHH!!!!)

TMI WARNING!!!!!

Even better: there are certain, shall we say, bodily functions, that are appropriate in the bathroom. You know. Even the most ladylike of us ladies has to pass gas once in a while.

"No, honey. I'm coming home to cook dinner. I was thinking of having spaghetti..."

(POOOOOOOOT!)

If you have to talk on your cell phone during break or lunch, fine and dandy. But if you do it in the bathroom, expect strange things to happen.

And wash your hands, please. You have no idea where that cell phone has been.

Welcome to my newest rant. Comfy? Good! Have a glass of sweet tea. This could take a minute.

Today, I would like to speak on the subject of proper pronunciation. What started this, you ask? Well, someone today was speaking to a CSR. They gave her the account number. The CSR messed up a word that made me do a double take.

The word? Toledo.

Yes, Toledo. That wonderful city in Ohio. It has three, count them, three syllables. Toll-ee-dough. She pronounced it with two syllables. Toll-dough.

There are other things that really chafe my chops. For example, the difference between Louisville, MS and Louisville, KY. In Mississippi, it is pronounced Lewis-ville. In Kentucky, it is either Lew-ee-ville or Lew-uh-ville. I get so frustrated when they get a call from the 502 area code (KY) and say Lewis-ville.

Versailles is another one. Kentuckians pronounce the name Ver-sails, not Ver-sai. It's interesting to hear people butcher that one.

Mississippi has their fair share of strange names. Pascagoula (not Pas-SCAG-you-la), Biloxi (not Buy-LOX-ee: don't think you can purchase much lox there, and even if you could, Southerners don't know the first thing about bagels), Saucier (pronounced Sew-shay), Kosciusko (pronounced kos-ee-s-ko): and the list goes on.

California has Sepulveda Boulevard, which I hear mispronounced quite a bit. And, while Nacogodoches is pronounced Nak-a-DO-chus in Texas, it is pronounced Nak-a-Dish in Louisiana.

Geography and Grammar should not end after high school or college. Continuing to improve yourself and your image should be an ongoing, lifelong project. Some things are worth working for.

Okay, end of rant. Anyone for pie? :)

Well, we got part of the answer. The customer called me today. She had received all of her order, and the box of picante sauce actually had picante sauce in it. So, she will hold on to the box and give it to the carrier that delivered it next week. As far as I know, that warehouse isn't planning a fiesta anytime soon, so they really don't need it.

However, I would love to hear the story of a Mexican restaurant who suddenly found themselves with a case of insulin syringes. :)