Remember, call centers may be big: but gee whiz, we do have to sit close to each other. Cubicles are close together, and some of us have severe perfume allergies. Take it easy, huh?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,535501,00.html?test=latestnews

34 Taken to Hospitals After Woman Sprays Perfume in Texas Call Center

Thursday, July 30, 2009 Associated Press

FORT WORTH, Texas — At first, fire officials suspected that carbon monoxide or some other toxic fumes had sickened almost 150 people at a Texas bank call center.

It turned out that perfume was to blame.

MedStar ambulance spokeswoman Lara Kohl says 34 people were taken to hospitals, 12 by ambulance, after reporting dizziness and shortness of breath Wednesday at a Bank of America call center in Fort Worth. An additional 110 were treated at the scene.

Fort Worth fire Lt. Kent Worley says the incident started with two people complaining about dizziness after a co-worker sprayed perfume. Others reported being sick when an announcement was made that anyone with similar symptoms should exit the building.

Investigators do not know what type of perfume was sprayed.

I have located the epitome of bad customer service, courtesy of my children's school system.

I went in today to ask for two affidavits. Our school system requires a ridiculous set of checks and balances to ensure that no child from another district attends the local schools. They have a button on their website that you can press and fill out a form reporting out of district students. If you live in the district, but do not own a house or rent an apartment, you must fill out an affidavit for each child. This is a form that must be notarized and returned to the school before they will assign your child to a classroom. For anyone that enrolls their child using an affidavit, this also includes a visit by the local police department to prove that you live where you say you do.

Back to the story. I went in to ask for the affidavits, and was told, "I'm sorry, but you can't pick those up until registration." Our children have been in this school system for 6 years. I work, but we live with my husband's mom because he is her full-time caregiver. When I asked why, she said, "I don't know: I'm new here, but it's just policy."

Those dreaded words - "just policy." It means they have no clue what the reason is, and they hope you won't press them further on it. I have tried so hard to be a part of my children's school lives. I have offered to work with the PTA. I have spoken to or emailed principals and offered assistance. I have filled out the form that the teachers send home every year where they ask for classroom help and have never had a return call. Not once in six years in this same school system.

I have more complaints, but I will just leave it at this. I hate being made to feel like an unwanted, unwashed heathen just because I do not own land in the city. I am just as much a citizen of this town as anyone else, and like it or not, I have a say. And if they have no clue why they have that policy, they need to sit down and review it so they can give people a decent explanation.

Dude! You're going to... Wichita???

http://consumerist.com/5320315/ups-sends-your-monitor-to-gladys-in-wichita-dell-tells-you-to-pick-it-up-you-live-in-boston

This poor guy. He ordered a Dell monitor to be shipped to him in Boston. That's in the North East. The monitor was shipped to someone named Gladys in Wichita. That's in the Midwest. These two locations are over 1,600 miles apart.

This is a classic example of the good old pass the buck strategy. UPS tells the guy to call Dell and have the package forwarded: Dell says they don't do that, and it must be UPS's fault because Dell has the right address on file. UPS then asked him to come pick up the package at their service center. In Wichita. Remember, this guy's in Boston. UPS then helpfully changes the status to, "Receiver will pick up at UPS facility." Apparently, someone from Dell called UPS and told them that he would be picking up his monitor.

He is right in stating that the shipping difficulties are not his problem. Instead of passing the buck, Dell should have shipped him a new monitor and worked with UPS to get the original one back. But they didn't do that. They played this stupid game and left the customer hanging in the middle.

QA Words (yes, plural) of the Day!

#1: Formularity. From a customer: "I'd like to place an order for this, but it's not on my formularity." Some of our customers are on formularies, which means they have a set list of items that they can purchase from us. But I've never heard of a formularity. It reminds me of Father Mulcahy on M*A*S*H*: "Jocularity!"

#2: Que and reque. Wrong! Those are spelled queue and requeue (or re-queue). How correct does "que pasa" sound?

"Bad news is out the door and around the block before good news gets up out of bed." - My Husband

Boy, isn't this the truth. FoxNews has a shining example of this right now on their website, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,531515,00.html.

This poor guitarist had his guitar broken by a baggage handler of United Airlines. He tried for a year to get United to pay for the broken guitar, which cost $1,200 to fix. When United wouldn't pay, he made a video and posted it on YouTube, titled "United Breaks Guitars." Fox said the video had more than 600,000 hits by Thursday evening. It's Friday evening now, and it has 1,627,312: the last one being mine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

The funny thing: United wants to use the video as a training video on how to handle customer complaints in the future.

Now, what would have happened if United had actually paid this claim like they should have? Nothing would have been told about this at all. But instead, this incident is all over the news. Even Oprah is all over it. United gets a bad reputation (which they deserve after this) and I want to go buy a Sons of Maxwell album, even though I have never heard of them before now.

It's very sad when United's version of Quality Assurance equals a passenger looking out the window and yelling, "Hey! They're throwing guitars out there!" The baggage handlers started the slippery slope by not treating their customers the way they should be treated. Their supervisor failed by not correcting what they were doing. The management failed by not reimbursing a claim and essentially saying the baggage handlers acted appropriately. I believe this is one company that needs more help and training than even an excellent YouTube video can provide.