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Tales of Ages Past
I've mentioned a few times that I would get around to talking about my old job. For which I was not and am not bound by an NDA over. ( <insert manical laughter> ). So, I'm finally getting around too it. -.-
Many many years ago, my first job in the Big City(tm) was at another call centre. ( It went out of business a looong time ago ). This place was particularly amazing, even by my lofty standards. Unlike my current company, this was a small rinky dink operation where the boss pretty much did everything. There was really just her, an HR guy and a secretary for upper management. The secretary was probably the most sane of the 3.
Say it Slower
One of the biggest problems we had was that our boss would basically take any client and attempt to make us operators field it. Which led to at least one employee revolt I can recall. One particularly....icky....revolt.
For some reason she took on a client that sold.....lets say "enhancement" cream that was to be generously rubbed upon ones neither regions to enhance performance. I have absolutely no idea why she thought this was a good idea and she certainly didn't consult any of us about it. But the client wanted us not just to sell it, but the also provide callers with directions on how to use it.
Yes, the client wanted us to tell people how to rub lotion on their wang. Then our boss was actually surprised that this led to, well, 90% of our calls being obscene heavy breathers that were already rubbing lotion on their wang before they dialed. This was particularly horrifying for me, because our staff was mostly female and I was the supervisor. Which meant I fielded problem callers......of which there were many on this line. But basically I would spent all morning being the place that boners went to die so to speak. I slew libidos left and right as excited males of all ages, balls in hand, called up, got a female operator and requested instructions ( slowly, of course ) only to suddenly find themselves talking to me.
Some would get particularly desperate as well. Imploring me to transfer them back to a female operator ( "C'mon man! Help a brother out!" ). As if, by virtue of being the same gender, I should give a rat's ass about their blue balls.
We got rid of that client rather quickly ( after the entire staff refused to answer the calls ). Much to the bafflement of Boss Lady.
Ferret Man
This incident was....rather peculiar. One evening on shift this random dude appeared in our office and started going around checking all of our stations. Since we have a secure office ( You needed to get passed two locked doors, a key pad and an intercom to reach the operations floor ) everyone figured he was a janitor or a tech or something at first. But, of course, it was nothing so normal.
It turns out he had gotten in by climbing the side of our building and getting onto our balcony. He scaled the side of the farkin' building. Why you ask? Well, as he told the police: "I was looking for my ferret. Have you seen him?"
Sponge Bob
One thing that was horrifically universal about the company was that HR had no standards. I mean none. Notta. Zilich. Seriously if you could sign your name, our HR Manager would put you at a desk and see if you survived the 2 week trial period. This led to some pretty amazing fails in my time there. But none so fantastical as Sponge Bob.
Sponge Bob was for all extensive purposes basically some random hobo that HR had found. Possibly out front of the building wandering aimlessly for all I know. But Sponge Bob had a big ass piece of packing foam. On his head. For no apparent reason. He refused to remove it under any circumstances. Even to put on a head set. So his first trial shift he spent with a head set on over a giant ass piece of packing foam.
He never made it to a second shift ( But only because the floor manager went and gave HR a piece of her mind. For 20 or 30 minutes. ).
.....Really?
Another thing HR did once was hire a blind dude. For a job that required looking at a computer screen. This was years before there was any sort of decent accessibility software or equipment to be had for computers. Nevermind trying to get said software to work with the 4 different types of software this job required.
HR figured they could just buy some sort of special monitor that he could magically see. I can't help but wonder if he took the job because HR promised him the gift of sight.
Fire Safety
I think my favourite part about my training was when I was promoted and was put in charge of some of the server room duties. The "server room" was barely more than a closet with little ventilation. I was informed "If there's ever a fire, pull this lever. But then you have about 10 seconds to get out of the office because it will kill you otherwise."
Good times.
The Ogre
We had one client who was....yeah. Let me put it this way: The whiteboard in our operations floor was covered in fan art of this particular client devouring kittens and other small, fluffy animals as they tried to flee in terror. That should give you a rough idea of what he was like.
The Ogre essentially believed he was a God amongst men and that all of us were lowly insects that existed only to serve him. The slightest error ( Even if it was correctable with all of 5 seconds of effort ) would sent him spirally off into a rage and he would berate the operator in question till he reduced them to tears ( I can recall at least 3 occasions he made one of our new girls cry ). On top of that, he was a complete sexist prick. I don't mean that he made passes at women either, I meant he viewed women as sub-human. So god help you if you had ovaries when you answered the phone, as he'd start in on you right from the get go then.
Central to this was his poor secretary. We'd never met the woman, but we all knew her pain. Whenever we called him with a message, he couldn't be bothered to actually write down anything himself. Not even phone numbers. He would scream at his secretary to come take the phone and do it for him, then he would snatch the phone back after she was finished. He never called her by name either. He always referred to her as "Woman". As in "WOMAN! COME HERE AND WRITE THIS DOWN!". Everything he ever said to her began or ended with "Woman!".
It got so bad even our boss refused to talk to him for any reason ( He would always demand to speak with her about every little grip he had with us. Real or imagined. ). He wasn't even a big client either. Eventually he was barred from speaking to us entirely and our boss requested that only his secretary ever be allowed to call us on his behalf or we'd cancel his account.
Asshole's still in business too. -.-
Hijinx
I think I may have told this one before on here, but anyhow: There was one shift were we inadvertantly threatened a client with death. >.>
We didn't mean too, mind you. It was one of those things where you get a joke going, but then someone doesn't get it, and....well, bad things happen. This was way way back when that damn ALL YOUR BASE thing was just starting to going around as a meme. Part of our job was voice to text transcriptions for pagers. Whenever we got a recording we couldn't understand the procedure was to fill in as much as we could, then pass it to another operator so they could take a shot at it.
So one evening one of my coworkers couldn't make out a recording and typed in "WHAT YOU SAY?!" before sending it to me. I transcribed as much as I could make out then typed in the next line of the meme before parking it to another coworker. She in turn figured out as much as she could and wrote in the next line. So on and so forth till it hit the one person in the office that had never heard of it before.
Thus we ended up paging a client with something like "YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE STEVE".
Oddly, they never complained. Though they may have been too afraid too. -.-
Fruedian Slips
I had one coworker who had a problem with a certain street downtown....if you're unfamiliar with the Lower Mainland, there is a street in downtown Vancouver called "Hornby". She would, without fail, transcribe it was "Horny" half of the time when doing voice to text....
Three Timin'
Not many clients seemed to realise that an actual human was involved in the voice to text transcriptions. This could be particularly amusing....or horrifying. We had one client in particular who, every morning without fail, would recieve a rather....warm wake up call from his girlfriend describing in vivid detail all the things she wanted to do to him with her mouth.
.....Thing is though, through out the rest of the day he would recieve various texts from his wife as well as yet another woman who sounded supiciously friendly.
This went on for a good year at least before one evening our entire staff got front row seats to the Jerry Springer show. All 3 lovely ladies found out about each other and spend the next virtually the entire night paging him with an unending stream of messages. Tearing him several new ones and mocking him about the size of his genitalia in a variety of creative ways. As this was the one thing they all agreed on: The diminutive size of his junk.
This was his company pager too, mind you. So I'm sure there was yet another wonderful point in his future when his company asked why he was suddenly using up so many text per day.
Denials
On the other hand, some clients did realise a human was involved in the process. Which led to one amusing incident where a friend of one of our female clients had paged her with a joke message indicating he was Dr Such and Such and had the results of her herpes tests.
This led to several pages to herself from herself aimed at us in the vein of "HELLO PAGER PEOPLE SORRY I TOTALLY DON'T HAVE HERPES THAT WAS ALL A JOKE!". This went on for several pages before a coworker took pity and paged her back a message from us acknowledging that she did not, in fact, have herpes.
Painful Therapy
Perhaps one of the most headache inducing clients we had was not actually a client at all. I don't know if it was part of this woman's therapy or what. But she was clearly...disturbed, and I don't know why but they gave her a pager. Which she would call incessantly and ramble off a massive series of numbers which we would then be forced to transcribe to text and page out to her. At which point I guess she was filled with glee and would call in and do it again. Over and over and over and over and over.
She would do this every few minutes for hours on end almost every night. It went on for the entire time I worked for this company. So a couple of years. Drove us all up the damn wall. Because any mistake in the number sequence ( Which she rattled off like an auctioneer ) would make her call more frequently and for longer periods of time.
annnd rest. Thats about all I can think of off the top of my head. There was more, but I don't remember it off hand or I'm subconciously suppressing the memories.. >.>
Many many years ago, my first job in the Big City(tm) was at another call centre. ( It went out of business a looong time ago ). This place was particularly amazing, even by my lofty standards. Unlike my current company, this was a small rinky dink operation where the boss pretty much did everything. There was really just her, an HR guy and a secretary for upper management. The secretary was probably the most sane of the 3.
Say it Slower
One of the biggest problems we had was that our boss would basically take any client and attempt to make us operators field it. Which led to at least one employee revolt I can recall. One particularly....icky....revolt.
For some reason she took on a client that sold.....lets say "enhancement" cream that was to be generously rubbed upon ones neither regions to enhance performance. I have absolutely no idea why she thought this was a good idea and she certainly didn't consult any of us about it. But the client wanted us not just to sell it, but the also provide callers with directions on how to use it.
Yes, the client wanted us to tell people how to rub lotion on their wang. Then our boss was actually surprised that this led to, well, 90% of our calls being obscene heavy breathers that were already rubbing lotion on their wang before they dialed. This was particularly horrifying for me, because our staff was mostly female and I was the supervisor. Which meant I fielded problem callers......of which there were many on this line. But basically I would spent all morning being the place that boners went to die so to speak. I slew libidos left and right as excited males of all ages, balls in hand, called up, got a female operator and requested instructions ( slowly, of course ) only to suddenly find themselves talking to me.
Some would get particularly desperate as well. Imploring me to transfer them back to a female operator ( "C'mon man! Help a brother out!" ). As if, by virtue of being the same gender, I should give a rat's ass about their blue balls.
We got rid of that client rather quickly ( after the entire staff refused to answer the calls ). Much to the bafflement of Boss Lady.
Ferret Man
This incident was....rather peculiar. One evening on shift this random dude appeared in our office and started going around checking all of our stations. Since we have a secure office ( You needed to get passed two locked doors, a key pad and an intercom to reach the operations floor ) everyone figured he was a janitor or a tech or something at first. But, of course, it was nothing so normal.
It turns out he had gotten in by climbing the side of our building and getting onto our balcony. He scaled the side of the farkin' building. Why you ask? Well, as he told the police: "I was looking for my ferret. Have you seen him?"
Sponge Bob
One thing that was horrifically universal about the company was that HR had no standards. I mean none. Notta. Zilich. Seriously if you could sign your name, our HR Manager would put you at a desk and see if you survived the 2 week trial period. This led to some pretty amazing fails in my time there. But none so fantastical as Sponge Bob.
Sponge Bob was for all extensive purposes basically some random hobo that HR had found. Possibly out front of the building wandering aimlessly for all I know. But Sponge Bob had a big ass piece of packing foam. On his head. For no apparent reason. He refused to remove it under any circumstances. Even to put on a head set. So his first trial shift he spent with a head set on over a giant ass piece of packing foam.
He never made it to a second shift ( But only because the floor manager went and gave HR a piece of her mind. For 20 or 30 minutes. ).
.....Really?
Another thing HR did once was hire a blind dude. For a job that required looking at a computer screen. This was years before there was any sort of decent accessibility software or equipment to be had for computers. Nevermind trying to get said software to work with the 4 different types of software this job required.
HR figured they could just buy some sort of special monitor that he could magically see. I can't help but wonder if he took the job because HR promised him the gift of sight.
Fire Safety
I think my favourite part about my training was when I was promoted and was put in charge of some of the server room duties. The "server room" was barely more than a closet with little ventilation. I was informed "If there's ever a fire, pull this lever. But then you have about 10 seconds to get out of the office because it will kill you otherwise."
Good times.
The Ogre
We had one client who was....yeah. Let me put it this way: The whiteboard in our operations floor was covered in fan art of this particular client devouring kittens and other small, fluffy animals as they tried to flee in terror. That should give you a rough idea of what he was like.
The Ogre essentially believed he was a God amongst men and that all of us were lowly insects that existed only to serve him. The slightest error ( Even if it was correctable with all of 5 seconds of effort ) would sent him spirally off into a rage and he would berate the operator in question till he reduced them to tears ( I can recall at least 3 occasions he made one of our new girls cry ). On top of that, he was a complete sexist prick. I don't mean that he made passes at women either, I meant he viewed women as sub-human. So god help you if you had ovaries when you answered the phone, as he'd start in on you right from the get go then.
Central to this was his poor secretary. We'd never met the woman, but we all knew her pain. Whenever we called him with a message, he couldn't be bothered to actually write down anything himself. Not even phone numbers. He would scream at his secretary to come take the phone and do it for him, then he would snatch the phone back after she was finished. He never called her by name either. He always referred to her as "Woman". As in "WOMAN! COME HERE AND WRITE THIS DOWN!". Everything he ever said to her began or ended with "Woman!".
It got so bad even our boss refused to talk to him for any reason ( He would always demand to speak with her about every little grip he had with us. Real or imagined. ). He wasn't even a big client either. Eventually he was barred from speaking to us entirely and our boss requested that only his secretary ever be allowed to call us on his behalf or we'd cancel his account.
Asshole's still in business too. -.-
Hijinx
I think I may have told this one before on here, but anyhow: There was one shift were we inadvertantly threatened a client with death. >.>
We didn't mean too, mind you. It was one of those things where you get a joke going, but then someone doesn't get it, and....well, bad things happen. This was way way back when that damn ALL YOUR BASE thing was just starting to going around as a meme. Part of our job was voice to text transcriptions for pagers. Whenever we got a recording we couldn't understand the procedure was to fill in as much as we could, then pass it to another operator so they could take a shot at it.
So one evening one of my coworkers couldn't make out a recording and typed in "WHAT YOU SAY?!" before sending it to me. I transcribed as much as I could make out then typed in the next line of the meme before parking it to another coworker. She in turn figured out as much as she could and wrote in the next line. So on and so forth till it hit the one person in the office that had never heard of it before.
Thus we ended up paging a client with something like "YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE STEVE".
Oddly, they never complained. Though they may have been too afraid too. -.-
Fruedian Slips
I had one coworker who had a problem with a certain street downtown....if you're unfamiliar with the Lower Mainland, there is a street in downtown Vancouver called "Hornby". She would, without fail, transcribe it was "Horny" half of the time when doing voice to text....
Three Timin'
Not many clients seemed to realise that an actual human was involved in the voice to text transcriptions. This could be particularly amusing....or horrifying. We had one client in particular who, every morning without fail, would recieve a rather....warm wake up call from his girlfriend describing in vivid detail all the things she wanted to do to him with her mouth.
.....Thing is though, through out the rest of the day he would recieve various texts from his wife as well as yet another woman who sounded supiciously friendly.
This went on for a good year at least before one evening our entire staff got front row seats to the Jerry Springer show. All 3 lovely ladies found out about each other and spend the next virtually the entire night paging him with an unending stream of messages. Tearing him several new ones and mocking him about the size of his genitalia in a variety of creative ways. As this was the one thing they all agreed on: The diminutive size of his junk.
This was his company pager too, mind you. So I'm sure there was yet another wonderful point in his future when his company asked why he was suddenly using up so many text per day.
Denials
On the other hand, some clients did realise a human was involved in the process. Which led to one amusing incident where a friend of one of our female clients had paged her with a joke message indicating he was Dr Such and Such and had the results of her herpes tests.
This led to several pages to herself from herself aimed at us in the vein of "HELLO PAGER PEOPLE SORRY I TOTALLY DON'T HAVE HERPES THAT WAS ALL A JOKE!". This went on for several pages before a coworker took pity and paged her back a message from us acknowledging that she did not, in fact, have herpes.
Painful Therapy
Perhaps one of the most headache inducing clients we had was not actually a client at all. I don't know if it was part of this woman's therapy or what. But she was clearly...disturbed, and I don't know why but they gave her a pager. Which she would call incessantly and ramble off a massive series of numbers which we would then be forced to transcribe to text and page out to her. At which point I guess she was filled with glee and would call in and do it again. Over and over and over and over and over.
She would do this every few minutes for hours on end almost every night. It went on for the entire time I worked for this company. So a couple of years. Drove us all up the damn wall. Because any mistake in the number sequence ( Which she rattled off like an auctioneer ) would make her call more frequently and for longer periods of time.
annnd rest. Thats about all I can think of off the top of my head. There was more, but I don't remember it off hand or I'm subconciously suppressing the memories.. >.>
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