Time management fails

[MoonCat]

What is it with people waiting until after 5:00 to call and make demands??

Two of my co-workers got these gems:

Customer #1 had placed an online-only ad through our website, then called us and wanted to place a print-only ad. We can't do that. When we take the ad by phone, we have to sell the print/online combo. Plus, once we release the ad, it goes online immediately (print starts the next day). He was pissed because he didn't want two ads online. Understandable, but WHY wait until 5:00 to call back & argue about it? At this point it's impossible to stop the combo ad from going online--it's already up! Supervisor's gone, help desk is gone, dept. website-fixer is gone, etc. Customer doesn't like this. Sorry, dude, people up the chain from us get to go home at 5:00 and they. are. gone.

Second caller needed display rates RIGHT NOW for a certain category of business. Folks in this division work until 4:30. Co-worker asked me a couple of questions on the rates, deadlines, etc. I haven't worked that category for some time, but we found the info. Caller needed to make a decision immediately. Why? Because she is leaving town at 6 AM tomorrow! Must finish transaction now!

Well, maybe you should have tried calling earlier in the day...just sayin'.

[KatherineB]

What is it with people waiting until after 5:00 to call and make demands??

*points you towards name of the site*

[SkullBash]

Yep. I get this regularly when we have closing dates on our job ads. We get a flood of callers within the last half hour ranging from what our fax number is to how can you apply to do you accept just resumes. It's amazing to me how much last minute stuff I deal with.

I have gotten calls at 4:55pm on a closing day asking if our fax machine is working while we are in the midst of receiving half a dozen items. If we are receiving a lot of faxes (which is typical on closing days), the sender will get a busy signal and a failed fax until the machine is able to receive again. People who fax after we close better hope and pray they are using a fax machine set up to date stamp stuff or else it's simply marked late on Monday. Exceptions apply but I find if hard to have sympathy.

[wolfie]

Yep. I get this regularly when we have closing dates on our job ads. We get a flood of callers within the last half hour ranging from what our fax number is to how can you apply to do you accept just resumes. It's amazing to me how much last minute stuff I deal with.

I have gotten calls at 4:55pm on a closing day asking if our fax machine is working while we are in the midst of receiving half a dozen items. If we are receiving a lot of faxes (which is typical on closing days), the sender will get a busy signal and a failed fax until the machine is able to receive again. People who fax after we close better hope and pray they are using a fax machine set up to date stamp stuff or else it's simply marked late on Monday. Exceptions apply but I find if hard to have sympathy.

But if they use a machine set up to date stamp stuff, why do you trust that it's set up correctly? Might be worth investing in a machine that date stamps RECEIVED faxes, and use this as one more screening criterion - for faxes received between "everyone goes home" on closing day and "people come in" on the next business day, if the "date received" stamp is after midnight, the application goes into one of two bins:

"date sent" stamp is either after midnight, or so obviously wrong that it's clear they used a machine that didn't have its date set properly: Too bad, so sad - you didn't follow instructions, so your application is tossed. Next time we have an opening, try to get your application in before the deadline.

"date sent" stamp is between "everyone goes home" and midnight: They've obviously tried to fake it to make it look like they applied in time. Since they've (in effect) lied on their application (I'd treat up to around 15 minutes of difference between the stamps as clocks being out of sync - if this is split by midnight, see case #1 above), their name goes on a "don't EVER hire this person" list.

[MoonCat]

Wolfie has a point. We go by the time stamped on the bottom of faxes--that's our time stamp, showing when we received it. Very useful when somebody calls and whines that they sent something in before the deadline...especially when they are in another timezone and forgot to take that into consideration.