1362: Happy to Serve You

[marina]

When I worked at Blockbuster, the secret shoppers would ding you for not greeting them on entrance, and ding you for not asking them if they found everything they were looking for on checkout, and ding you for not offering to upgrade their card. But our store was so small that I was sometimes the only one in it, so my checkout routine was frequently "hi and did you fuh-HI WELCOMETO BLOCKBUSTER!-ind everything you were loo-HI WELCOME TO BLOCKBUSTER!-ooking forCan I interest you in a HI WELCOME TO BLOCKBUSTER an upgrade? no? have a nice night. WELCOMETOBLOCKBUSTER!" all in one breath. It would freak normal people out, but secret shoppers can't ding you for talking quickly.

And "go to college" is usually my retort when people have shitty menial jobs they don't like. It's totally bitchy, but nothing made me love college more than the shit jobs I had to work before I went there and while I was going.

[Dean from Australia]

These corporations don't even understand "What do we do now?" anymore. For a while, it worked like a charm for me. But now it's just "I dunno" murmury style...

[Junkenstein]

passing a caller to someopne else at a help center gets you in deep shit. you're supposed to go through a script as a rule and then solve the issue.

this guy sounds like a retard BUT i have to say that when i worked at a help call center, even solving most of the issues, i got fuzzy too, after a hundred calls of morons not asking the most mentally challenged questions. just saying that being on the other side is depressing too, so if you're doing that, quit. and dont go to college its a waste of time.

[Junkenstein]

Pat's impression of "the dude that knows the citizen's rights" is killing me, keep rewinding and replaying. goddamn.

[DrGiggles]

Regarding Keith's situation with Continental, I wanted to mention that nearly the exact same thing happened to me. I think Keith is dead-on pointing out how crazy it is that the corporate office acts like they don't know what's going on.

Things exactly the same: London airport, having to fly standby, being lied to with every communication, $300 voucher for 72 straight hours of hell.

Things that were different:
Delta airline. A train ran late, I was directed to the wrong terminal, arrived in the correct place 2 minutes late (i.e. 58 minutes EARLY for my flight). Only there were 6 other people in the same situation. The woman at the gate refused to even ask her supervisor if we could be let through. She charged us all 200 pounds for standby tickets.

Wait in the airport 24 hours. Only 2 people on standby get through- why were they chosen? "Well, SIR, your ticket is class a F discount ticket." "And?" "All other tickets are given priority, sir." The flight closed and left, she offered to put us on standby for tomorrow.

We pushed back hard and she agreed to let us try flights early the next day from the other major airport in London. She individually pulls up each of our accounts, does something, and sends us on a 20 pound bus ride to the other airport. We get there and are told "I'm sorry, SIR, but there's no record of you flying standby from this airport. You're supposed to be at the other airport, I don't know why you were told to come here."

We were pissed, and eventually got them to make the change. She told me I'd be flying London->JFK->Atlanta-> my final destination. When I finally got on a flight and made it to JFK, I checked in with Shaniqua at the counter. "Sir, you're not flying out of this airport. Your ticket is from LaGuardia to Denver." That was the end of my troubles- Shaniqua was amazing- she got me an earlier flight, a better route, and each one of those flights was fully booked. All of the problems I experienced were from the London staff, both airports.

I wrote a letter, and got a lousy $300 voucher that can only be used on the company's website where no flight goes for $300, and where every flight is at least $300 more than all other travel websites. Plus, 200 pounds is more than $300.

[marina]

Originally Posted by Junkenstein

and dont go to college its a waste of time.

College worked for me. Not like I had a great job the day after graduation, I still had to pay my dues, but now I have a job that I actually like most days and people respect my opinion and treat me like a grown up instead of like a monkey. It's worth it.

[Eightball]

Haven't laughed this hard in a while.... thanks Pat....

[Blonde_Amazon]

Originally Posted by Sorin Markov

go back to playing wow or some other terrible internet game, at least my hobby lets me travel and meet people in real life not random girl characters who are really boys pretending to be girls

Ah nerd snobbery, it makes me laugh so much even though it's folks like you who give the rest of us a bad name.

Also fuck Time Warner. I've had so many problems with them, and I have tried to switch services but the area in Charlotte that I live in doesn't have access to other providers that I would prefer. I've had technicians show up late, and I've been spoken to like I'm a retard when I'm trying to have my internet connection fixed.

[Junkenstein]

yeah, the script thing should be dumped by the companies.

i remember having my boss saying to me that it was a "procedure" we had to go through, no idea about the possible reason. they told you, you HAD to ask "did you turn your computer off and on again?". "Is your computer connected to the local internet line?" and stuff like that. after a while, right before leaving the place, i just didnt care and solved the issues right away, but i remember the guys who checked the calls openly criticizing us, if we didnt follow those lines.

its retarded. avoid that job. suck dicks instead.

[Blitzgal]

But then you have that percentage of people who are so fucking stupid that they're the problem. I had a co-worker here at my present job who was calling IT down to "fix her computer" at least once a week. One time her complaint was that the computer kept "clicking on things" by itself. The IT guy came down, and discovered that she was balancing a file on her keyboard, and it was pressing the keys. People are retards. It's why "is it plugged in?" is never going to go away as a question you have to ask.