Anyone who knows that I'm loud and obnoxious should try sitting next to my seat-mate at work. I actually bought ear plugs today and I'm pretty sure she still won't get the hint to shut the fuck up.

Lio,

I love a good story about someone who tries to make someone out to be in an idiot, but in the process only manages to show what a fucking moron he himself is. I'm surprised that anyone who calls the marketing department to ask about a country code even has the opposable digits necessary to operate a telephone.

Anyway, I've been an angry customer myself lately. Last Sunday morning my modem burned out. I called AT&T, they tell me it's dead and that I need a new one. I get a new modem and wireless router (separate units, unlike my last one, so if one shits the bed, I only have to replace one of the two). I get the wireless network up and a day later, I can't get on line again. I call AT&T, and they tell me that the modem is working, now it's the line. I've had similar problems on and off for months, by the way. They finally send a tech out to fix it-our wire was touching another wire and this was causing the problem. We're finally out of the woods, I hope, but the real pain in the ass in all of this was that my wife has finals for her on line classes this past week! What a coincidence that my modem shits out AND I have a line problem all at once at the worst possible time! If these were good coincidences I'm sure people would say that it was a miracle and say that god was looking out for me. I'd like to take the chance to tell god to fuck himself for this and many other slights.

Ya know, working in the customer service industry I take certain things for granted. Like, everyday, I know I will speak with at least one asshole, pissed off about something that has nothing to do with me or my department. I'm ok with this, it goes part and parcel with the job. I am paid to get screamed at by assholes, and that is my job. I'm good with that because normally I realize they are angry at my company and not attacking me personally. But every once in a while a customer will strike one of my nerves, and I fire back.

So the other day a guy calls me completely interrupting my greeting saying, "I need the country code for [name of small country deleted], Do you even know what that is?" Now, normally I would kindly inform him I could help him with his request (even though I'm in Marketing, and this is a request for Customer Service), but this hit pretty much the only nerve that I have when speaking with a customer. The assumption that I am a moron.

Roughly 80% of people in my department are college educated, the other 20% have been at the job so long they are better at the job than me. Basically when you call into customer service, or our department in particular, you are not speaking with an idiot. This asshole was assuming that just because he wasn't speaking with a doctor or lawyer, he was speaking with some sort of GED reject. He was basically assuming that I dropped out of school before I could attend 10th grade Geography.

So, before he could get the "S" sound out in "Do you even know what that is?", I fired back "It's a small island in [geographical area deleted]. To which he said "Oh." I said "Here's your country code". The kicker is he didn't even want to know that tidbit of information for anything even related to our company. Dick.

I hear that, Caniprokis... I hate soccer moms. All day I deal with these twats who buy Blackberrys because all their other twat soccer mom friends have them. Then when they can't figure out how to use them because their last phone was a pair of tin cans and some string, they call us up and scream at us like we're the assholes! These douche bags generally purchase these phones because they they have a full keyboard for texting their twat friends, they have a big screen which they need because they're getting old and need large pictures on their phone, and because you can get them in pink. They never stop to think that these are amazingly sophisticated devices that might take more than 20 minutes of your precious fucking time to learn how to use. Your average Blackberry has more computing power, RAM and online capabilities than my first desktop had. Then they're all like "you mean I have pay extra for a feature to use this phone." YES! If we allowed you to take a Blackberry without a data feature, with the sheer amount of times it checks for emails per minute, you could easily rack up thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, in data charges in one month. (Remember that $.02 vs. $.002 conversation you sent me that one time, Calliander?) Not to mention the fact that if you aren't using this in conjunction with Email or the web there is no fucking reason to have one. Fucking soccer moms are the bane of my goddamn existence.

I am the starter and finisher in many cases... or at least used to be when I was doing more business with random individuals. It makes things especially interesting when someone will try to escalate an issue up without realising that they've been talking to me the whole time. I've had a number of people tell me things like "Wow, you're a much better rep than the last guy I dealt with. He was a total loser, you should try to get him fired".

I'd rather not have any customers to bother me, but since they're the ones with the money I have to put up with them. It's fun trying to find that line of what's just enough to give them to keep them happy.

Here's a situation that customer service has got to love:

Yeah, I just recently got put into that position of my job. Sometimes I'm the guy that gets calls sent to him when a rep can't handle it. I'm the next step up on the food chain if you will. Most of the time it's some stupid little trivial thing that makes the customer happy that the prior representative has forgotten to offer, because as Calliander stated earlier, I'm smarter than about 75% of the people I work with. And it's nice to do that. But I can really identify with Stone. It's kinda fun and empowering when you get those customers that won't calm down and you can be all like "I'm sorry sir but your stupid/irate rant is going no further up the chain of command, have a nice day." There are times when the customers can be satisfied by reasonable means, and then there are times when you have to lay the cards on the table and say "This is what we offer, you can take it or leave it. You can shop our competitors but you are not going to receive the ridiculous thing you have requested." Every once in a while you get the customer who has made some retarded interpretation of a promotion we've offered, then they get pissed off when you tell them what a sane person would have gleened from the promotion. Those are my favorite, mainly because we get to terminate the conversation per company policy. Then I get to think of them pulling their hair out over a dumbass interpretation of a promotion that was worded by an army of corporate lawyers. Then I get to laugh when I think about them trying to take that shit to arbitration against said army of corporate lawyers, oh the smiles...

I'm usually 'the finisher' when we've got a customer that's being an asshole. It's good

One of the things my department's responsible for is maintaining the sales tax exemption certificates for customers. The laws are stupidly complex, so customers will pretty regularly screw up during the process of getting a certificate together. Some of the shit is pretty basic...forgetting to fill out any of the spaces (what they're going to buy, what it is they're going to do) - annoying, not a big deal. Most of the time, I just let the small details go (the state doesn't really pay attention to the certificates, anyways) in order to be convenient to them. Every so often, though, we'll get someone trying to give us an egregiously incorrect certificate or something like that - and when one of the women in the department tries to explain the mistake to the customer, the customer will go off on them, saying that they don't know what we're doing, etc.

That's where I step in...and spend 10 minutes trying to say, in a nice way, "no one else has ever come back to you about this because no one else understands this state's retarded sales tax laws" or "your accountant said the certificate was okay because your accountant is a slack-jawed idiot". Most of these guys just need to hear an authoritative sounding voice. I've had a couple of situations where the customer's come back at me, though, and I've gotten involved in shouting matches, a lot of "look, I'm not going to transfer you to anyone else, I make the decisions about this, so this is where this conversation is going to end", one time where I spent 30 minutes on the phone with some guy not saying anything, just listening to each other breathe, shit like that. It's fun.

STUN!

You know what I hate? When you're dealing with a customer or client or what have you... and they start bitching at you about the price of a good or service you're providing, or better yet try to haggle. What the hell? This type of shit may benefit you on some back corner market in Marrakesh or some type of product with an extraordinarily high profit margin like a car or a house, but we live in America and the price is the price is the price. My favorite is when I'm a Starbucks or some such shit some A-hole starts flapping his gums to the poor kid behind the counter about the outrageous price of the coffee. C'mon now! First off, do you think that making an ass of yourself to a 17 year old kid is going to change the price of a cup of coffee set by a multi billion dollar corporation? Do you think that yelling at this 17 year old kid is going to make him say "Ya know what? That coffee IS too expensive, I don't think our company realizes that! I'm gonna hop a concord to the company headquarters and let them know!". No, that 17 year old kid is going to laugh at you behind your back and call you a Boner.

Now I work as a customer service rep for a similar multi billion dollar conglomerate, and I run into these jack holes all the time. And it seems that people can't get it through their thick fucking skulls that we can't customize something made to service a consumer base of MILLIONS of people on a one by one personal level. I had one stupid twat the other day who wanted me to change a nationwide advertising campaign because a free predictive program failed to predict something! That's the nature of a predictive system, they aren't perfect, other wise we'd have sold the patent on this AI to the fucking pentagon! Or ya get the ass holes who are all like "Oh, can't ya throw this in there because I'm such a good customer?" No, I can't the system won't let me. Besides what the fuck do I look like, the fucking cable guy who's gonna give you free HBO if you slide me a 20? Go fuck yourself, you'll get what we offer to all our customers... Because all of our customers are good customers.

But it's nowhere near as bad as when I worked retail. I used to work for a high end audio store and I was trying to sell a $4000 home theater system to this douche bag middle age wannabe biker ass hole. I was going through my whole spiel about the system's benefits and all the possibilities it presented. Then this cock holder goes to me, "I've got $3500 cash right now. Deal?" Well, that's nice it doesn't change the fact that the price of the system is still $4000 dollars. And no, I'm not impressed that you ride on the outside your vehicle.

All in all I'd say the old addage of "The customer is always right" has been an excuse for people to be rude, crass, and generally unpleasant for far too long. The customer is entitled the best service that can be provided to them, that does not mean that the customer has the right to be a complete douche bag when that best is not good enough. We live in a free capitalist economy and numbers do the talking. If the issue you're torqued about is worth abusing some poor pawn of the company then the issue will eventually show up in the numbers and be corrected. If it isn't corrected then yelling, cajoling, or rangling with some poor schmuck won't help matters. Go fuck yourself.

Well, had my first week of work at the new job. I don't know if I'll be as comfortable at this job, but I feel that's a good thing. It'll prompt me to move on faster. In my first week on the floor, I moved $10000 in equipment and today I accounted for 50% of our sales... needless to say they like me. I also sold our most expensive home theater set up right infront of my bosses and the training manager for the northeast. They were amazed that I was moving these products this early on. After six months I get access to their job postings for corporate positions, so I think I may go that route. I crunched the numbers today and I'm making only a little bit more than at Caron's. Of course that doesn't include the benefits and sales bonuses so I guess I'll have to wait and see how that all figures in. Regardless, I don't have to spear chickens or fight with little old ladies...

Posted by Caniprokis:and what has all this gotton me. MORE FUCKING WORK. not disaplinary action that i so craved but just the oposit more respociblitly and people coming to me for anwsers and desisions.

That is too funny. I was going to suggest a grammar/spell check function, but that post wouldn't be half as good without all of that stuff. It adds character. What have you been up to man, aside from work?

Drinking, I hope. If you turned a grammar checker on that post you would probably break it.

More responsibility is what you want, right? Is the rebelling thing working, or is that not the type of responsibility you were talking about?

The Move

So i have this office job. i go to work sit in a cube anwser the phone and have some other office duties that i wont really get into. now ive been at this place for about 9 months. i pretty much hate the place, not because customer service fucking sucks (never ever ever ever take a customer service job if you like your life) i mean its better than digging holes or framing houses ni the winter and pays better and i have benifits but.... this fucking place drains all life from people. it makes you compcent, it makes you feel like ill just sit right here and keep getting paid and this will be fine.

when i fist started i wore very nice cloths and shoes and shaved every day and made sure my apearance was the nices i could make it. soon i found that i was not just going to be a cs rep but also i was going to be the running bitch in the office, which i dident mind since it got me out of the cube of hate i live in, but i started interacting with the factory and getting boxes and clibling pallets all of this to hopefully advance my way out of cs. figubug going above and beyond would make that an easy transistion. nono how wrong i was. all it got me was alot more work for the same pay and no chance of advancement in a company that has some of the most severe ceilings in movement i have ever seen.

so i started an experiment, how far could i go before i got spoken to. i dident care about what, my appearance, my work, my attitude anything at all. i started going to work in jeans and sneakers, noone has said anything about this to date 5 months now. i dont do work i dont want to do nothing has ever been said about this, i have even just thrown people folders away because they pissed me off, nothing has ever cme back to me. ive had meeting and told the bosses that i think this place is bullshit, that my manager is a hack that our proceadures are the kind of garbage that belongs deep in space and that i could give a shit about the customers. and what has all this gotton me. MORE FUCKING WORK. not disaplinary action that i so craved but just the oposit more respociblitly and people coming to me for anwsers and desisions.

all i wanted really was to get fired so i could collect unemployment for a little while fuck off and play music. instead im a god damned soot after commidity in my department.....fuck.

Yeah, you bastard, get out of the filthhole.

I went to the new branch for the first time today. Easy commute into central Jersey. Not surprisingly, it's a lot like the old place. It looks different, though - the california branch of the company has an office that looked like it was built during the mid-90s. A lot of space, airy. The New Jersey branch looks like an elementary school built during the mid-80s, exposed brick, like it would've been modern looking 20 years ago.

The people are all very friendly, different from Philadelphia. I don't know if it's a New Jersey thing or if it is just about their working for McMaster-Carr. People advance in management more slowly there than they do in LA, which is going to make things more difficult. People are nice. A lot of the younger people in the branch live in Manhattan. Inexpensive gas in Jersey, and the state is full of trees.

I like Philadelphia a lot. It's like New York at half-speed, Manhattan's junior cousin, slightly less attractive but easier to get along with. Parking's hard, but it's a good town to walk around - I know where things are in center city. I'm going to stay in this house for 2 months and then get a place in the center of downtown, I think. I miss Los Angeles a bit.

The end of this season is shaping up well. I guarantee that the Red Sox are going to take the division.

Stone

Well, I just started my new job on monday. It seems like a really chill place and my co-workers seem like a real fun bunch of guys. I spent 8 hours yesterday reading company manuals and filling out these assinine worksheets that asked questions that basically amounted to "Sexual Harrassment is bad. True or False" or "Your coworker screams out the word 'nigger' in the store. Do you A.) Pull him aside and calmly explain to him that that was not proper busines conversation. B.) Punch him in the head. C.) Give him a high five." All the fun policy and procedure of working for a major corporation. I don't know, right now it seems like the type of place where I could grow to hate or I could love it... could go either way. But the pay and benefits are good, so that will keep me going. If nothing else it will give me motivation to move higher. See, at Caron's, I wasn't happy with my job, but I didn't hate it. I'd grown complacent. It wasn't good, but it wasn't really bad either. If I like this job, I can stay reap the benefits, and even move into Bose Corporate if I were thus inclined. If I hate it, It will light the fire I need lit under my ass.

On the bright side I get my wheels tommorrow. 97 Jeep Cherokee. Looks like a fun ride... 4 wheel should help me in the snow. I just pray i don't tip the bastard. Also, I'm worried it won't have as much soul as the Smurf Rocket. Ya know? Smurf Rocket was like me. It was big, it wasn't pretty, but it had it where it counted. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Also, this time without wheels has really made me realize how little human contact I have these days. I mean, on sundays we have D&D and a few of us get together. But of course Bill leave this week. I hang out with Logan occasionally, and sometimes spo will make a surprise visit, but that's it really. All saying that I have to get out more. I've been in too long.

You guys (anyone with an account) ought to post more - it's strange not talking to you all.

I got promoted a few weeks ago, which was good - I'm now doing what I came out here to do.

Some of the people who I manage call me "sir", which is disconcerting, since a lot of them are twice my age. Some of them have been at the company as long as I've been alive, which is odd.

When the operation runs poorly, I feel like it's my fault, and end up going home feeling like a fuck-up. Whenever we do well, I feel like an asshole for wanting to take credit, since I haven't really done anything - it's everybody else that is actually doing the real work.

I got into a gaming group out here, playing Warhammer, but I don't think I'm going to keep going to the games. It's just not that much fun when you're playing a RPG with people you're not yet friends with. I guess if I actually spent the time to make friends with the people I was gaming with, it would've changed things, but, ah. When you've stopped playing RPGs for a while, it's odd to go back to a game that isn't competitive. I could probably enjoy running a game.

The first few months I spent out here feel further away in time - farther away from me - than the last few months I spent at school, or last summer back home, periods chronologically before my coming out here. A lot has changed.

Stun

Apple has made it official now. Hopefully, my certificates will come soon!

Finished my requirements for Apple Certification yesterday at 10-ish in the morning Pacific time. I am now a fully certified Apple Technician. Praise may be sent in donations of cash (of which I am always needing), gifts, letters to Congress, and the like. ;)

Please excuse the gigantic images. Just wanted you all to see. I did really well on the test yesterday, too.

Well, I recently reached another landmark on my road to becoming an adult... My first job interview.  While it could be something that grinds my soul and spits me out... the job looks promising, and if I get an offer, I think I'lll take it.

Meh... I hate everything. My day started off well enough. I had a little cash, so I went grocery store. They had fantastic prices on meat, also a good thing. I even got a Phat RPG book. Then... the shit started. I got to work and put they me in the dish room... FOR THE FIFTH CONSECUTIVE SHIFT. Not to mention that the kid working next to me was a useless fucking meatwad. Then I got home, fully prepared to write the next in a series of my horrible bullshit papers for my women's studies class. And then what happens? The fucking site I'm supposed to get my assignment from is giving me a fucking 404! meh.

You wanted it, Caniprokis, you got it.

WHY BOTHER?
by Me

Alrighty. Since I've moved on from the gas station, I think you've all noticed a visible change in me. I don't think I've been sincerely really angry since I started at the video store. At the gas station, I used to hate everything and everyone. I hated working and I hated people. Now, I love everything and everyone. I love working and I love people.

That, however, doesn't mean that people aren't still idiots.

People are mindless. The mass majority, that is. Most people just fit right into that cookie-cutter mould; none of that square-peg, round-hole thing. The media market machine dictates pretty much everything to most people. We Insult folks may not be influenced by things like commercials or billboard ads, but a lot of people are. Did you know that, in actuality, spam e-mails bring in a lot of revenue for a company? And most people tend to believe the hype, even though our good friend Flava Flav used to tell us otherwise. What I mean by this is that I see a lot of dumb things every day, dumb things that customers in my store do.

I don't know if any readers have been to a video store, but I think that most, if not all, have special "BOB'S VIDEO" cases for the movies and then they put some styrofoam in the actual movie box. I mean, I could be wrong; maybe in Stupidland they just put them in their sleeves. Who knows? Well, anyway, customers constantly bring up just the box and think they're going to rent that. Most don't even notice the actual movie in the clear, plastic case behind the box. "Oh, really? The movie's not in there? I thought it was a bit light."

Right near the door is a counter we use to display information and pamphlets and etc. We also give the movies to our customers on their way out by placing them on that counter. There's two signs on the counter that say, "Do not leave your movies on the counter." And we have these signs because there's nothing to stop someone from taking a movie off the counter. A lot of people come in and simply return their movies by placing them on said counter. It's not like our metal detector thingy which beeps when someone walks through it with a movie is inconspicuous - it's clearly not at the door, so if it's busy and someone just plops five movies on the counter and leaves, someone can take them. Most people don't make that connection, though.

Now, I don't understand why you would rent movies if you don't especially like them. And if you have to ask the person at the counter when the damned Grinch is coming out (November 20th), you clearly don't like movies enough to want to keep on top of release dates. I also don't get why you would rent movies when you don't know anything about them. Did you know there are people who don't know what VHS is? There are people who ask me if we have a movie and I'll ask them if they want it on VHS or DVD. The most common reply to this is a dumb stare and then, "No, just regular video." HOW THE FUCK COULD YOU NOT HAVE HEARD THE TERM "VHS" APPLIED TO A VIDEOCASSETTE IF YOU'RE OVER EIGHT YEARS OLD?!? WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN LIVING?!?

People also don't like to look up. Even the slightest bit. They also aren't fond of looking around and finding things out for themselves. The most common question I get is, "Where are your DVDs?" Well, asshole, if you would maybe look around the store you'd see these big signs that say "DVD" on them. Several of them.

Worst of all, though, is what people do to our DVDs and video games that come on discs. Why would you let stupid kids handle a DVD disc? Why, for any reason, would you ever touch the fucking bottom of the disc? "This wouldn't play in my DVD player." Well, maybe if you weren't holding it like a cracker and getting your greasy fingerprints all over it, it would fucking play, you dolt!

More to come, but I must head to class. Good evening.

Goodbye.

Goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye.

Good riddance!

Oh, it feels so good to know I will never have to get up at 5:00 am on Sunday anymore! I can watch SNL! I can stay up! I can hang out with my friends! YES YES YES! Fuck the gas station! FUCK IT IN IT'S ASS! WHOO!

Sorry, had to get that out.