Category: Work

I woke up at 4:21

and now I’m watching “Walk the Line”.  Tonight I’m going with Keith to see “3:10 to Yuma”.  Kind of a Mangold festival.

Ooooh that’s good coffee I made.  Yarr!

Tomorrow, rehearsal for Sunday church.  I’ll see if I can avoid walking out this Sunday – I was most distressed last Sunday.

Keith lost his phone.  This is a message to the karmic beings – kick the ass of the little sod who picked it up and then started harassing everybody on the phone list!!! Got hold of Paul who killed the phone stone dead within instants, thank Goodness.

My apartment is SHINY CLEAN except I gotta take out the trash.

Daughter Katie’s best friend from high school moved back to town.  I detect the possibility of roommatishness.

The Secret Policeman’s Other Camping Trip is now scheduled for the 22nd of September.  I is SO TEMPTED to invite the CEO but that would likely crimp the connections of the other invitees, so I’ll just think about it really hard.  This time I would buy the beer….

Just noticed that the bassist in Walk the Line is the same guy who played the jock in Buffy.

More coffee.

I think I will serenade one of my coworkers today.  Peter A said he would be very happy to accept my serenade, but I told him:

Mandos are LOUD instruments… well they are, for their size.  And no work will get done while I am singing to which his response was to purse his lips and raise one eyebrow, something he does so well he really should get paid extra for it.  Anyway, if I actually do sing to him it will be “Buy me a Beer” aka “The Cougar’s Love Call”.
RobofNine and I ate at the Himalaya last night.  Umm, umm, yum.

CAN car meshuggas and Happy Family News

I booked the CAN car – the charcoal Prius parked at my door, don’t you know – from 10:30 to 1:30 so I could shop for the extremely large toilet paper package I like so much (okay, I bought other stuff too…) and also to have enough time to hit the office and call RobofNine and ScaryClown down to admire the vehicle.  As could be predicted (ScaryClown being about 12 in terms of psychological age – maybe 13) he said “People must have been ****ing back here, look at the stains” as he got into the back seat.  Thanks, kiddo.

Today I bought eggcups (leering eggcups frustrate my amnesia – R. Needham); a set of stacking coffee cups which I have coveted for about two months now; much food (I’m feeding Katie K tonight – and probably watching Red Shoes again…); a wall calendar, suction cups (none of which suction to the walls, Tammy, I think I’ll have to make holes now); and did I tell you I drove a Prius for the first time?  I nearly broke my neck trying to figure out how to take the parking brake off and when I went to show off to the guys I couldn’t get it started ’cause I didn’t put my foot on the brake, so RobofNine kindly pointed out my error.  Then when I got home some ****wit in a Honeywell service truck was parked in the CAN car spot so I had to park it in the visitor lot, but as soon as I unloaded my groceries, the spot vacated and I ran like the hammers down the stairs to shift the car, all of which went well and I didn’t have to parallel park, may the saints and angels be praised.

OOOOOOOO Squeeeee!!!! phone just rang – it was daughter Katie and she GOT THE JOB.  In three months benefits; in six months a raise – and the company discounts are great and she’s working 8:00 – 4:30 M-F.  I said, “Welcome to the working poor” and she said, “I don’t care, at least things are moving in the right direction. Big Ten Four to that.

Lost mail

It appears I haven’t been receiving mail at two of my different addresses.  My apologies for not responding to any mail which I didn’t actually get to read.

Ran into cousin Laurel in the Granville Station the other day.  When she told me she’d emailed me I went, “Hunh?” because I certainly had no recollection of receiving anything from her, and it would be a red letter day if I did.  I’ve also sent mail out in the last week that never got to the recipient, so it’s good not to assume malfeasance in these cases….

I’m heading to Jericho tonight and Victoria on the weekend, and hopefully somewhere in there I get to see daughter Katie.  So I have a nice week in prospect.

Work continues to rapidly improve.  I wish I could say the same about my back.  Other parts of me are grumbling too, but the back is loudest; I’m doing my exercises, including (since I couldn’t sleep anyway) getting up and doing them at 4 in the morning.

I had one of my favourite coworkers say to me yesterday, “What the hell am I good at?” so I wrote him a paean of praise (disguised in the dreadful, eviscerated language of “the resume”) which outlined exactly what he does that is SO bloody amazing; I am looking forward to his comments, especially the last line, which was, Holy crap! after rereading that even I was impressed, and I’ve seen you plastered.

Ah, workmates.

Today is the all staff meeting.  I found out from the CEO that somehow my email outlining my questions for the townhall had disapparated, so I re-sent it (lot of that going around), only this time I took thought to include one of Scary Clown’s questions.  We shall see if anything comes of it.

Despite everything that’s going on (some of my rellies are having a hard time with one thing and another, and I’m up to four painkillers a day, again, after not being that bad for a year) I’m actually happy.  And I’m working on a tune, which I think is going to be an instrumental, and I’m using chords which I don’t know the names for.  I love the mandolin, but it’s still very much a foreign language.  Oh, and I sliced myself in the kitchen on the weekend, so I bled all over the fretboard as I was practicing for Jericho tonight.  It doesn’t really hurt, but it was a surprise to see the blood.  I immediately started riffing on “Ya gotta suffer if you want to sing the blues.”  But really, I haven’t, and I don’t.

Things I’ve learned about customer service part I

Things I’ve learned from working in customer service:

1.  Customers can deal with almost anything in an intelligent and humane way if you don’t lie about it and they hear the bad news from the person responsible for fixing it – as fast as the bad news became evident.  Delay = Bad.

1a. The relief you feel when you get that dreaded call over with will be your friend for the rest of your workday.

2. There will always be customers who, for whatever reason, and this varies from genuine mental illness to inability to pay for the solution proposed to temporary distraction due to current life events, are impossible to please.  Although most of the customers I’ve dealt with in the past 10 years have been men, on balance I’d say that there are equal numbers of impossible male and impossible female customers.  I’m not talking about people who are temporarily or permanently nuts, just the people who believe that if they raise the volume they’ll get the goodies.  Bullies, liars and f*ckwits…. those kinds of people.  The person who is scared of his or her spouse, and plays little dog in front of the big dog, is a special case, and can usually be brought to heel by a request to speak to the owner of the product.

3. Customer service is mostly education.  If you find a customer who wants to learn, teach.  If the customer doesn’t listen or doesn’t comprehend, you’ve got options, among them:  Drop down to a lower energy level to defuse, ask them brightly “Is there anything else I can help you with today” which is the international “Get the Hell off the Phone, Bozo” signal, escalate to a manager, or agree to disagree.  This last doesn’t work often, but it’s valuable on occasion and it has the advantage of being more respectful than a flat “No.” “That’s wrong.” “You are mistaken.” and the ever popular, sotto voce, “Why don’t you stick your head up your ass and fight for air, if it’s a fight you’re looking for, sir?”

4. If you are female and doing tech support, be prepared to be verbally smooched by female customers who are thrilled to have their experience reflected back to them accurately, and patronised to within an inch of your life by some men.  Most men, mostly, are prepared to have women tell them about their tech products; Canadian men are marginally more able to do it comfortably than American men, at least in my experience.

5. The overwhelming majority of customers are honest, and all of them should be treated out of the gate that way.  A smaller proportion are mistaken, and should be treated with respect as misunderstandings are easy to come by.  Even the customers who lie need to feel listened to.  Once I’ve caught a customer in a lie, however, it’s difficult to feel motivated to assist him or her.

6. I love customers who tell the truth.  When a North Carolina drawl comes through the phone at me saying, “I blowed it up good,” my heart melts and I am willing to go the extra mile to assist.

7. The worst enemies of customer service are not the agents or the customers.  They are the goddamned management.  Any for profit company that cares about customer service has senior managers focussing on customer pain points as improvement opportunities.  Any for profit company that doesn’t care about customer service has senior managers focussing on accounting pain points, and has the lamentable quarter over quarter results to show for it.  May they all find a particularly steamy vat of molten lead to lounge around in, the great boobies.

oo! oo! oo!

Primate grunts and hoots!  Trevor loaned me a copy of Meet the Feebles AND Bad Taste!  I can feel an evening of serious video coming on!  My place, Friday!!!  Man, there’s nothing like having ex-pat Kiwis working with you.

And in other Kiwi news, Tanya’s hubbbay has got his papers and can legally work here.  Woo hoo!  Time to have a hangi!!! 

Keith was here last night too

Keith stayed over last night, mostly because I kidnapped his Patrick O’Brian book and then started snoring.  Evil I am.  I took him out to dinner and he had tandoori chicken for the first time (on Caesar salad…)

Last night I dreamed that Spike from Buffy was writing a book on how to be the perfect boyfriend.  Most of us spewed out our tea when we heard this, especially when he started lecturing us about it (he went on at length and I sure wish I could remember any of it). We were all dressed in period costume (like a really really bad bunch of Pirates/Aubrey-Maturin/Diamond Age/mid-Victorian cosplayers). We got on a boat and hunted crocodiles.  The inside of the boat was bigger than the outside.

Work is abruptly better because there’s a new hire starting next week.  I cheered up.  Also, my coworkers are awesome – I just thought I’d mention that.  I still wish I could say something about two other departments in my company besides, “If brains were a Botox injection you’d look like a Sharpei”.

Slick

Installed a new Canon printer/scanner/copier this morning – everything worked slick once I figured out where to put the ink cartridges.  The first picture I printed was Katie’s beautiful grad photo.  Thanks Paul for enabling this purchase to happen.  We had a LOVELY time eating dinner on the back deck at Planet Bachelor last night and stopped over briefly at Suzanne’s to admire her gorgeous new apartment in New West.

I am doing something I have never done at work since the day I started here.

I am sleeveless. 

I have found a videographer to do my Youtube video.  Oh, I guess I didn’t mention that.  I guess I’m in planning stages, but the Tapioca Song belongs to the world – and Youtube is the world.

Sundry and Various

Date from Friday night is not further interested.  Fortunately I am too busy to do more than go, “Hm, damned shame.”

This is a paragraph about how one woman can say to another “Maybe what I need is an 8 inch sub!” and we’re not talking sammitch.

It’s 7:15 and I’ve talked to two gf’s in Ontario already!  Hugs to Tammy, Hugs to Chipper.

Last night Patricia came with me to the Jericho.  She paid her eight dollars to get in but only watched me and two other performers, then went back out on the deck where she found a table with two good looking (merrit of course) middle aged men who didn’t want to finish their beer. Christ, they could have had no conversation at all and I would have liked them under those circumstances.  After we left (and I sang the song I wrote for LTGW at the top of my lungs in Jericho Park) she told me that I was far superior to the other performers and it was worth the 8 bucks to hear me sing Slimfast and Methadone.  OF COURSE this does not need to be true for me to be irrationally pleased. It was a very fun evening and I laughed my ass off.
Keith’s birthday books arrived on Monday and with his permission I devoured them.  It’s good to have maps of the action in the Patrick O’Brian books.
Colin’s visit was a very low key success. He took a lot of self portraits with my laptop, some of which were quite startlingly funny.  I wanted to post one with the title “How I lowered my IQ 45 points without even trying” but I don’t have his permission, and I’d flog somebody that posted a pic of me like that, so discretion prevails.
Mike M called from Wreck Beach yesterday…. if I hadn’t committed to go to Jericho, I would have gone to Wreck in a heartbeat, ’twas a glorious day.

Work bites the parasite riddled butt of a moribund goat and it’s going to stay like this all summer.  Fortunately there is a point at which things will twitch feebly back into their previous configuration or something like it, so I am trying to be philosophical.  In fact that about covers my life right about now “Trying to be philosophical”!