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All posts for the month August, 2012

Winston Teaches A Customer His Own Name

Posted by Winston on August 28, 2012
Posted in: Extremely Stupid. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 3 comments

This gives “buying online” a whole new meaning.

Stupid People Say The Dumbest Fucking Things:

Winston: “I’ll go ahead and take the payment now. What’s the card number?”

Customer: “It’s 4521….”

Winston: “Okay, thank you. And could I get the name on the card please?”

Customer: “Visa.”

Winston: “No, the name as it appears on the card.”

Customer: “Let me see, yeah, it’s definitely a Visa.”

Winston: “Do you see your name on the card?”

Customer: “Well my name’s Bob.”

Winston: “Does it say your name on the card?”

Customer: “Maybe, let me see. Um, it says ‘Bob Dumbass’ right in the middle there. Is that what you mean?”

I’ll let that one speak for itself.

Who Said You Could Go To The Bathroom?

Posted by Winston on August 22, 2012
Posted in: Job Security. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 11 comments

Who needs a newspaper when you can chat?

In light of Telescreen being recently named one of the worst companies to work for (no shit), I thought I’d get back to the “Job Security” category of ESP, and focus on what it’s like to work at a call center. At at normal job, you have work to do, and you have the day to complete it. You can chat about the NFL game at the water cooler, go out to Chipotle and snag a burrito, or arrive five minutes late if there’s goddamn traffic. If you have more shit to do, you stay a little later, or work through lunch. If you get tired, you snag a cup of coffee over in the break room. You’re responsible for yourself and your job, and the company trusts you to complete your tasks. How fucking enlightened.

Oh how different a call center is from the real world. At Telescreen, time is money, and the employees are expected to work every second of their shift. Every…fucking…second. Call centers are all about statistics, and everything about the employees day is monitored: When they walk in the door, when they log into the computer, when they take calls, how many calls they take, when they go on break, how long the break was, how long the calls are, when they log out, etc. It’s 1984 in the worst sense, and the monitoring is enlisted because Telescreen doesn’t trust any of the employees to do their jobs.

The employees are expected to start taking calls before or right when the shift starts. Not a minute after, literally, and no excuse will get an employee out of being marked late. The whole eight hour shift is monitored to ensure the employee takes calls the entire time, and don’t sneak away to do anything other than work. This obviously is physically and psychologically draining, as getting screamed at for eight hours nonstop isn’t ideal for anyone.

The employees get a lunch break that’s exactly 30 minutes, as well as two other 15 minute breaks, and you guessed it, there’s no wiggle room in the length of the breaks. In the meantime, they take calls one after another, no downtime between calls, no time to breathe, just frantic work. What do they do if they have to stretch their legs, take a leak, or check the mountain of emails in their inboxes? The short answer is…they don’t.

I have had a few problems with this myself in the past. We are supposed to go into our “break aux” on our 1984-esque monitoring toolbar anytime we need to do anything other than take calls. I say, fuck that, because break-time is exteremely precious yell-free time. So when I have to go to take a leak, I get up and take a leak. Seems simple enough to me, I mean, what kind of place won’t let the employees go to the bathroom? Well…

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No, I Have Lunch That Day

Posted by Winston on August 8, 2012
Posted in: Clueless & Elderly. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 7 comments

“No Grandma, I can’t call you because you don’t know how to use a phone.”

Old people are so fucking difficult to troubleshoot with because they never want to do a thing. You ask them to press the power button on the remote and they act like you asked them for their first born child. This is exactly what happened when I encountered Social Mabel.

The call came in because she was refusing to troubleshoot her TV issue. Once Social Mabel came on the line, she was the typical clueless and elderly customer. She didn’t know her TV remote from a damn pencil sharpener, and the last thing she would be caught dead doing was troubleshooting.

Winston: “The first thing we’re going to need to do is reset the TV receiver.”

Customer: “I can’t do that! I’m an old woman, there’s no way I’m bending over to grab that stupid plug.”

Winston: “Okay, well how about we try pressing the power button on the remote. It’s the little red button on the top.”

Customer: “Are you kidding me? The remote is all the way across the room. I’m not getting up to press some dang whatever.”

All the while, I’m shaking my head, and I know she probably went through this for an hour with at least two other agents. CSR’s aren’t allowed to send technicians until they have followed all of the troubleshooting steps first. As I could see, there was no way anyone was going to get past step one with this old pain in the ass. Social Mabel was stonewalling everyone like a fucking pro.

Winston: “Well we need to try troubleshooting if you want to fix your TV.”

Customer: “I’m not trying a darn thing, you get someone out here to fix this, and you get someone out here right now!”

I argued for another five minutes and decided, fuck this, there was no way she was going to get off her old wrinkly ass to do anything.

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Marital Troubles

Posted by Winston on August 1, 2012
Posted in: Dirty Rednecks. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 4 comments

“Hey Oscar, you know Livius is a dude, right?”

Wowza! It’s been quite a week in the world of ESP. To all of you faithful readers, I am proud to announce that the blog was featured on Freshly Pressed. If you’re not savvy in blog lingo, that means ESP was chosen for the WordPress home page. I know, that surprised me too, I didn’t think they liked blogs with the word “fuck” in them, but, well, fuck me, they chose it anyway.

The Freshly Pressed feature led to a deluge of activity from the blogging world. In a matter of a few hours, ESP had more viewers than it had seen in its entire existence. True, that’s kinda sad, but I was very happy to see so many new folks. So to all of you bloggers that are new to ESP, thanks for following, reading, and sharing all the great comments. Now enough with the mushy stuff, lets get to what we do best around here: making fun of stupid people.

A call gets transferred my way because a customer is requesting a refund, and for some reason, that normal procedure is too complicated for the frontline agent, so the call is sent to me. I meet Loving Husband, who sounds like he came straight from a goddamn NRA convention.

Customer: “Yesir, I canceled that account, now I need my money.”

Winston: “I do see the account was cancelled as of today, and it looks like there will be about a $30 credit on the account after the equipment is returned.”

Customer: “No way man, I want all the money that was paid last time.”

Winston: “Well the last payment made was for about $70, but that went against the last month of programming. I can only refund a credit balance on the account, which again will be around $30.”

Customer: “Fine, I’ll take the $30, but Hell, y’all owe me all of that money. Stealing bitch.”

Was he calling me a stealing bitch? Or someone else?

Winston: “Can you read me the name on the card so I can make sure the refund is going to the right place?”

Customer: “It’s in my wife’s name, might as well say Dumb Bitch.”

At this point, all I could do was pause, revel in what was said, and repeat my same question. Kind of like, lather, rinse, repeat, but with stupidity instead of dirt.

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