Category: Perplexed Employees

The Redneck Bilinguals

Winston3 Comments
It’s important to be bilingual in Jive too.

I think it’s been pretty firmly established by now that Rednecks encompass a large portion of the Telescreen customer base. Hey, they cater to the “rural individuals,” and the agents get to reap the, um, rewards.

The customers aren’t the only “rural individuals” we get to deal with in Super Department. A few of the call centers are down in Texas and South Carolina. We talk to a ton of agents hailing from The South or Texas (since Texas is kind of a country unto itself). Because they’re usually pretty tolerable, I like to leave my fellow agents alone on the blog. They’re suffering just like me and don’t usually deserve to be ridiculed. Sure I have a whole category called “Perplexed Employees,” but for the most part, agents are a far cry from most of the raging lunatics we talk to. So I go by the mantra to just let a Redneck be. Kind of like when you see a rattlesnake in the woods. It won’t bite you as long as you leave it the fuck alone. So when I drive past a trailer park, I let the residents be, instead of pulling in and yelling, “Ronald Reagan is a piece of shit!”

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The Fail Agent

Winston1 Comment
Epic fail.

Considering the type of employees at Telescreen, you would figure it’s not that hard of a job. If you barely need a high school degree, limited “customer service experience,” and must be a chain smoker with two kids driving a rusty pinto, you would think the job is pretty fucking easy.

From reading some of my past blog posts, I’m sure you also get the sense that this it’s probably one of the more stressful jobs out there. Take a normal cubicle job, but toss in appeasing the screaming toothless redneck while navigating ten different near-obsolete applications as quickly as possible, and you’ve got a recipe for a shit job.

Me, I like to keep shit simple. That turns a stressful job into sometimes, an easy job. For example, some dumbass calls in and starts bitching about their bill. I throw free shit and money at them. They then quit bitching, hang up the phone, and leave me the fuck alone. See how simple that is?

Of course it’s not always that easy, but if you strive for simplicity, it really makes the days a lot easier. In a place filled with ESP’s, easy is a key savior of sanity.

Some employees aren’t quite that enlightened. They go by the book and seem to think they can solve everything using the bullshit mandates from the upper echelon of Telescreen. Of course all of the rules thrown at us don’t help us with our jobs, but only impede them. You’ve got to think outside of the box, and well, actually think in the first place to survive the day to day.

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The Phone Sex Badass

Winston3 Comments
“Oh yeah, it’s definitely getting hot in here.”

Sometimes employees don’t get mad, they get even. I plot pretty much every single day how I can get even with these idiotic assholes, but so far I’ve come up with nothing. One employee was much better at plotting than me and ended up getting pretty fucking even.

I’m on the phone with some raging bitch who’s pissed about something I don’t give a fuck about. She’s insistent on talking to a previous agent who was working with her the previous week.

Customer: “I need to speak with John, he promised me he would get a technician out here today!”

Winston: “Well let me see if I can track John down then.”

Customer: “No, you get up and you find him right now!”

See the demanding bullshit I deal with on a regular basis? I put the raging bitch on hold and tried to track down John, the poor employee that had to deal with this psycho. I looked him up in our directory, and it turned out he had just quit earlier in the week. Smart bastard. That’s par for the course as the turnover is fucking unreal at Telescreen.

Winston: “I’m sorry ma’am, but it looks like John quit earlier this week. I’m not sure if you had tried calling him…”

Customer: “You’re damn right I have! I’ve been trying to call him all week, why do you think I’m so frustrated? Every time I called that number, you know what I got? A phone sex line. S-E-X! You know, that porno stuff. Can you believe that?”

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Is That Spanish?

Winston3 Comments

I know I mock the Telescreen customers all the time, but shit, the employees are dumbasses too. Here’s an example: Winston: “Are you looking at the notes on the account?” CSR: “Yeah, I see a note from a John in your office. It says, ‘Couldn’t call customer back due to queue.’ Is that spanish, you […]

Master of the Custodial Arts

Winston3 Comments
For some reason this guy thinks he’s cool because he’s a janitor.

You know your job is a piece of shit when people fight over custodial duties. No, I’m not joking, gentle reader. As always, your pal Winston tells the truth and nothing but the truth. Allow me to elaborate.

Because Telescreen is so fucking cheap, they don’t pay for enough maintenance crews around our building. Mind you, the call center is fucking huge, with over a thousand people working there, but apparently Big Brother wants to buy some more weekend hookers, so we’re stuck with the few illegal immigrants we have. Then who’s going to pick up the slack? I guess the dipshit management will just have to utilize the workers they already have to fill in on cleaning duties.  Well, let me be specific, they can only use the workers that are experiencing some downtime, which is pretty much never. Hence why the competition to join the cleanup crew is so fierce. Who wouldn’t want a nice break from a continuous onslaught of stupidity?

I found out about this “perk” by going outside one day during training, even before I started in Super Department. I walked outside with some of my coworkers and headed over to the smoking area. This is by far the most popular place in the building, next to the cafeteria which serves a plethora of fried food. This should give  you an idea of the work environment I’m dealing with.

We saw one of the veteran Super Department agents outside with a broom and dustpan, cleaning up cigarette buts. I knew from prior experience that this guy happened to be a douchebag, so I took the opportunity to ridicule him. “Hey man, congrats, I see you’re now a master of the custodial arts. I knew you could do it.” “Hey, fuck you man,” he unsurprisingly replied, “This is way better than being on the phones.”

In that moment, Douchebag Coworker was right, cleaning up cigarette butts is better than talking to extremely stupid fucking idiots. I was determined to make a career change…or just volunteer the next time “cleanup duty” was offered.

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Winston Gets A Raise

Winston3 Comments

I didn’t see it coming. It was a day like any other day, filled with useless fucking morons, clueless rednecks, and yelling bitches. Then a friendly message from my boss pops up on the screen, “Yearly review after your call.” Um, okay. I end the call by telling the genius that because the bill reads […]

The Hot Dog Eating Contest

Winston

Some companies support a healthy lifestyle by promoting outdoor activities or a discount for a fitness club membership. It’s no surprise that Telescreen doesn’t support a fucking thing that would benefit the employees. Maybe they’re worried that the costs would be too high because an insanely high percentage of the employees are obese. I’m not […]

The Wise & Great Mr. Trainer

Winston

I remember our first day on the job quite clearly. Our training room was so quiet it made a library sound like a god damn Rolling Stones concert. The awkward silence in the room was finally broken by Mr. Trainer, the wise Telescreen Inc. employee who would be guiding us through the learning process. Wait a second, I have to be taught how to listen to stupid people bitch and moan all day? Apparently listening to dipshits is a refined craft, like a fine bottle of wine. And by a fine bottle, I mean Franzia, the shit that comes in a fucking box.

We’ve spent most of our day signing papers, getting standard HR bullshit, and asking questions. Mr. Trainer begins on the topic of unruly customers, and the fact that we will be getting some extremely irate and threatening individuals on the phone lines. One of my fellow trainees asks if we can hang up on a threatening customer. Absolutely not, Mr. Trainer advises us. If you hang up on an unruly customer, you can be fired on the spot. I can see getting fired on the spot for cruising into work with a .45 or for wearing nothing but a denim loincloth on jeans day, but for hanging up on an asswipe?

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