Outsourcing Rejection
Posted on February 8, 2003 by Ching under Life, Web.
“Welcome to being a Brubaker,” was all Brian could say.. He said that once upon a time one of the Brubaker forefathers must have pissed off some voodoo queen or witch in a land far, far away because Brubakers have the worst luck imaginable. I am just so frustrated. I’ve had a run of such bad luck the last couple of days, and it all began with a Salon article: Outsourcing Rejection. I came across a snippet via Quixotical.org and I decided to read on. Being in the customer service industry myself, I found the article wildly amusing.
A few months before I left the Phone Center, one of our clients started an experiment: using us to screen for middle-management positions instead of just their blue-collar jobs. These applications were particularly fun. It wasn’t just that the interviews were more complex; it was the peculiar sadistic thrill that most of them provided. Like all of our callers, the aspiring middle managers dialed a number and were put directly through to a recruiter. But the middle managers were different in that many of them made two disastrous assumptions. The first was that anyone who answers the phone must be the receptionist, and the second was that it’s OK to be rude to the receptionist.
The fun started almost immediately. The first thing the middle managers had to do was give their basic information: name, contact numbers, things like that. Problem callers would already be impatient with this process. They rattled things off as quickly as possible, deeply resentful that they weren’t talking to the important person yet. Next I asked them for some basic résumé information. This was usually answered cryptically, accompanied by testy little exhalations and I’m pretty sure eye-rolling, though that’s only an educated guess.
When I launched into the actual interview, it really pissed them off. They’d get furious that the freaking receptionist had the audacity to waste their time by … And then round about question 5 it would dawn on them that this was the interview. I could hear the quick catch in their speech as it hit them, and the sick pause as they thought back over how they’d been behaving for the past several minutes. It was the attempts at damage control that I really found hilarious. Suddenly, we were best pals. They almost always thought that using my first name as much as possible might somehow make up for their earlier suggestion that I make it snappy. Too late, Mr. Jenkins. You were an F7 back at question 2.
Tell me that is not funny. I was rolling! Anyway, I enjoyed it so much that I felt the urge to share it with Brian. I click on the print button and after waiting a couple of minutes my computer tells me that I do not have access to this printer and to contact my “network administrator.” My first reaction, “What the hell?!” I had just printed something last week and the network was perfectly fine. The network was actually one of the things that I loved about our home office. Brian and I could share our My Pictures and My Music folders as well as any other files we want to share between us effortlessly. Not to mention I didn’t have to buy my own printer nor find space for it, which was awesome because I’m a real clutter-bug. But I digress.. Our first conclusion was that perhaps my IP address had been removed, albeit accidentally, from Brian’s trusted zones on his firewall. Checked that, no problem there. Then we thought maybe Felix, because he is such a little booger, had unplugged one or some of the cables but after examining the back of our computers for several minutes we came to the conclusion that wasn’t the problem either. So we inspected our network connections which seemed to be fine and redid them several times to no avail. Brian had me delete the printer and try to add it back, which was a really horrible idea as I couldn’t add it back because I couldn’t even connect to his computer. Now not only could I not print but I didn’t even have the cute little printer icon any more. On the upside, I can still access the internet. So I went to the Dell support website but even that was futile. I think they don’t expect you to call for help at two in the morning because the only people that are working during that time of day are morons. I seriously believe that they aren’t capable of free thinking, rather they just go by a list of questions and recite the prescribed set of answers. You might as well, click on the FAQ link becaues there’s no difference! Anyhow, this guy tells me that he is not experienced in this area and that I would need to speak with their “advanced OS department.” I’m thinking fine, whatever, but are they open right now? According to him they were and that he would transfer me but instead of reaching the party successfully after a few minutes of waiting I just end up getting this “Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again.” message, which could be the fault of T-Mobile and their magically disappearing signal. Whatever the case, I was aggravated that I had to call back. And you know when you call back you have to go through the same hassle of providing your express service tag, express service code, name, address and phone number only to realize that the person you’re speaking with can’t answer your questions and will just transfer you to another person who may or may not be able to help but who will probably waste your time just as the first person had done by asking for all of that information all over again. The second time that I called, after I provided the information I just politely explained to her that I was disconnected in the process of being transfered and would like to be transfered straight away. This person wen’t through the same process the guy did only this time I had to wait on hold even longer until eventually I just gave up and looked at my cellphone which shows that I wasn’t on a call any longer.. I was waiting for freaking nothing! I finally just gave up and said screw it. Brian and I had to wake up super early the following day and couldn’t afford to be up all night tinkering around with this shit. Brian and I concur that it could be a hardware problem (since we’ve practically exhausted all other possibilities). We had a major power outage on monday that lasted several hours (I actually had to take a shower and get dressed in the dark, plus I had to rush to work so I could microwave my breakfast there). He thinks his network card might have gotten fried. I don’t know if that is possible but it will have to do for now because we don’t want to think about it any further. So this morning we were supposed to wake up at seven but hit the snooze several times because we were both exhausted from the previous night’s fiasco. I get up to take a shower only to find out that there is no hot water. I made Brian get up, much to his dismay, to check the pilot light underneath the hot water heater and sure enought it was out. Brian thinks that we probably had really strong winds the night before, so strong that it blew the pilot light out. Anyway, it was too cold for a regular shower so I ended up taking a ghetto shower (just washing my face and brushing my teeth and wiping my body so I don’t completely stink) but I still feel dirty. With that out of the way, we head on over to the motor vehicles place only to find out that they are closed on Saturdays! Brian had mistaken them for the driver’s license place which is open on Saturday and closed on Mondays. Grrrr! I hate getting up early but I have no choice. I’m going to have to do it again on Monday. You’re probably wondering, as much time as I spend on the internet, why I just don’t do it online at KSwebtags.org — oh, but I tried — it didn’t offer the option of changing your last name and your address. I can change my address by mail but then it doesn’t give me the option of changing my last name. Plus I don’t trust the mail because it is so slow (and I’m quickly running out of time) so I’d rather do it in person. That is my “mission impossible” task for this month. On the upside, we were able to get each other’s Valentine’s Day gifts today. Brian got me the watch that I really, really wanted for Christmas (but didn’t get) at Kay Wiggins Jewelry and I purchased and scheduled a hot stone massage for him at Individually Yours (this place on Douglas and Oliver that Ashley recommended). We usually look to Sveta’s at Bradley Fair for our massage and relaxation needs but they don’t offer hot stone massage and every time Brian sees it on tv, he seems to really want it so I decided to get him something special and different this time around, something that he’s never experienced before. I just know that he’ll enjoy his hour and half of hot stone ecstacy and extreme pampering.
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