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Life with the phone company, God help us
Apr. 2nd, 2009 11:42 pmI finally made a few phone calls and took advantage of the local cable Internet service, which will be installed on Tuesday. Then I made another call to my cell provider to ask about adding a second line. Once everything else in place, I will be making one more call to cancel my landline and my DSL service—yes, the ones I get through my employer. *feigns shame* The worst part is that I made thes calls at work, which I'm sure is against some obscure little Code of Conduct by-law or something. I'm a baaaaad little corporate cabana boy.
Speaking of work, I realized something the other day that makes me want to hang my head and sob until the keyboard shorts out. Semi-regularly, I get a call from a customer who is having trouble dialing a number, except that the number is question has either too many or not enough numbers in it. Now this may be an honest mistake, although the possibility of someone thinking this five-digit number will actually go through is a tad boggling. But I hate hate haaaaate saying, "I'm sorry, you're missing a few numbers."
This is because (and this is the realization) I have never, in the eleven years I've been working as a call completions operator, heard anyone give any answer on the planet to this statement except, "Huhhh?" Every time: "Huhhh?" Regardless of how I phrase it. Always in the slow drawl of someone whose lips move when they're reading Joan Collins and/or the Weekly World News. If you could amplify the headset, I swear you'd be able to hear the gerbil wheel in their skull squeaking.
If it only happened occasionally, I could live with it. But it's literally a daily occurrence, and it turns my job into that of scratch-tester at a chalkboard factory. As soon as they hit me with that six-digit number, my jaw sets, my bowels clench, and I find myself silently begging, "Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, say something, anything different. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you didn't realize. Tell me you like potatoes. Use your #%@*ing words, fer crissakes. DON'T MAKE ME COMMIT HARI KIRI WITH THIS #2 PENCIL, OH PLEASE I BEG, DEAR CUSTOMER OF MINE." But once I've thought my way through my mantra, I wince in anticipate as I finally speak: "I'm sorry, you don't have enough numbers there."
The caller silently puts down the phone, and Jed Clampett picks it up. "Huhhh?" he drawls. And I need to page the supervisor to remove the pencil from my hemorrhaging pancreas. Again.
EDIT: The following is from a response to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cornute's comment, reprinted here because I don't think I aimed my rant very well:
Looking at my post, I realize that I need to be clearer than I was: it's not the dialing I'm ranting about. I do have a few customers who are clearly hearkening back to 5-digit dialing; in general, they're pretty easy to steer towards the information I need. (Heck, I even still get the occasional "GRamercy 5-XXXX," which is kind of neat.) In most other cases, the too-long or too-short number is a fairly simple mistake, such as leaving out the middle digit of the area code, or leapfrogging straight from the area code to the number after the exchange, or having repeated digits—say, three 6's in a row—and inadverdently leaving one out, or trying to dial both area codes in areas that have overlaps. Granted, I'm sometimes baffled that they don't notice any of this, but then again, I listen to phone numbers all day long, so I'm sensitive to the XXX-XXX-XXXX rhythm.
No, my problem is with their response to my telling them any of that. If they were to say, "I'm sorry?" or "What do you mean?" I would be able to have an actual discussion on the matter. But no, it's that grating, grunty "Huhhh?" every single time, which is rude, and makes the caller sound less intelligent than they are. And when I know for a fact that it's coming, I'm left head-desking like a sippy-bird and wondering why I even bother.
I will say that there's one thig even more annoying: the fad (now fading at last) of replacing, "What did you say?" with, "What happened?" *seethe* For a while, I was counting the days before I finally flip out and shriek, "NOTHING HAPPENED, FOR CRISSAKES."
Speaking of work, I realized something the other day that makes me want to hang my head and sob until the keyboard shorts out. Semi-regularly, I get a call from a customer who is having trouble dialing a number, except that the number is question has either too many or not enough numbers in it. Now this may be an honest mistake, although the possibility of someone thinking this five-digit number will actually go through is a tad boggling. But I hate hate haaaaate saying, "I'm sorry, you're missing a few numbers."
This is because (and this is the realization) I have never, in the eleven years I've been working as a call completions operator, heard anyone give any answer on the planet to this statement except, "Huhhh?" Every time: "Huhhh?" Regardless of how I phrase it. Always in the slow drawl of someone whose lips move when they're reading Joan Collins and/or the Weekly World News. If you could amplify the headset, I swear you'd be able to hear the gerbil wheel in their skull squeaking.
If it only happened occasionally, I could live with it. But it's literally a daily occurrence, and it turns my job into that of scratch-tester at a chalkboard factory. As soon as they hit me with that six-digit number, my jaw sets, my bowels clench, and I find myself silently begging, "Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, say something, anything different. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you didn't realize. Tell me you like potatoes. Use your #%@*ing words, fer crissakes. DON'T MAKE ME COMMIT HARI KIRI WITH THIS #2 PENCIL, OH PLEASE I BEG, DEAR CUSTOMER OF MINE." But once I've thought my way through my mantra, I wince in anticipate as I finally speak: "I'm sorry, you don't have enough numbers there."
The caller silently puts down the phone, and Jed Clampett picks it up. "Huhhh?" he drawls. And I need to page the supervisor to remove the pencil from my hemorrhaging pancreas. Again.
EDIT: The following is from a response to
cornute's comment, reprinted here because I don't think I aimed my rant very well:Looking at my post, I realize that I need to be clearer than I was: it's not the dialing I'm ranting about. I do have a few customers who are clearly hearkening back to 5-digit dialing; in general, they're pretty easy to steer towards the information I need. (Heck, I even still get the occasional "GRamercy 5-XXXX," which is kind of neat.) In most other cases, the too-long or too-short number is a fairly simple mistake, such as leaving out the middle digit of the area code, or leapfrogging straight from the area code to the number after the exchange, or having repeated digits—say, three 6's in a row—and inadverdently leaving one out, or trying to dial both area codes in areas that have overlaps. Granted, I'm sometimes baffled that they don't notice any of this, but then again, I listen to phone numbers all day long, so I'm sensitive to the XXX-XXX-XXXX rhythm.
No, my problem is with their response to my telling them any of that. If they were to say, "I'm sorry?" or "What do you mean?" I would be able to have an actual discussion on the matter. But no, it's that grating, grunty "Huhhh?" every single time, which is rude, and makes the caller sound less intelligent than they are. And when I know for a fact that it's coming, I'm left head-desking like a sippy-bird and wondering why I even bother.
I will say that there's one thig even more annoying: the fad (now fading at last) of replacing, "What did you say?" with, "What happened?" *seethe* For a while, I was counting the days before I finally flip out and shriek, "NOTHING HAPPENED, FOR CRISSAKES."
