I have been in this guy's shoes. I worked at a telecommunications company call center. People are often straight up a**holes. They often think you just refuse to do something because you don't want to work, or you don't give them information because you just don't want to. They don't realize that often you are held to a particular script and not allowed to give out some info if it isn't something that the other call reps would know, or because it just isn't information you are given access to. Heck sometimes it is information that even your supervisor doesn't have access to. All they think is that you have nothing better to do that sit there and deny them access to the information they need. I even had a woman once that got upset that I couldn't tell her how to change the parental control settings on her kid's iPhones that her ex-husband had given them. I worked for an internet company, but that doesn't make a person an all around tech-support person for you.
A couple of other incidents that grind my gears so to speak is when people wait until the last second to put in a ticket for something and then complain when it isn't done on time, or when someone complains that they have been experiencing a problem for weeks, months or years but they just put in a ticket an hour ago for it. They bitch and you are just sitting there thinking, "If this was such a problem, why did you only just now complain about it?"
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It's been a while since I've posted anything about my time at the "Brisby" Company but there was a post recently that knocked a good one loose from memory.
The Call Center was open 24/7. Occasionally I'd be asked to cover a 3rd shift because they were short. It would get me time and a half, and I liked the money, plus I could really spend the time reading a book or something (looking back, I should have spent more time studying for certs then - c'est la vie.)
It was usually pretty quiet. For the first half of a 3rd shift, mostly your calls were going to come from restaurants over the park areas that were closing and were having issues with the cash register system, and maybe a few from West Coast people staying in the office late. But between 0030 and 0500, it was pretty dead. But one call would come in a couple of times a week.
A call about Maximo. That's IBM's asset management platform. It was used by technicians who keep the rides running to know where the parts are that they need to fix them. You know, so people don't keep going straight into a wall when the roller coaster was supposed to turn. Maximo was not known for its stability (at least not around where I was). From my experience, it went down at least twice a week, and the response team was...not the best.
The ride maintenance guys are fairly nice but also not exactly the brightest bulbs. Most of them had been there 15 years plus and didn't need to keep on things like "them newfangled computers".
It had been a bad week. I forget what was going on exactly; I'm fairly certain I was starting to burn out from being on the phones, and while I was being told I was going to be hired on by the new contracting company, they were for some reason dragging their feet, and I was getting really frustrated, because moving over to the new company from my current subcontractor company meant more money and benefits. But no one knew anything, and between the new contracting company and the subcontractor, they were just pointing fingers at each other.
It's about 1 in the morning and the phone rings. "Brisby Customer Call Center, this is MickCollins, how can I help you."
RideTech: "Yeah this is RideTech over in Sorcery Caliphate. Maximo is down again." Me: "Ok, let me get your info and I'll submit a ticket to the Maximo team." I do this, generate the ticket, fire it off to the team and hang up.
An hour later, same guy calls back. RT: "Maximo's still down." I look up the ticket info. Looks like no one from their team has even looked at it yet. I pass this on to the caller. RT: "Awright."
Half hour later, phone rings again. Same guy. RT: "Maximo's still down! When are you going to fix this shit?" I look up the ticket. Still unacknowledged. I don't have the power to call anyone (I don't have a number for them, it's just an internal team." In the meantime.... RT: "I can't believe this. We can't get anything done half the time because we can't find our shit to fix anything! You guys don't know what the fuck you're..." I finally lose it. Me: "LISTEN! I am NOT in charge of this piece of shit system! I just have to take tickets from everyone and pass them on and hope they get fixed eventually! If it was up to me, I'd take a suitcase nuke and blow that fucking thing away, because it's shit! I get calls about it at least twice a week! You think I like that??!?!!"
Dead silence. I get the feeling the guy's looking at the phone.
I let silence reign for about 20 seconds.
Me: "I'll add a note in here that you contacted us multiple times and that their service level lately is crap. That's all I can do here. Call back in an hour and I'll let you know if they're working on it or not."
RT: "....alright." He hangs up.
The 3rd shift lead is just laughing his ass off hearing this exchange. He's a guy on the happy pills, because he was an Apache pilot over in the Middle East during the first Gulf War and was running late when he was subway three stops away from the WTC on 9/11 and has some....we'll call them issues.
The guy never called back (much to the Lead's dismay, because he wanted to listen on speakerphone). I looked at 0400 and someone had finally acknowledged the ticket and was working on it.
I didn't get written up, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to stick around there much longer...it wasn't worth the cost to my soul.
- User MickCollins from Reddit
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