First, something disturbing has happened at my work. As many of you know, I work for a well-known long distance company. When I was hired, I was hired as a Customer Service representative, meaning that the customer called me, I helped them with their problem, thanked them and disconnected. Then a new person came to be in charge of our department and decided that she wanted us to also sell things to the customer. Not only that, but if we didn't sell something to at least fifteen percent of eligible customers who called in, we would get into trouble. What this meant was that, if I didn't make at least fifteen people out of a hundred buy something, whether they wanted to do so or not, it affects my job performance.
Our supervisor at the time told us that, if we were to at least try to sell on every call, but show that the fifteen percent goal was unrealistic, then we might be able to get the head of the department to lower this goal. So, we did this. For some reason, our attempt backfired and they actually raised our goal to twenty-five percent! And that isn't the worst of it! We found out from our supervisor that the long-distance company had stated that we should be able to sell to at least FIFTY PERCENT!!!
Now, my employer has sent a mass mailing to something like 50,000 of their customers showing them how to go to our web site to get a bonus promotion. For some reason, they have decided to follow this up with a number of us actually calling the customers to make sure that they got these cards. They have done this at our busiest time of the year and have taken over half of our representatives off the phones so that they can do these outbound calls. What this means to the customer is that our program has over 150,000 customers in it and only three or four representatives to answer their calls.
As many of you may have read in my Creep essay, we have three minutes to complete a call, or it goes against our scores, which affect our raises. A few days ago, I had a very apologetic customer call in to change his address . . . ON SEVEN DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS!!! Unfortunately, no matter how badly he felt about this, he didn't want to send a fax to do this, so I was forced to do it over the phone. My talk time for this one call? Over ten minutes.
Another thing that bothers me is unprofessionalism. If a customer calls me, I am trying my best to help him. If he has a problem with the policy of the program, then he shouldn't yell and swear at me. I spoke with a customer today who was told that he wasn't spending enough to be in our program. He pointed out all of the different services that he has with our company, but I informed him that, unfortunately, only one of those services counted toward our program. He said, "Well, then, I don't give a [colorful metaphor]," and hung up on me. I can't believe that they let people like that run businesses.
On a related note, I really hate it when people swear loudly in public. It absolutely angers me when we are in a public place, like a mall, and some idiot decides that he doesn't care if there are children around. When a person cusses, as Huckleberry Finn would say, I always look around to see how many kids have just been poisoned by him.
Also related to this, there is a company in the St. Louis area, called Dirt Cheap, that is a gas station chain, but specializes in less expensive alcohol and cigarettes. The first thing that bothers me is that they claim to be "the last refuge for the persecuted smoker." What about the persecuted non-smoker? I've pretty much covered my opinion of smoking before.
The other thing that bothers me is that they use a guy in a chicken suit as their mascot. He's cute and runs around squawking, "Cheep! Cheep! Fun! Fun!" all throughout the commercials. Why would they need a cartoonish character to promote their products? Are they trying to get the attention of children? Wasn't the company who owns "Camel" cigarettes forced to remove Joe Camel from their product for this very reason? Needless to say, I won't ever give "Dirt Cheap" my business . . .Not even to buy gas . . . as long as they have these commercials.
The final thing that makes me angry (at least, the final thing that I can think of right now) is knowing that some companies can be real snots to their employees. If a worker is sick with a long-term illness, (s)he can claim the "Family Medical Leave Act." This forces employers to hold the worker's position for twelve weeks, although they don't have to pay the employee during that time. However, once the twelve weeks are up, the company can terminate the worker's job, if the worker isn't well enough to return to work. And they don't have to "fire" or "lay off" the worker, either. Some unscrupulous companies will list the termination as "voluntary" (i.e. the employee quit) in an effort to keep the worker from drawing unemployment.
Just a rant. I needed to get some things off of my chest.
January 9, 2004