A Dramatic Re-Enactment of a Call Between Myself and an Irate Parent Trying to Pay Their Child's Bill With No Permission to Get Account Details

• (Note: This took place on Twitter this afternoon between myself and capn-madd-katt after I tweeted the following during my break: "Dear Families of Account Holders: You need permission to get account details. We cannot break state law just because you're a parent.")
• Katt: BUT I MUST NOE MY CHILD'S BIZNIZ!
• Me: BUT IZ PA STATE LAW SAYS YOU NO CAN HAS UNLESS CHILD CALLS US AND SAYS YOU CAN HAS, EVEN IF SHE TOLD YOU TO.
• Katt: BUT I IZ A PARUNT! I IZ IMPORTENT AND EXTREMLEE BIZY!
• Me: LOLZ I NO CARE JOO STILL NO CAN HAS. YOU CAN HAS SUPERVISOR, BUT SUP WILL TELL JOO NO CAN HAS TOO!
• Katt: BAH! *IMPORTENT THROAT CLEERING/PAPUR SHUFFLING*
• (End note: Fred, the supervisor, told the gentleman the same thing I did, that under Pennsylvania state privacy laws, he could not give the man any details-including the amount of the bill that needed to be paid-unless the account holder (the man's daughter) called in and gave him permission. Caller proceeded to call Fred a "motherfucker" and hang up.)

Additionally!

Did you guys know that when a company sends its mailings such as bills and 10 day shut-off notices to the post office, call center employees have complete control over what happens to them once they reach the post office?

I DIDN’T!

Seriously, had a guy call in who got his shut-off notice but didn’t get his bill with the past due amount, then accused me of keeping the bill behind or something so he didn’t get it, just so the gas company could get more money.

The minute he hung up, I muted the mic and laughed my ass off.  THAT call was funny as hell. XD

Urgh.

So this lady fucking calls in and rambles on for 15 minutes about her bill.  Someone quoted her a wrong past due amount, and apparently the charities she’s called haven’t called us like they’re saying they will.  Nothing we can do about that.

I tried to explain things to her, and she kept going back to the same four or five points.  I suddenly realized two things: 1) I must sound horrible when I do that. 2) That woman made me sound like a fucking AMATEUR.

So when we’re done, I’ve summarized everything, and she’s said she’s satisfied, but THEN she asks to talk to a supervisor because she “believed what I told her, but wanted to speak to a supervisor to make sure it was right.”  Bitch, if you’re asking for a supervisor, you don’t believe a fucking WORD of what just came out of my mouth.  Called the line, was told to offer a callback, which I did and she accepted…

…and then Fred, aka Hippie Jesus, came sauntering up right as I was about to get the lady off the phone.  So I had no choice but to give the phone to Fred.  I explained to him what happened, and he gave me an O RLY? look, then took over the call.

About 5 minutes into his takeover of the call, Fred believed me.  There was much in the way of frustrated “kill me the fuck NOW” gestures.  Thank the gods she hung up when she was done talking to Fred so I didn’t have to deal with her again.

Bright side: she didn’t yell at me or call me a “fucking idiot” like the lady and her mother on Tuesday did.

I don’t have to be at work until 1.

Thursdays are my short days at work.

My schedule for the month is amazing.  We all start out as C level reps, which aren’t the worst, but they’re not the best either, which means we don’t get to pick our schedules.  They give us our schedules the first month out.

My schedule is as follows:

Monday - 9-7

Tuesday - 9-7

Wednesday - 10-7

Thursday - 1-7

Friday - 7-5

We open at 7 in the morning and close at 7 in the evening.  I would take closing 4 nights a week over opening 4 mornings a week any time.  This looks more like the sort of schedule an A level rep, which is the best reps, would pick.  I feel like a very lucky person. :D

Oh, and also…

I had one of the funniest moments ever happen on a call.

Had put a lady on hold to see if she was eligible for any sort of payment plan.

Took lady off hold.

Lady was in process of bitching out her fiance, complete with creative uses of F word.

All our calls are recorded.

I had to sit there and wait until she was done swearing at him to tell her that she was eligible for the payment plan, because we’re taught not to interrupt the customer.

She has no idea I could hear her swearing, nor does she have any idea that tears were coming down my face and that I laughed my ass off at the situation after she hung up.

:D

Today definitely made up for all the bitch-assness of the last hour and a half of work yesterday.

I actually got called an angel by one of the customers I had on the phone.

Had to bite back laughter because he clearly doesn’t know me, but it was nice to hear.  I like it when I can genuinely help someone, and that happens a few times during the day.

Oh, and the Big Bosses came to the office today, distributing bouncy balls according to how many customer compliments each rep submitted during the last week or so.  I now have 7 little bouncy balls in a pink basket on my desk, and will no longer be bored between calls on slow days because I have something to play with.

I intended to stay up until all hours tonight on here with you all, because I don’t have to go to work until 1, but my body is like “LOLZ NO BITCH WHAT U TALKIN’ ‘BOUT YAWN YAWN YAWN MOTHERFUCKER,” so it’s looking like an early night tonight.

HOWEVER, that means that I’ll be awake earlier than normal, which means I’ll probably get on Tumblr for a bit then, which means I can see some of the UK folks that I don’t usually get to see!

I’m just beat because it’s my first week of an actual work schedule and not my training schedule, and my body is trying to adjust to this NEW schedule, just as it was getting used to the OTHER schedule.  I should be all right to stay awake after this week is done.

Oh, and Wendy is officially home safely!  I talked to her for a bit earlier, and she sounded exhausted as fuck but happy to be home.  Can’t wait to see her this weekend and give her a big-ass motherfucker of a hug.

FML

So, according to this woman who called in today, I don’t know how to do my job properly and am a fucking idiot.

Oh, but guess why?

Because after she yelled at me for a good 20 minutes because she didn’t want to pay her past due amount so her fucking gas wouldn’t be shut off and then spoke to a supervisor (who let her pay a different amount because the post office fucked up delivering the letters that said she’d been taken off a payment plan and had me put her on another payment plan that she was eligible for and that I would have offered the bitch if she had shut the fuck up for five minutes), SHE BITCHED AT ME FOR ANOTHER TEN MINUTES BECAUSE HER CARD REQUIRED MANUAL AUTHORIZATION AND IT COULDN’T BE HER BANK’S FAULT AND IT HAD TO BE OUR FAULT.  She and her mother, who I could hear in the background, then said that the call center was staffed by “fucking idiots,” that she’d call her bank and find out what was wrong, and hung up.  By this time I was nearly in tears, and spent a good half hour telling myself that if I could survive the bitches from high school, this bitch and her mother weren’t going to make me cry.

She then called back at the end of my shift, and I got the call.  Fucking happy happy joy joy.

AND OMFG.

GUESS FUCKING WHAT?

IT WAS THE FUCKING BANK’S FAULT.

She ended up putting her mother on the phone so her mother could make the payment with her card.  Both mother and daughter were extremely nice to me the second time around, with no apology for blaming the bank fuckery on me.

At least Wendy called from London earlier today and said she was safe, all my friends in the UK are present and accounted for, I passed my first on-floor graded call with a 91.32, they played New Order in Sheetz, and I got Sheetz for dinner, or tonight would have seen me getting cut off from ordering any more drinks at the bar across the street.  Fucking hell.

:D

THREE

100%

TESTS

IN

A

ROW!

I am kicking SO MUCH ASS at this training.  Our trainer, Brian, says I’m doing a really good job.  People in the class are saying I’m one of the ones who “have it down really fast.”  One of the guys even said he wished he could type his contact log notes as fast as I do.  I really think I’ve found my perfect job finally!

Also, I am unfortunately no longer a member of Hippie Jesus’ team.  His coaching position got eliminated because he’s taking another position in the company where he’d be able to supervise and help ALL the teams instead of just one, because the woman who did THAT job is going back to being a phone rep.  My new coach is a dude named Keith.  His team name is a play on the Tim Gunn phrase “Make it work.”  I am all right with this. :D

Oh God. XD

I’m still cramping like a motherfucker, but I’m holding off taking an Aleve until I’m actually sleepy and ready to go to bed so I don’t fuck up my sleep schedule, so you get me for a couple hours/until I feel like going to bed.

So, the things that happened today:

1. I passed my second written test at work training!  I was one of only two people who got 100% on the test.  I felt like a genius. :D
2. For those of you who missed it, Roach Lady got the Health Department called on her on Friday by someone in the back office.  Reps aren’t allowed to do stuff like that, but the supervisors ARE.  We are eagerly awaiting any future calls from her, just to see what happens next.
3. This guy called while our trainer Brian was taking calls, and he immediately asked for the name of the president of our company.  We knew instantly that this was going to be good.  His tone was polite, his words had “asshole” written ALL OVER THEM.  At one point, he even told the supervisor who Brian called in to take over the call “You don’t NEED to know MY name right now,” and kept bitching when the supervisor refused to give him last names, which is 100% NOT ALLOWED.  Apparently, he’d called earlier and bitched at one of the coaches, Fred, for not giving him an appointment tomorrow, when the earliest available appointment was Friday.  So Fred took a not-nice tone with him, and this asshole wanted to call the Public Utility Commission on Fred.  We listened to Fred’s call, which was recorded, and at no time was Fred disrespectful or rude to him.  He literally just couldn’t give the man the appointment that he wanted because there was none available, and the man got a bad case of the Special Snowflakes.
4. A bunch of us got lectured for yelling “WOOHOO!” after Brian muted the call and told us that the supervisor was going to come take the call in the room with us, because Brian thought we were cheering that we got an angry phone call.  We were actually cheering because we’d get to hear how the call got resolved right away, unlike with Roach Lady, where we had to wait a few days.  Brian rescinded the lecture, then told us not to do it when the supervisor got into the room.
5. When the phone call was over and the guy had hung up, the supervisor said “What a dick.”  We all died laughing.
6. Melissa was drinking a 5 Hour Energy drink.  I asked her how it tasted and she said it tasted like ass.  I told her I didn’t even want to know how she knew what that tasted like, and she started laughing hysterically and said it was the funniest thing I’ve said all training.
7. Later, Jesse, one of the guys in class, told Melissa to “Stop laughing and drink your ass,” and Brian heard him and went “I don’t even want to know.”  He was less disgusted once we explained the context. XD
8. Me, Frank, Travis, and Brian were all quoting Monty Python randomly all day.
9. Me, Frank, and Jesse ended the day by singing “The Time Warp” right before we all clocked out.

So, apart from the cramps, it was a good day.  I really think I’m going to love this job once I actually hit the floor.

(Side note: I already know who my coach is going to be once I hit the floor.  It’s Fred.  I am SO FUCKING EXCITED. :D)

*half-asleep typing*

I’m taking an early night tonight because I need to take an Aleve.

Started cramping around noon.

NOT ONE OF THE GIRLS IN MY TRAINING CLASS HAD IBUPROFEN ON THEM.  I HAVE BEEN SUFFERING FOR OVER EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS. D:

However, I do have some news from work:

1. I passed my hands-on test!  We have another, written test tomorrow, but I have a study guide that has all the questions and answers written down, so I can study it in the morning before we actually take the test.
2. Remember Roach Lady?  The one who said “Fuck your good day” to the supervisor?  Someone in the back-office-not a rep, we’re not allowed to do this-called the HEALTH DEPARTMENT on her.
3. We had a lady call in today while I was “nesting,” which is listening in to calls while a rep is taking them, who was a real peach.  Her service line was busted.  Service line maintenance is the responsibility of the customer (main line is our company’s responsibility).  She not only DEMANDED that we pay her back for the plumber she had to hire to fix the service line leak, she refused to pay the massive gas bill she had and threatened to call the local news on us. XD

I’ll be on tomorrow if I’m not cramping and exhausted, but dear gods, these motherfuckers have been killing me since around noon, and I NEED a break from them.  See you all tomorrow!