The problem with customers September 4, 2009

I knew from the moment I answered the call, it would be an awkward one.  It was.  Her name was Elizabeth and her problem was with me.   Her voice was the first clue.  It was pristine, like fine china.  Her words were exact, her letters were all accurately pronounced.  Her voice was unwavering.  She was a posh female with the mind of Beelzebub.

The call begin with her simple questions, luring me into a false sense of security.  ‘I am ringing on behalf of my deceased aunt, can I ask you some questions?’   They were fairly benign, simple easy questions.

‘I cannot discuss this with you as I need evidence your an executor’, I replied maintaining perfect decorum and policy.

‘That is fine, I received a letter stating you need a copy of the will, why?’ she replied maintaining perfect dignity.

Her aunt’s name was Mary, she had been deceased for a number of months and it was approaching the final stages of her niece getting all her aunt’s money.

‘We only need evidence of an executor so not the full will is required and we also need evidence of the death cert.’ I replied with poise.

‘Okay, I’ll send that into you.’ she replied, I almost sensed a magical excitement in her voice, as if she had the key to the riches that lay in her poor dead aunt’s coffers.

It was then the mistake occurred, an error so erroneous it has been known to start wars, a mistake so cataclysmic that I might have as well pushed the nuclear button on all of the North Korean missiles.

‘Okay thank you, Mary’ I replied and as the word inadvertently slipped from between my lips, I knew it was too late.  I had called her after her dead aunt.   The mistake was bad but what follows is worse.

‘Oh I mean Elizabeth, I mean Elizabeth’ and then proceeded to follow up my mistake with, ‘It’s Friday sorry’ and continued laughing, an unstoppable rush of laughter that only the greatest emotional dam could force back.

There was silence on the phone.  The type of silence you could only experience after being told you have herpes. The reception I received was worse.  I might have as well got drunk and thrown up in her aunt’s coffin at the wake with the tirade of abuse that followed.

‘What is your name?’ She said sternly

I didn’t reply.

‘How long have you worked there?’

‘A few weeks’ I replied shyly

‘Well let me help you learn something, you haven’t obviously learn’t in the last few weeks, you treat matters like a will with more respect’ she shouted.

In my mind, the first thing that came into my head was to reply

‘Well its good job your aunt is dead, at least she’s at rest from listening to you or did you kill her with your lack of a sense of humour.’

Of course I didn’t say that but it was close.

‘I was laughing at mispronouncing your name, not the will’ I actually said.

‘Well you pronounced it correctly.  Learn to be more respectful’ she screamed as she hung up the phone.

Now I agree, laughing may not have been the most appropriate thing to have done but she could have taken it a bit better.   At least I was not morbid about the situation.  She should take her aunt’s money and go buy herself a sense of humour.

Good day to you.

A little about myself. July 13, 2009

I guess now is a time as good as any to introduce myself. My name is ‘J’. I’m Irish and if I was filling out a form for a dating website, I would say, I’m 30 years old, Male, Caucasian, Black hair, blue eyes and 5 foot something and married! However we all know that simply stating your vital statistics is not really describing ‘who’ you are.
I was brought up on a farm on the edge of the west coast of Ireland, close to the Atlantic. Most of my childhood was spent sticking my hand up cow’s behinds and while this might over excite the more sexually adventurous of you out there, coupling this with cleaning sh1te from stables and hand turning turf I think many of you will agree, that I didn’t have one of the most pampered of upbringings!
Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining about my childhood. I had quite a happy child hood all things considered and was well provided for. However, there were on occasion, times when I felt a better (and perhaps less smelly) world awaited.
Growing up on a farm is a unique experience, only those who worked or lived on one can truly appreciate and share. Many the morning I was pulled from my warm bed and thrown out in the rain with nothing but an oil skin jacket and a smile and told to run up the hill and see if any sheep had produced the Sunday dinner – ok cruel I know – but where did you think those lovely lamb chops came from? Mmmmm mint sauce!
While I saw dinner; my parents on the other hand saw a new family member. To them, the lambs were their children and it was their job to protect them. It sounds unusual but I guess all farmers feel the same way about their animals, and my parents are no different. When they could, they would name the animals and particularly the ones they grew attached to. The names were not particularly inventive and were usually named after the colour of the breed or who they bought them off. Timmy Murphy was the most popular name among our herd, he was the main supplier of our cows. There was Timmy Murphy’s Freisin, Timmy Murphy’s specked black and white, Timmy Murphy’s orange cow and finally Timmy Murphy’s mad cow. That cow was not the favourite.
But back to me, I was part of that world and god help me It would take 19 years before I could get away from it. It wasn’t until I was standing in front of a shed watching an ‘A.I man’ sticking his hand up a cow’s posterior impregnating it that I decided enough was enough. I know what you’re thinking, what’s he on about? An ‘A.I’ (Artificial Insemination)man is a guy who holds a pot of bull sperm (frightfully unhygienic) in the back of his car to inject into a willing/ or unwilling (they are not fussy as long as the money is green) cow ‘looking’ for a calf. It’s a type of sperm bank for cows, without the sticky porn mags, and need for Tupperware and the mother has little choice over who her sperm donor is. An awful queer job to get into if you ask me, inseminating cows with sperm – and it does beggar the thought – how exactly does he get the sperm from the bull in the first place?
Anyways back to my escape –the ‘A.I man’ was in the process of injecting sperm into the behind of a particularly unhappy cow when I realised that this was not the life I wanted, there had to be something more? It was the next day that I hopped on a bus and moved to Dublin. Dublin seemed like the obvious choice – ‘The Big Smoke’ and in reality although a 5 hour journey from home was the only other place I had really been outside of Mayo. Going from the confines and relative security of the farm and the animals, I was catapulted into the world of the big city and people – everywhere! Let’s just say, those first few days where an adjustment. It also opened my eyes and made me realise -in some cases, animals were similar to human’s, but in many ways they were not. Animals had more humanity.
Dublin was a city of two halves, the Northside and the Southside. The Northside was considered drug infested, take your life into your own hands, do they even have roads and filled with ‘lower class citizens. The Southsiders considered themselves Upper East Side types, coming from both old and new money and believed a passport and a course of injections were required to cross the liffey. (Ironic considering the Airport is located on the Northside!) Of course the famous ‘Celtic Tiger’ changed all that and at one stage rich people roamed everywhere like a financial zombie. Since the ‘Great Depression Volume 2’ happened, mainly due to my ineptitude working in a bank, they now wander the streets of the Northside looking for food- were far better organised and equipped to deal with this sort of thing having lived it most of our lives (apparently!).
I lived on the Northside, before the ‘Celtic tiger’. It was here that I really learnt about life, love and how not to be stabbed by a needle by an 11 year old drug dealer. Shortly after arriving in Dublin and settling on the Northside I thought a formal education in ‘life’ might be in order – unfortunately Life 101 wasn’t listed on any college lists so I thought a degree in Arts was the next best thing! That and sure weren’t they always saying in school that you’ll definitely get a job if you have a college degree! And sure amn’t I just one who listens and does what he is told – Yes Mammy, I am! So away with me to study Arts in GCD (using its post Celtic Tiger hip name).
At this point I was going to fast-forward through college, all the drunken debauchery, myriad of meaningless relationships and thankless and unfulfilling jobs I’ve had over the past 10 years but that would be doing both you and I a disservice and while I know you are all biting at the bit to hear about the exciting goings on of my life in a high street bank I am going to make you all wait that little bit longer!

‘the customer has an uncanny way of being right’ July 8, 2009

Having read numerous blogs on many different subjects out there, I decided to start one myself.  The first issue i had to overcome, which is often common among perspective bloggers – what do I want to blog about.

So after calling in sick to work, with a disease that had not yet been invented involving an infection of the Cossacks, I decided to research and investigate some good subject matter on which to base my unique, powerful and creative blog.

With blogs out there ranging from ‘Syphilis, -the power of the scratch’ to ‘God, its just dog spelled backwards’ and the penultimate, ‘How to make money using a webcam, a body part and propeller blade’. I realised that there really didn’t seem to be much equitette, or limitiations to my options. And still I was no clearer on any topics. After much consideration over a large pot of tea and some delicious carmel squares (-what Matt Reilly’s Bakery can’t do with some carmlised sugar and melted chocolate isn’t worth doing!) I decided the best way to go about this is to write what I know.

It was this Eureka moment that made me decide to write what I come into contact with everyday – people. While not my typical ‘day job,’ due to the ‘state of the economy’ I find myself outside my comfort zone and relocated in both desk and department to the lovely telephone sales and service department of the ‘lovely’ high street bank I work for. (Please don’t hold the fact that I work for a bank against me. I have a wife with an increasly large designer shoe and handbag collection to support. AND  I did not single handedly bring down the world’s financial system by underwriting a mortgage for a caravan on the west coast of Ireland by supplying  a €5 billion loan, which stated it was a multinational named Microsiff, -I wouldn’t do such a thing)

My new (TEMPORARY) position involves me answering calls daily and listing to people who have problems with their accounts (or just listening to people who have problems!).  As you can imagine, money – how much or little  people have and what they do with it in of itself is a whole can of worms. But the account holders themselves and how the conduct which should be a mundune telephone call reminds me of what I imagine a repatronisation and rehibilitation program for serious mental health patients would sound like. And that is seriously worth blogging about – if only for my own mental health!

It seems appropriate to  start with the first day I got on the phone.  This was a memorable day, not only because it was the day I discovered what people were spending their money on, but also the day I discovered the word I have come to dread.  A word so powerful it would drive a perfectly sane squirrel to jump in front of a moving truck.  A word so evil that lemmings would use it in training to prepare them for the worst, a word that to this day makes me and everyone who has ever worked in a service centre quake to their very ear pieces.  The word is CUSTOMERS.

Even typing the word makes me feel dirty.  I’ll be having a shower later and will probably need to use 5 bottles of shower gel just to get the smell of the word of my skin.

You might think I am exaggerating here but trust me! If you never worked in a call centre you probably don’t realise that most of the mind numbed poor unfortunates who are trapped there care little for their jobs  and are usually there because there was nothing else apart from sewage cleaning or sponge bath volunteering at a old folks home left at the job centre. If you are among the minority who actually enjoy a career in a call centre then you are either criminally insane and should not be near phones in the first place or really enjoy abuse,  in which case you probably have ‘S&M R us’ as a bookmark.

I started on a Wednesday.  At the time, it felt like an unusual day to start but in hindsight I realised there was method in the madness.  Wednesday is like one of those lost days of the week, it’s not quite as bad as Monday but not quite as good as Friday.  It’s the in-between day.  It’s like that friend at school you knew the name of but they served no purpose other than to make up the numbers.

The reason for starting on a Wednesday is simply good timing.  It makes you believe you’re closer to the weekend than you actually are, but gives the business time to get you settled in.  It lures you into this false sense of security, that this job is not as bad as it actually is.  If you’re ever hiring for a position that is particularly bad, like say picking knits out of dangerous abseiling hedgehogs, then start the person on a Wednesday.  The pain will not be as bad, as the weekend will feel like its just around the corner.

Upon arriving at the building, at the common ten minute early first day time, I was ushered to my new desk.  A small unashamed cubicle with no design.  There was space on the blue separator for all my family pictures and a dog playing archery.   From the outset, it didn’t look like an inescapable prison but little did I know, my life sentence was about to begin.

Hello world! July 8, 2009

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