Well, let's see. Yesterday was sheer stark staring hell from start to finish. First, we had been solemnly promised that when we showed up for work on Monday, our first day on the phones, the classroom would be open by 7:30 so we newbies would have plenty of time to get our computers set up before we had to start taking calls. Nope. Door was locked until asshole Christopher Mitchell came hurrying up at ten minutes before 8 and let us in, completely unapologetic for breaking the assurance he'd given us Friday night. He then told us to just sign on the phones at 8 and start taking calls. Prick.

Here's the thing... Accent's IDT (Integrated Desk Top) is very ironically named. That desktop is anything but integrated. There are, and I kid you not, at least ten different applications/programs you MUST have open at all times while answering calls, and while some of those applications are simple, one page, one use screens, several of them are extremely complicated documents with many pages and screens. Each of these documents requires A COMPLETELY SEPARATE LOG IN PASSWORD. About one third of them are available from the Start pull up box; the rest you have to go to various places in various programs to find a link to in order to bring them up.

If you don't have some kind of glitch with one of your many passwords and all goes smoothly, it takes twenty minutes to get these things up. And I have, to date, never managed to set this desktop up without having a glitch of some sort.

This is just the computer. You also have to log on your phone, and your phone is vital because that's where your timecard is... you only get paid for the time you are logged on the phone. However, you absolutely HAVE to have all these myriad unintegrated chaotic applications and programs up and running, because if you don't bring the Equifax Apply credit check up, the first call you will get, guaranteed, will be someone who wants Sprint Complete Sense and the first thing you do will be a credit check. If you don't bring your sales tic sheet up, you can't register your sales... etc. Anything you don't have up, your first call will require, it's guaranteed. So you have to get it all up, and everything has its own log in password, and it takes forever.

Yesterday, just to make my life as wonderful as possible, I could not for the life of me recollect my new phone log on. We had logged on once in training and changed our passwords; I had written the new code down, and that code would not work. So I didn't get logged on until 9:30 or so, after IT pulled my old password out and assignmed me a new one, and that SUCKED. I felt like a complete idiot.

This morning, I got everything up and running except my Tic Sheet. I logged into it, got an error message, and BLAM! everything I had laboriously opened over the course of fifteen minutes collapsed. I wanted to cry.

Leaving aside that, well, yesterday was Monday, and Mondays are hell at Accent because nobody calls their phone company over the weekend, they all wait until Monday and do it from work. Nobody gets Monday off at Accent (nobody who takes calls on the floor, anyway) and I saw why... calls came in all day long at a furious rate, and every single one of them was something horribly complex, often that I couldn't do anything about (or I could, but company policy wouldn't let me). Like everyone else in my class, I had my hand up for help about two-thirds of the time, which also made me feel really stupid. Dickweed Christopher Mitchell, with his smarmy, smirking "now don't put your hands up unless you've thoroughly researched your question on your computer and in your manuals first" just got right up my ass, too. If we knew where to FIND the fucking answer we wouldn't ASK, would we? Cretin.

Today was better, if only because I was more acclimated, and a 3:00 team meeting kept me off the phones for an hour, which was nice. I took one call from a very nice lady who had an inexplicable international call on her bill... three minutes, which broke my heart because I can credit off a one or two minute call, but nothing more... and she had been a Sprint customer for over a year and showed no International usage at all prior to that call. Obviously someone had someone how used her phone or her phone number fraudulently, but the APM I asked about it told me I could not give her credit unless she allowed me to put her on an International plan, and she didn't want a goddam international plan because she never made long distance calls.

I should have simply given her the credit anyway... it was a $28 call and we can credit up to $50 on our own authority... but I was cowed by the APM and didn't do it. The woman hung up furiously vowing to switch long distance providers and I don't blame her. I put a detailed note in the account, so if she does switch and someone looks at it, my ass will hopefully be covered... but I'd feel better about myself if I'd simply defied authority and done the credit regardless.

Every time I answer the phone "Thank you for calling Sprint Long Distance", blah blah blah, I feel surreal. I'm one of Those People now... the call center people, who sit in a cubie and take your phone calls and piss you off by never managing to quite give you exactly what you want or need. Jesus. I feel like I need a shower.

Most calls, by and large, are okay, and most people are pleasant... I remember that from the post office. My sales are piss poor but I have to think my quality level is quite high; I have good soft skills and I'm very very nice to my customers. I've made a few sales but they've basically been ones dropped in my lap. Mostly I just concentrate on trying to solve the customer's problem as best I can, and hope they buy something from me... not a productive approach, so far.

My one sale today came from a very crafty old lady. She called up knowing she was going to dispute her bill. First, though, she let me sign her up for Spring Complete Sense on an International Plan with Inside Wire Protection. This is two sales, and requires, at the end, that I put her over to Third Party Verification, which verifies that she is the authorized account holder, really wants the product, and she hasn't been deceived.

Apparently she knew this, because after I set up the account, and was about to transfer her, she sprang her trap... she wanted several calls on her Sprint Long Distance invoice credited off, and she wasn't going to let me off the phone until she got them.

Since I HAD to transfer her to third party verification or lose the sale, I couldn't dump her off on Help Desk, and she absolutely would not take no for an answer. I got an APM to authorize me offering the woman 20% off, since she had just signed up for a new long distance package, but she wanted more. She got her husband on the line and they were adamant; they wanted $92.90 since knocked off that bill, bringing it down to a round $200. I finally got an APM to authorize me to go to $30, which was $88, and soft soaped them into going for that, saying "are we really going to argue about four dollars, when this plan going into effect will save you so much money off your future calls?" They went for it, but didn't seem happy, and I felt like I'd just pushed a boulder the size of a house up the side of the Hoover Dam by the time I finally put them over to verification... where they probably answered a question wrong and the sale fell out, anyway.

Sprint does it's absolute level best to make our lives and our jobs impossible. We have to do a credit check on all Sprint Complete Sense customers; nearly everyone who wants the product wants it because they owe money to another provider, so they fail. If they pass the credit check, their address won't match in our database, and if their address matches, chances are by the time we're done with the lengthy set up process they'll be bored and fall out in verification. And of course, Complete Sense is the premiere product right now and we MUST try to sell it to every customer, even those who don't use much long distance and who will simply be alienated if we try to push this thing on them. (If SCS is available, we MUST try to sell it. If we don't, it's an automatic zero on the call... it doesn't matter if we sell four other products, if we didn't try to offer SCS and it was available, the call is an automatic failure. To say that this is a completely jugheaded philosophy is being somewhat pejorative towards a certain breed of mule.)

So here I am, in an environment in which my bosses routinely spy on all my phone calls, where I've signed away every specific human liberty detailed in the Bill of Rights, where if I ever get three sales in one day some cheerful asswipe will tie a balloon to the back of my chair and I'll have to smile and say 'thank you' or be thought of as having a 'bad attitude' (the kiss of death in a place like this). I'm expected to sell to people who are calling in pissed off about Sprint in the first place, using a slow, shambling chaos of a computer system and working within a complex of procedures in which some pile of shit wearing a thousand dollar suit somewhere who hasn't made or taken a sales call in twenty years has unctiously decided what will be the hierarchy of priorities in my sales schedule and what won't. And I'm supposed to keep customers happy when I'm forbidden to do something as simple as credit a $28 call that they obviously didn't make, judging from their extensive calling history!

I won't say this job is more idiotic and poorly organized than the post office call center was, or, for that matter, the Tampa City Clerk's office was, but I will say this: they need to start passing out some financial incentives for providing quality customer service as well as hitting sales goals, because I'm about a sixty cent cab ride from having a truly shitty attitude about Accent.

At least nothing appalling has happened to me in my personal life. Um... well, something lousy happened to Paul this weekend... the new landlord brought over a 'Renter's Agreement' he wants all his lessees to sign, and it basically forbids large pets. We don't know if this is just a CYA agreement for him that he can keep on file if Chewie gets obstreperous, or if he's serious about it, but I suspect this is specifically aimed at getting rid of Chewie, who barks loudly, often early in the morning or late at night, and who likes to dig holes in the yard. If so, Paul is in a bind, because, well... have YOU ever tried to find someone willing to take a fifty pound dog? Plus Paul loves Chewie and it will half kill him to have to get rid of him.

I'm still planning on moving by the end of the month, so it's not my problem. But I do feel bad about Paul. It's extremely doubtful I'll find a place where I could have large pets, and even if I did, I love Chewie but I don't want to live with him.

Tammy tells me she's got a few more uniques for me, including the coveted Cyclops in his Silver Age costume, so that's great news. Tony Collett just posted on my blog that he's paid for the Vision piece but hasn't taken delivery yet. All these wonderful people I've never met, just sending me expensive goodies in exchange for virtually nothing at all! I feel like a televangelist. Well, okay, I don't feel quite THAT slimy. But I certainly have the porn collection...

Oh, I just hauled off and beat the living CRAP out of Paul in a clix game last night. I was greatly aided by him having the worst run of dice rolls I've ever seen, but still, I was playing pretty well. He put out a lot of powerful villains he wanted to play, including the Thanos Unique and the Mojo Unique I got from Tammy and gave to him, and I put out a bunch of powerful villains as well, including the Darkseid and Catwoman Uniques I got from Mike Norton and the Enchantress Unique I got from Tammy. I played some other new figs I'd gotten recently from Tammy and Mike as well... Madame Masque, Taskmaster, Diablo, the Toad, Blastaar... and I just mopped the place up with Paul's group. Thanos isn't so impressive when you Outwit his Invulnerability and then have Annihilus, Blastaar and Darkseid blast the living crap out of him, aided by Enchantress using her Perplex to tweak damage a little here, attack value a little there. Oh, I had Klaw in there, too, and an Experienced Umar, although they didn't do much except keep Paul's pieces busy. Still, that was plenty helpful on its own.

I'm probably going to start calling around looking for apartments this weekend, although that's a delicate venture... it's one that pretty much everyone manages to accomplish when they have to, but there's a certain window one has to work within, and I may be looking too early for something to move into in March. Still, I do need to start packing, which I'm really not looking forward to. Chad has told me he'll help me move, though, which is good... with Scott in the Rotten Bastard file, my list of friends with large vehicles is alarmingly short.

I suppose I should post a request for old furniture on my blog, but I think such items would be rather more expensive to ship than clix. ::grin:: As it is, though, I can probably get Paul to give me my futon back. I can also probably lift the patio chairs I brought with me, since Paul only goes outside under duress. If so, that futon and those patio chairs (and my bookshelves and books, and comics, and rec center, and electronics, and computer desk and computer chair) will be all I have to put into a new apartment for a while.

The sad irony is, when I was living in Tampa I had too MUCH furniture... friends kept giving me spare pieces, plus I'd found some perfectly good stuff sitting out by dumpsters, plus I'd harvested a huge old desk from an abandoned office next to a place I was working once. All that stuff got left behind or given away when I moved. Now I have enough chattels to make a move annoying and onerous, but not enough to make a new place comfortable.

Well, still, just having solitude, and space to myself again, will be wonderful... and if this job is anything like as stressful as it seems like it will be, I'll need some kind of Fortress of Solitude to come home to. So this move is both necessary and good... I just hate moving, and will doubtless grouse about it a lot in the upcoming weeks.

Okay. There's nothing really worth talking about going on down here, but I sure did go on and on about it anyway, didn't I? I hope you're well and happy, and that this letter meets your 'substantive epistle' standards.

Take care,

D.