Contact the Chinese GOV'T DAMNIT

Chinese Internet Users Have Little Access To Overseas Websites

December 27, 2006

In what local analysts are blaming on the 6.7 earthquake off the coast of Taiwan yesterday, communications and Internet access throughout Asia have been disrupted.

Mainland Chinese users trying to access websites like Hotmail.com, Yahoo.com, or most any other website hosted outside of mainland China are finding them very slow to load, or not displaying at all.

Using proxies also is thwarted, as bandwidth coming into and leaving China has dwindled to a slow trickle. Websites hosted within mainland China, like Sina.com.cn, appear to be loading as normal.

A China Netcom representative says work is continuing on fixing any problems, but online reports say the interruption might last up to three weeks. The affected undersea cables have also caused problems in areas like Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Indonesia.


Guess who's on the Chinese queue to relay the good news? It's nice that Chinese customers don't understand the concept of "it's not our fault, natural disasters will strike" type rebute. Sometimes I'm surprised customers don't blame our company solely for bigger issues, like world famine and the globe blowing up for instance. After all, everything is our fault.

And here I was wishing I was working Christmas...

Yeah, no. I missed the eye of the storm for that. Intermittent/No dial tone, 1-way voice path, features not working... System wide of course, and all on Christmas day. For practically the whole day. 120 on SDP queue on hold, and that's our max limit. Oh boy, whoever has our stock better sell fast, cause with that little act, I'm sure we'll be losing a good chunk of our customer base right there. Ah yes, thank god I wasn't there for the massacre.

To sum it all up, a poem a co-worker wrote:

Night After Shawmas

Twas the night after Shawmas, WAN all through the tower,
The digi-phone features were FUBAR, we took 20 calls every hour,
The server room smelled like a plastic chimney cooked rare,
We all had our hopes, the headend techs soon would be there.

The agents were all stressed out, all smug in their pods,
With visions of dct 700's, with black screens and funky VODs,
Greg with his shiny melon, and I in my Shaw cap,
Had just settled in, for a long shift of crap.

WAN over by the CM desk, there arose such a clatter,
I went into break 7 to see what was the matter,
Control Alt Delete Enter, I flew like a flash,
Rounded the corner in full-contact tech support dash.

The moon nowhere in sight in the BC Christmas rain,
I knew the Canucks playoff run would be totally in vain,
WAN what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a drunken Dave Absolon, reeking of gin tonic and beer,

With the twinkle in his eye, so lively and quick,
I knew in a a few moments, he was the AHT prick.
More serious then commandments, his orders they came,
He cursed and he swore as he told us we're lame."

No dial tone, No cable, no high speed internet,
"It's an outage, if you book a SC, coached you will get,"
if it's Digi-Phone crazy and totally off the wall,"
Warm transfer to TSR2 and move on to the next call"

What he said made sense but he was drunker than hell,
Probably sucked back a 26'r, you could tell by the smell,
He giggled and burped as he disappeared in the elevator from sight,
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, it was one hell of a night.

I'm certain...

That there's a masochist in every female (well, minus Tracy, cause she's a freak). Who the hell spends 40 minutes in front of a mirror plucking eyebrows. >.>. My tears were flowing freely at the end of it :(

Nothing interesting at work. It was an easy night. Too easy. I can expect for it to get bad in the next week. On the other hand, I'm quite satisfied with my stats tonight. Seems like a good day! Perhaps people are still happy from the holidays? Nah. Lady luck is on my side.

MORE BOXES. MOREEEEEEEEEEEE. GIVE ME MORE COMMISSION. I'm hoping to make quite a bit on boxing day. I suppose that remains to be seen though. Mmm money. So overrated. On the other hand, I lost like $35 dollars in one day from my stock game. Fucking Intel and its shittiness. No! It will climb back up. I believe!

I'm a little tired. Fucking spinning ball of whirring doom. Why must you be so addictive.

FUCK YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

COMP 1113 Applied Mathematics 86
COMP 1510 Programming Methods 78
COMP 1536 Intro to Web Development 81
COMP 1730 Relational Database Systems 90

Oh god, I totally owe myself a big ticket item for this. I can't even express how happy I am that I fucking owned up that Java final. Holy shit, I must have gotten close to perfect or something to have my mark pulled up that high. I was totally expecting less than 70 for my final mark in Java. Granted, I did worse in math and database than I had expected, but fuck that unimportant shit. I FUCKING OWNED UP JAVA SO BADLY IT ALMOST BOWS DOWN TO ME. I AM SO READY FOR NEXT TERM JAVA. BRING IT ON BABY.

Now for that HDTV *ponders*...

Back to the grind.

Soon. I'd say too soon, but I realize I get bored very easily when I'm not doing anything. Crazily enough, I have moved past gaming for the most part, and don't get absorbed into it anymore. At least not for extended periods of time. I'm trying to get into the stock market now actually. I always seem to be playing when the stock market's closed though bah.

So no, I don't have any funny stories yet. DAMN WHY DID I HAVE TO FORGET THAT JESSICA ALBA POSTER. So hot. Who needs hydro?

Thanks Rachel.

Now it's officially over.

Well, I can confidently say that Web was my worst final out of all of them. In fact it was so bad, it's actually kind of disgraceful, considering that it was my favorite course this term. Regardless, IT IS OVER. IT IS REALLY OVER!!! For at least 6 days anyways. Er, and after tonight's final shift at work that is. Bah.

And now, with 2 1/2 hours of sleep, I adjourn to my bed, where I shall flop and sleep good dreams of sheep flying and cows jumping over moons.

To blog or not to blog...

Well obviously I'm blogging.

Must procrastinate studying further. Actually I must say, I'm starting to feel the pressure for tomorrow's database final. Oh why is my memory is shoddy? I seem to have forgotten the first half of the course yay. How the hell am I doing the best in database for all my subjects again?

So it does seem that I've jinxed myself yet again, because half my calls last night were chinese. I suppose it isn't a bad thing since my chinese is yet again sucking, and thus, requires practice. The only thing I hate with a passion is SDP cantonese calls. Those dropped in the TSR bin I tend to ignore until someone sends me a direct email. :\

Oh my god. SDP Lite is out too. Goddamn. Why do we keep expanding when we don't even have the original at 100% reliability? This poor elderly chinese lady called in yesterday and she wasn't able to dial to china at all. It obviously had something to do with the way it was provisioned since all the failure codes were exactly the same.

Oh and I really love our informational codes for SDP. They're really informative and useful. "The call could not be completed due to unknown reasons." Thanks. I'll get right on fixing that problem.

Anyways, I couldn't go to a TSR 2, because we were severely understaffed last night and there were like 6 people crowding one TSR 2. I was like man forget it, especially since it was one of those TSR 2's that don't know what they're doing for SDP. So what do I do?

I reset the lady's DPT, tell her to try it later, and call back if it doesn't work. What else could I do! It's funny, cause she called in right after the tech fixed her no dial tone problem, and she just got her phone installed on the 6th of this month. Lovely service reliability as always.

OH yea, so one of my good co-worker's voice has been put on the ARU system for our chinese line. That's exciting. She made me listen to it yesterday. She definitely sounds alot more excited in terms of tone comparatively to the corresponding male voice for the cantonese line. The male voice, whom I also know of course, is usually more lively than that on a real phone haha. He sounded kinda funny being so monotone. The old ARU voice apparently, had "improper" mandarin, as my co-worker kindly stated. Haha, god I love her. She's so funny to chit chat with. Anyone who is severely bored should try the number! 604-629-4003. Hearing the two voices contrast is kind of funny. I don't know if this is funny or sad, but I can't understand half of what the cantonese options are that you can press. The guy's vocabulary is so advanced :(?! I think it's 1 for billing, 2 for tech support...? Or maybe it follows our regular ARU system. For some reason, option 1 is to disconnect SDP/other services.

It's like "If you want to disconnect services with us, please press 1." Mmmm nice easy access. It's funny that's the first thing our customers hear when calling.

Speaking of new products, we launched our new boxes, and of course I have no clue what's going on, so I assume it's like the other boxes, which I suppose is not too far from the truth. Except that there's no power button.

So here I am, on my first call with the box, and telling the customer to turn on his box with the power button on the unit after activating it. He's like "Huh?? It's plugged in already."
And being the clueless person I usually am, I say "So?? Press the power button. We need to turn it on."
"Power?!"
"YES POWER." (finally kicks in that there is no goddamn power button) "Er... nevermind sir."

People fed me again yesterday! Yay! I like food. Mmm, that dear co-worker gave me this sweet ass coffee & cream yogurt, which was so goddamn good. I want more of where that came from. All in all, it was a pretty sweet shift since we got a $50 dollar gift certificate to Earls for being unable to attend the annual christmas party for our company. Man Sweet deal, I'd rather have the gift certificate since there was apparently, a 3 drink limit. Pft. Are you kidding me? For 50 bucks I can get double that. Hmm... I'm getting hungry. I think I'll go drink. I mean cook.

YAY FREEDOM

Customer requested to speak with a supervisor regarding outage.
We explained that we are doing all we can to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
Mr Yan informed us he is using this service for business purposes, and we let him know that we would not reccomend this service for any mission critical applications as it is an entertainment service.

Hoho. That is an awesome quote from a supervisor. I love that guy. That supervisor has the coolest name around too. Mmmmm.

OMGZ TIME TO RELAX. LAST SHIFT FOR A WHOLE WEEK ALMOST.

Have fun with your first shift as sup S. Teehee. I dropped all those intermittent dialtone escalations into your bin.

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~~~~~

All over. And I do mean it. It's really all over. Half ass attempt yay. Well except finals, but I write those off like no tomorrow. HOHO.

Where was I... oh yes. One more shift of work and it's a week of relaxation. Well finals, but... *points to above*

This lady was totally enthused talking about her porn tonight. It was amusing. She was like OMG! I need it on! They're like my soap operas, like totally busted, and etc etc titles. That was amusing.

It was sooo quiet tonight it wasn't even funny. I was so surprised. The queue died at 8 pm. SWEET. Finishing my half done project in work mode/customer on hold. Yay.

Ranty. Must get busy on doing nothing.

HELL YES!

OH GOD. FUCK YES. THIS IS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. SO. FUCKING. HAPPY.

And it's only 11. I figure I shall stay up until the never hours and attempt to complete my other assignment. I can't believe there's a lab due tomorrow still. I was contemplating on skipping it, but then I would automatically lose 2% of my final grade. ARGH. What a choice. Fucking XML. Putting a damper on things as usual.

Yes, I'm just a little wee bit stressed. Why, oh why did I procrastinate it all. But, who cares! *points to above* JOO NIT TESTS ALL PASSED. Ok fine, there's a nerd in me too Rachel, so Tracy isn't the only one. At least I can appreciate hot guys. Eh?

!! CONGRATS <3<3<3!!

Wow S, big congrats on the promotion to asup! I guess they recognized all that talent you have with dealing with irates, that they're gonna put you head on with em every single call. YAY!

I guess that means from now on I have to be careful of what I say here since technically asups/sups shouldn't be reading this horrible horrible blog contradicting just about all the company values. Tsk tsk, what will our supervisor team think if they found out an asup was reading this awful thing and not firing that damn blasphemous TSR. *shakes head*

Dang, I'll miss you on the phones :(, even though you get morning shifts every month anyways. On the positive side, at least I know who to seek for an SDP escalation now. Teehee. In fact, even if you're not on, maybe I'll bug you with an escalation callback email just for kicks. Or better yet, I'll leave you a voice message on your personal extension. Bet you'd like that eh? I'll send you all the escalations in which house alarms go off many thanks to our flappy DPTs. Those are especially fun.

Haha, I'm joking of course (maybe). Really though, congrats and great job!

Omg, so anyways, onto the good stuff. I saw this SUPER hot guy on the bus today with the sexiest face features. Seriously, it was getting really steamed up in the bus from all the hotness he was radiating. He had these super gorgeous eyes with inhumanly long eyelashes to complement them, and his eyebrows simply perfecting the finishing touch on those oh so gorgeous eyes. Not to mention the rest of his face features. It just seemed so... symmetrical. Yes, Tracy didn't seem terribly impressed, but who cares what she thinks. Can't appreciate hot guys at all.

OH GOD I'M SCREWED. Two major projects due on friday, and I essentially haven't even started on one of them. I better work on it at work.... bleh. And so many cantonese calls. Double bleh.

On the other hand, I love how I can say almost anything on the chinese queue and get away with it. Today a smart guy called in and he could obviously speak english, but he wanted to get faster service and thus dialed the chinese queue. 4 minutes prior to the closing of the china gate line, he gets me, and we have a nice chat and landing me a couple bucks in commission to boot.

He then goes on to say that our company's a monopoly and our hold times for our english line is insanely busy, statements I would not be caught dead in agreeing/disagreeing with in a regular call. However, since it was the chinese queue, and my pent up anger/restraint was waiting to burst, I agreed rather enthusiastically (in chinese of course). We both get a good laugh out of it because I then proceed to tell him how I can totally agree with him cause he's calling the chinese line. WEEE~~

Back to... DOOOOOOOOOOM.

Vegeatable?

Man, so here I am, rushing off to Timmy's during my lunch break, and I'm behind this guy who's with the only cashier in the restaurant. He gets up there, decides to look at the menu for a minute or so, then finally decides on a soup. I was thinking... okay, that was kind of annoying. How bout you decide on the side there buddy. Then he exclaims:
"Hey, vegetable soup is spelt wrong. I mean vegetable."
"Uhh... I don't think so." says the cashier.
"Yeah, isn't there a 'A' after the e? I swear to god it's spelt wrong."
"... *smiles nervously*"
He argues for a good minute before finally letting it go. At this point, I'm wanting to scream at him cause he's taking so goddamn long, and that's when he decides to take his sweetass time on choosing a donut as well, to which he changes his mind twice before finally deciding.

Some people. 5 minutes of my 30 minute break gone.

And no, nothing interesting happened to me yesterday. All the bad calls were going to my brother, who got a garbage call done by a certain TSR that really shouldn't be on the SDP queue. *Coughs*

Who votes yea to me being a Troublemaker?

So anyways, I have this inside joke with a supervisor who keeps getting scheduled with me in our weekly meetings. It all started off innocently, I walked into one of these meetings a couple weeks ago, and I was tired (as usual). For some reason, we've started taking attendance at these meetings, and he started calling out names like elementary school or something.

Naturally, everyone replied the usual way, "here!" or "yup!" or "present", again, just like elementary school. When he finally reaches my name, I go "mm." Not the sound effect for yummy, but more like an acknowledgement, to which he comments "Oh yeah, thanks. Thanks alot."

I hadn't a clue if that was directed towards me so I ignored it. A short moment later, he's like "So everyone's present and WANTING to be here right?" *stares in my direction* Of course, a fellow worker asks him why he's stressing the wanting to which he replies "Oh cause little miss someone totally doesn't wanna be here. Mm indeed!"

Anyways, we had a good laugh about it in the end, but this week when I went into the meeting, he immediately stared me down all the way to me taking my seat.
"So, the troublemaker's back eh?"

I mention it because later on, when I was strolling around our call center and passed my own supervisor, he was like "WHATCHA DOIN MIA? CAUSING TROUBLE AGAIN EH?"

COINCIDENTALLY OF COURSE, the other sup who started it hears it and yells back, "SEE SOMEONE ELSE AGREES WITH ME!"

Of course they were joking. A troublemaker? Me? Where?

Anyways, to the customer stories! Well wait, I must speak of irony striking again. I was trying to convince a fellow co-worker to join the China gate because of the recent changes they had made, like CLOSING ON SUNDAYS (HELLZ YA!!!!), finally implementing a telephone system where the customer can choose 1/2 for cantonese/mandarin, and also negating second language callbacks. Guess my employee survey did do something after all! Sort of encouraging.

Oh what was I saying... oh so my co-worker was worried cause he doesn't speak chinese that well apparently so I was like man, if you work at night, you get maybe 1 or 2 chinese calls all evening, which is true since I swapped to a static night shift. Our chinese customers love calling in the morning. My co-worker's getting all interested, until I start my shift and take my first call of some elderly man who is hard of hearing, and I'm on the phone repeatedly screaming at him to try and get him to understand. Who the hell can't hear the different between address/television in chinese. Bleh. But back to the irony... I got maybe like 8 chinese calls yesterday. That's an insane number for a night shift. I blame it on my jinx.

A chinese customer yesterday was getting 500 kb/s download speed in richmond. We tried everything, and it eventually went to 1000 kb/s, but god, I felt so bad for this guy and I had tried everything. Even in my peak times, I get like 2000, and I'm in an awful area too. Anyways, long story short, since he was a chinese customer, I told him he might be better off with Telus. I love how I can say whatever the hell I want on that queue and get away with it.

Only 100 on repair yesterday night. Nice healthy number. I want my vacation to start now. All 6 days of it.

Btw, S, nice of you to ditch the SDP corner :(. Me and H feel so betrayed. We were talking behind your back yesterday. No, I don't want to hear any of your excuses. Training Champion?? Training people?! Pffft. lol ;)

Boil water advisory lifted!!!

As per the globe and mail.

Notable quote:
Wrote one anguished coffee drinker in a letter to the editor: "The news of 'no coffee today' hit hard. Some cried, others screamed. . . . No one will ever forget Nov. 17, the day Starbucks had no coffee."

LOL. We should dedicate a holiday to Nov 17. I think I was the in between of the crying/screaming consumer. Funny as hell.

Hit a milestone at work.

The first time I've hung up on a customer: Nov 25, 2006.

I would have blogged about it sooner, but most of the heat was gone by the time I ranted it all out to Tracy. Plus I had a VERY relaxing two days.

What a bastard this guy was. He was one of those people who know the things to say to push your buttons. Rare caller obviously, since I've never had to hang up on anyone before. Background information to know was that on Sat night, two of our HD channels (302, 309) didn't have audio.
It started out innocently enough... kind of..
"I have no sound on all my HD channels cause you guys don't have enough bandwidth to support all your new HD channels."
"What channel are you on?"
"302."
"Yeah, we have a problem with 302 right now."
*from here on, picture the fucker having an extremely condescending and bitchy tone*
"Oh, NOW you have a problem with 302. No I was right, you guys just don't have enough bandwidth to support all your channels."
"You're saying you never had sound prior to tonight?"
"No, I'm saying my PVRs can't record shows with proper audio, and I've finally decided to call now that it's happening live."
"Well, those are two different issues. We're having technical problems tonight with audio."
"OH, TONIGHT. I'm getting no audio on 302 or 309 right now."
"Yeah, those are the two affected channels. If you tune to a different HD channel you get sound right?"
"You're not listening to me. I said my PVRs do not record audio properly. God your company's customer service sucks. Can't even post the technical problems you're having on your website, and when I ask why it's not done, no one ever gives me an answer."
"Do you have any splitters hooked up?" (failed one of our checks, meaning signal prob)
"The only wires are coming straight from outside."
"... Internal splitters."
"My wiring is fine. I have a master's in and I've checked my own signal. In fact, one of your technicians came to my house and checked wiring as well, even went as far as accusing me as stealing signal. He came in and took apart my cable box and when he found I wasn't stealing cable, it was like he was disappointed. I wish everyone would steal cable from you guys. That'd put a smile on my face." *
* checks account, of course this is his first call in over a year and his first call regarding his PVRs. Furthermore, he has never had a service tech out there **
"There's no record of a service tech coming to your house for anything..."
"That's because you guys don't know what the hell you're doing, there were at least two techs out here."
".. at least not to troubleshoot technical issues. You may have encountered one of our auditors, who aren't trained to look at technical problems anyways."
"I'm not waiting at home for a tech who doesn't know what he's doing to come out, and wasting hours and 200 bucks of my time waiting around for him, unless you guys want to pay me to do so. I'll go swap out the boxes if you say they're faulty."
"Fine. Whatever. Go exchange them then."
"You guys are going to be out of business in a few years. Us consumers should be demanding our money back for non working services from you guys."
".... Yeah, okay."
"I wish I could speak with a REAL technician instead of you. You don't know anything."
"... Bye."
"You probably haven't even graduated grade 12 have you?" *releases call*

Yup, that was the general gist of the call. There was more, but I can't really remember. What a jerk. Oh well. *continues relaxation*

Your sarcasm sucks, Tracy.

:)

Have you ever noticed that people always laugh when a professor swears in a lecture?

It is funny as hell. My web design prof today was trying to login to show his PP slides to us, and was trying for a good 5 minutes until a student told him: "The network's down!".
My prof gives a quizzical look and then says in an egyptianish accent: "Oh shit."
The lecture hall was laughing for a long time while he went to go grab his laptop, which then booted up with a bluescreen. Haha, poor guy. It was his Friday the 13th today.

Btw, there was nothing interesting on Wednesday, except for this fucktard TSR from kelowna who totally screwed up everything. Useless. Actually, I hear reps from other systems like Alberta/etc are even worse than our reps here. Man, just when you thought people could not get stupider.

It was very quiet on Wednesday night comparatively to our month overall. Maybe people have given up or something.

NINTENDO, YOU'VE WON ME OVER.

I'm so impressed I have to dedicate a blog to this. I was at metro today and they had the Wii's on display.

Naturally, I poked my head into it, casually browsing, and was about to walk away when I saw Zelda on display, which then promptly attracted my full attention for the next half hour.

I watched and waited a good 15 mins for this sucky male player to either A) stop dying and aim the goddamn bow&arrow better so he stops hitting the floor instead of the monster who is over his head or B) give the controller to me so I could do option A.

Neither A or B happened, so that's when I asked him politely if I could take over since he had played for such a long time. The nerdy looking guy then gives me a look of superiority / disbelief like because I'm a girl, he can't even fanthom how I would even know what a video game was and thus he shouldn't have to hand it over. Confidently, I look at him directly in the eye innocently until he finally reluctantly hands it over and then tries to teach me how to play, trying to tell me where to go and obviously waiting for me to die so he can take the controller back. Of course after a few mins of figuring out the unique control style, I start owning up the game, to which results in the Nintendo demo salesperson dude commenting to the serious ass-kicking I was doing in the game. I'm not trying to brag or anything but since there aren't alot of things I'm good at, I think I'm entitled to rant this time without feeling egotistical. Gaming is one of my fortes so don't fuck with me :)

The scrubby boy then walks away, and I managed to catch a glimpse of his embarassed face, to which I smile sweetly to.

Goddamn, that was satisfying. And I'm not just talking about showing up that dumbass. The Wii really does live up to its reviews. I was extremely skeptical before trying it, but now I am a believer. I will buy one when the price finally drops, along with the HDTVs. Soooo exciting. My interest in video games has finally been resparked. Thank you Nintendo!!!

Life happens

Oh ya, so an addendum to my last post that I totally forgot of until today...

So a little background of our tower interior is in order before telling my story. Glass panes. Period. Lots of them around, multi-colored, heavy glass panes exist on every floor in our tower, and they are an equivalent to a wall.

So anyways, one of the cleaning lady's at our tower was doing her thing and well, was cleaning, and I was doing my usual thing, you guessed it, slacking. I was sitting in my chair and just staring vacantly as she was in a room doing her thing, and she finishes. She then proceeds to exit the room in an orderly fashion, and I'm watching her walk towards this glass pane. So I'm thinking, she's walking awfully fast to be going around that pane since the door is over there, and that's when I hear a big loud *THUMP* as she walks face-first into it. I couldn't believe it!

I know it was mean but I couldn't help grinning since it was a rather comical moment to watch. I did feel kind of bad when she looked at me looking all embarassed though. Turns out she ended up with a huge bruise on her forehead. Poor lady.

Teehee.

Could be worse...

Alright finally, time to blog. I spent 26 hours on my java assignment over 3 days, but I'm rather pleased with the outcome from this hard procrastinated work.

Anyone love the problems we've been having lately in our lovely weathered city? Nothing like showering in brownish water and drinking the same. Work was nice enough to supply us with safe drinks on the first day, but afterwards well, too cheap.

It was hell on earth trying to find a coffee shop that would serve coffee to poor old fatigued me, and I had almost given up on all hope in life for the next few days until I found out timmy's was able to pull through for us caffeine addicted ho's. *cries happily*

Yesterday, totally non-weather related as usual, we probably broke the record for the most SDP calls on hold with 82 on the queue, and 6 reps taking SDP calls. Woohoo, system wide no dial tone/intermittent dial tone issue. It was fantastic too cause customers were leaving their SDP phone numbers for callback, and of course it'd go straight to voicemail when we try to call them back. I'm not even gonna mention the 175 on repair and 100 on internet. Why won't the goddamn phones at work blow when I'm on shift.

Anyways, that was over and done with after a couple hours. I think I broke my record with 60 calls overall last night... but I can't recall... funny thing was, I was still slacking my ass off.

There were a couple notable stupid calls yesterday. Perhaps the storm attracts the stupidest of people.

First one:
"I can't make any outgoing calls."
"Yeah, we have a problem with the network right now. Do you have a dialtone?"
"Yes, whenever I call this number it always forwards to you guys, and I can't disconnect from you guys. Then I went to my neighbor's phone and tried to call that number and again it gets forwarded to you guys, and she's with Telus!"
"Uh... ok let me try the number then >.>"
*dials and gets a telus voicemail recording* 'The telus mobility customer you have reached is unavailable. This voicemail box is full. Please call another time.'
"Well, I tried to dial that number and I got a telus voicemail recording. Is this what you got when you called?"
"No!!! It said to hold on and that a representative would call me back when you guys were available."
"Are you sure..."
"Sure, it said something about telus mobility."
"... Um, can you try a different number?"
Of course when she does, it's fine. Who knew huh.

Second one:
"It won't let me put in 'Bohli' as my password to access it."
"What? Is this for your voicemail service?"
"I just want to access it and it's not letting me."
"Are you trying to get into your voicemail?"
"No, it's not letting me put in my password Bohli. A girl at your company gave it to me."
"... I don't understand what you're saying. Is this for your phone service or internet or what?"
"You guys should have my password on your system. It's Bohli. It's not working and I can't access it."
"Well yes, you set Bohli as your password with us in case you want to make account changes, but this isn't for your voicemail..."
"When I phoned you guys, a girl gave me Bohli as a password to access it. I can't see the numbers, they're too little."
"Are you trying to say you're trying to translate Bohli on your phone as numbers and you can't see the letters?"
"Yes."
"... Okay fine I'll set it to that in numbers, which is 02344." *resets pin*
"It's done, go ahead and press *98 to go into your voicemail."
"That's not how it worked before..."
"*tempted to ask how it worked before, and instead, wisely chooses to ignore what the customer said* Well, why dont' you give it a try, and call back if you still can't get it working...>.>"
"Ok, but that's not how it worked before..."
"Er, well... bye!!!!"

The intelligence of people sometimes makes me feel like a genius. Sweet, time to chill for a day after all that hard work.

On a totally non-related note, Congratulations BC Lions!!!

Well, fuck me.

To reiterate what has already been said in my weekly school journals:
Geez, I am so angry it’s not even funny. I finally got my java midterm back, and the 58% I got was much less than satisfactory. I was disappointed, naturally, but I assumed it was because I didn’t know what I was doing. However, after looking through it at home, I finally realized that I had made the dumbest mistake ever in my career of schooling – not filling in the optscan sheet for the last 5 questions, even though I had written the correct answers on my actual midterm paper. This stupid stupid stupid mistake cost me 14% of my MT grade, and adding injury to insult, I also didn’t fill in the version of the test, thus losing me another 2%. I don’t think I’ve ever been this pissed off with a test. 58% is a far cry from acceptable, and now because I made such a dumbass mistake, I am forced to study double as hard for the final to at least try to bring my mark up to a C. Fantastic. I couldn’t believe it when I actually looked at it more closely, that I had actually screwed up so simple of a concept of filling in the dots. I would have gotten 73% if I hadn’t messed up so goddamn badly. I will probably look over the optscan sheet again from whomever has it, but I have an aching feeling it WAS my stupid mistake. Then I’ll be even angrier. If I had gotten the questions wrong cause I don’t know what’s going on, then fine, but not filling in the optscan sheet?? Arghhhhhhhhh. The worst part was – they were T/F questions too which makes it even stupider since those are the easiest questions. I’m usually so careful too when I’m double checking my exam for stupid little things like that. What the hell was I thinking that morning? I had a nightmare about it yesterday when I was trying to get over it, and then woke up even angrier than yesterday. At least I got the highest mark in my set for the database midterm, which actually kind of pisses me off now because I’d much rather do well in java than database. That was one very costly and stupid mistake I made, and I’m pretty sure I’ll remember this one for life.

Yep, all I can say is fuck me. No excuses.

Anyways, half of the gvrd is out right now. Abbotsford, burnaby, maple ridge, north vancouver, you name it. Crazy shit. Thank you weather from hell. Looks like I'll need a side order of angsty fries to go with the emo burgers.

*mutters*

Life?

Mmm, emo buns. So tasty.

*emo emo emo*

Excellent.

Booze time plx.

Babies are cute. My face attracts attention from babies I've noticed. Whether they're crying, giggling, or just chilling, babies will stop whatever they're doing, stare at me, maybe point at me, then start giggling. It must be an inside joke in a cruel cruel world where babies conspire to mock me. Either that or I have an attractive face. I vote the former option, simply because it's funnier.

There were 40 on SDP queue alone tonight. Intermittent dialtone issue in the lower mainland. 'Nuf said about our reliability.

Here's my new closing line with SDP customers:
"Thanks for your patience with us. Bye for now. (You'll be back)"

Mister sun, don't go away ~

So anyways, that effectively backed up our repair/internet queues, which steadily sat at 120 each. Fantastic. Life is great. Maybe I'll just go drown myself in my bathtub.

P.S. Fuck you HDTV.

*edit* So anyways, yesterday I was a total moron, and left my USB key in a work computer. Way to ruin an already shitty night for me. It totally stressed me out because there's info on that thing I totally don't want people reading, and plus it was a frigging good USB stick. Anyways, there is one good thing about work, and that's how I can totally count on my co-workers to bail me out when I do stupid stuff like that. Makes me miss morning shifts and how fun they were.

Finally, new and bitchy material

So yes, I had one of the worst days at work yesterday since I can remember, one of the main reasons being this:

VAN-HDTV
mia (PT)
ATT 3834 AWT 163 AHT 3997

Yes lovely 2-hr HDTV call from hell with the customer having a stereo/receiver/TV/PVR/dvd/vcr and every. single. fucking. damn. cable known to mankind.
Of course he didn't tell me had HDMI/DVI/digital optical cable until after we hooked up the component and RCAs like fucking morons. Mmm, I think I really got pissed cause my a-sup did not believe me that HD calls were screwing up the rest of my stats. I was so tempted to copy and paste that shit to him. Actually screw just him, I was tempted to copy and paste that to the whole call center so everyone could laugh at how pathetic it is.

Anyways, after that call, I was so cranky for at least an hour with all customers that came in. One lady's conversation with me went like this:
"(At 10:00 pm) So yeah, I ordered the lakehouse at 8:30 and it was all pixelating and stuff. What the hell is up with your PPV's lately. They're shit."
"*monotone* It's 10 now. Why didn't you call in right away when it was having problems."
"Well, BECAUSE, I thought it'd get better but it didn't."
"It's great that you called in after the movie is over so we can troubleshoot the problem now."
"I WAS HOLDING ON THE LINE FOR AN HOUR TO FINALLY GET YOU. I CAN'T EVEN BELIEVE YOU'RE QUESTIONING ME."
"Ma'am, you've been holding for half an hour according to our system."
"Let me talk to someone else cause you obviously don't give a shit."
"Whatever, hold then."
*puts her back at the beginning of the line*
I wasn't mean to all customers like that, just pretty abrupt, but with this lady I was pretty damn rude cause she obviously just wanted credit since she didn't call right away when it was having problems. Obviously, it wasn't as bad as she said then if she didn't care about it enough to call in sooner. I hate people like that, and I'm usually nicer but man I was in a bad mood.

Anyways, it got better over the night and I had some fun talking with some customers, but the fucking last call I got totally ruined it again. Fucking prick calls in and wants help recording with his DVD recorder. I have no clue what dvd recorders do and it's 11:22 pm, so I ask a TSR 2, who says we don't support it other than wiring which has already been checked. I tell him this and he gets all fucking emo on me saying that it's outputting from OUR device (the PVR) even though all other functionality with the PVR, for once, is working fine. So the only thing that is not working is recording from his DVD-R. Doesn't want to even listen to proper logic, not willing to call the manufacturer for the DVR and he's totally pulling the "I'm gonna cancel if you don't provide support for this" line on me. He wouldn't even let me off the phone when I told him to go ahead since I really didn't give a damn at this point, and I didn't want to pass him onto a different rep since he was a total asshole, though eventually I did since I had no choice with it being 11:30.

It's not our output buddy, it's your fucking input.

This month is our new September, continous 200 on hold each night with the weather making a turn for the worse. And I suppose that's why I'm crankier and customers are crankier as well. That and it's just continuous hounding on my stats/performance at work lately. *sigh* I need to quit soon.

Totally bored with life.

I suddenly feel inspired to buy a digital camera and take random pictures of stuff I find interesting. I also want to build my own personal webpage. I need to do something new. Life gets too boring doing the same crap over and over again. I totally want to try some kind of dancing like salsa or ballroom dancing, but... so lazy. Actually if anything, I should learn martial arts because I'm all alone and it can get pretty scary at night sometimes.

Then again, what does it matter? If I died, no one would find out until weeks later until my landlord came to pick up my rent, which, by the way, took two months last time when I didn't pay. And no, it wasn't because I didn't want to pay my rent (well c'mon of course I don't want to) but it was cause when I knocked on her door, no one ever answered the door, so I just gave up after trying for the first couple weeks in September. Or wait, maybe Mister C, my a-supervisor would try to find out since he'd miss screwing me over, oops, I mean coaching me at work, and thus would look into the issue further as to why I wasn't attending work.
The reason I think of this now is cause I had a situation going on yesterday with me slightly slipping while getting out of my bathtub. My life quickly flashed before my eyes as my forehead nearly hit the sharp edged towel rack. That totally reminds me of this guy's blog I read about him nearly dying in his bathroom. http://www.patrickwalsh.blog-city.com/slipndied.htm

Yep, it sure is kinda scary being alone.

On a random note, I realized how important it is to keep taking Chinese calls at work since I feel like my chinese has degraded since I've stopped working full-time. Who would have known eh? Evidence that crappy chinese CAN and WILL get worse.

By the way, I hate metrotown and how you can't buy bus passes anywhere there with a credit card. What a joke. I should call and complain to random people just because it's so annoying every month.

Canucks VS Predators @ GM place tonight 7pm. WE'RE TOTALLY GONNA DOMINATE THEM. :)
I'll be listening to that game instead of studying for my database midterm tomorrow. I'm gonna get dominated by the exam tomorrow ... *sigh*

Something.

All for you S. Teehee.

P.S. Why is everyone so against ketchup on steak? Hateful.

What? Slacker? Who?

I'm sort of getting really frustrated at work. Last shift, when I gave it my all, my stats were still sucking so badly, and I was actually trying... there is no excuse really. I have to pick it up, meaning less customer oriented calls I suppose. I have a hard to letting a customer go though when their problem isn't solved. Oh well. It's just depressing to know that if it weren't for me, our team average would be lower than what it is, and we would be beating the other team we're competing against this month for average handle time.

Hopefully I'll pick it up tonight. Letting myself fall behind on so many other things as well including school. Pathetic. I think I'm just getting depressed because of the weather. I wish it were nice and sunny again so I could chill out... indoors. LOL. I never go out so I dunno what the hell I'm talking about.

I had alot of pissy customers on Wednesday, but not any notable ones to recall. The hockey PPV actually went through fairly well, and so I didn't receive a high volume of calls regarding it. It was pretty steady at like 100 on hold though for just repair. Only slightly out of control I would say.

Oh oh, I remember a funny story a co-worker told me the other day. Some crazy lady called in and was totally biting his head off with random shit like "INFIDELS. THIS COUNTRY IS FULL OF INFIDELS. NO ONE IS FOLLOWING GOD'S LAW." To this, he calmly responds back "ma'am, our company doesn't support God's law. Do you have a problem with your cablevision?"

Teehee. Well damn, only 3 more days left in the competition. I'm serious, if I don't pick it up today and tomorrow, I'm gonna go jump off a bridge on Sunday. Just in time for the two hardest midterms.

**edit: I'm thinking of changing blogsites. The layout on this blows. I can't even find some of the posts I made... hmm**

Haven't blogged for a long while...

Not much to say to be honest. I was kind of hoping for early leave tonight, but it definitely looks like it's not happening with 25 in repair queue.

Oh well. Oh some distraught guy from edmonton was calling in who was forwarded from his dad's cell phone. He was almost yelling at me cause I couldn't find his dad's cell phone number in our database. Probably some idiot decided to set the guy's cell phone to forward to our technical support number... though I don't know why they would want to do that... hmm.

So yeah, I don't have much to complain about. Well I do but it's schoolwise, and that's terribly boring so I will skip it.

Busy night (relatively for a Friday night anyways). I'm still bored. Home time yet? Didn't think so.

More on the real culprit - Mother Nature!

Rofl. Just had to copy and paste this article on our site.

Sun Transit Predicted Picture Degradation
What are Sun Transits? Sun transits occur when the sun crosses the earth's equatorial plane during the spring and fall equinoxes (late February or early March; September or October). At these times, the sun aligns directly behind the satellites for a few minutes each day. When the sun moves directly behind the satellite to our receive antenna, the satellite signal can be overwhelmed by the enormous amount of thermally generated radio frequency (RF) noise radiated by the sun. This can cause reception interference for a few minutes everyday during this occurrence. What this means is that on an analogue channel the picture will get progressively noisier (snow) and digital channels will first pixelate then drop out altogether (black) during this period.Each Fall & Spring, we have customers calling in about short bursts of pixelization and channels blacking out during the early afternoon. Please let customers know that this is not something that can be overcome, it is a force of nature and we are very apologetic for the inconvenience.

So yes, mother nature. It's great. Speaking of which, I used to love our work washrooms, until they added this nausea inducing air filter thing near the stalls. God that scent makes me want to throw up. Why did they have to add it anyways? It totally smelt fine before. Oh well.

Very boring night tonight. Sooooo boring... no interesting calls at all and a couple commission calls. Would you believe, that on a Saturday night, there were practically no calls waiting the whole night? Our busiest time was from 7 pm - 8 pm, where there was a PPV boxing event, and even then, it was steady at ~10 people in the queue. I'm pretty lucky haha. Betcha some of you can't wait to shift to nights now.

** edit: one of my co-workers said something really funny:
"pick a phone and phone, it's going to have problems on our system!"
SO. GODDAMN. TRUE. For what it's worth, we should make a phone compatibility list. It would be a whole damn lot shorter than our incompatibility list LOL.

Dedication and hard work!

Yep, that totally describes my work ethics alright.

I had a pretty lousy day today actually. But looking at the bright side for the rest of you (maybe), this will be a long blog :P.

So, my alarm clock on my cell phone, yet again failed me twice in a row, leaving me to miss my classes yet again. Thank god I had no labs since those actually count, but it still pissed me off since each lecture is worth like maybe 5 bucks ? or more? :( Anyways, not a big deal I guessss. Not like I would have paid attention anyways.

So anyways, there I was, waiting at the bus stop 4 mins ahead of schedule to when the bus is supposed to arrive, and the stupid bus comes 7 minutes late. I'm a little panicky since I might not be able to get my coffee, but whatever, at least I'll get to work on time. AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT, BECAUSE THEN, the stupid ass bus breaks down in the middle of the road 9 blocks away from the skytrain station, leaving me to sprint to it on my dumbass heels. (I hate formal work days)

Surprisingly at this point, I'm actually still kind of ahead of schedule arriving 4:26 pm @ waterfront, so I'm like man what the hell, plenty of time*runs into Timmy's to grab my coffee*. And who do I see before running into the restaurant? My supervisor! He's like "HEY YOU!! How you doing?? What time are you supposed to start?"
"uh. 4:30...."
*looks at time* "Oh?" *raises eyebrow*
"uhhhhhhhh, gotta run, bye!!!"

Hahaha, I still made it to my desk logged in at 4:31 pm, which is still considered on time woohoo!

Anyways, back to my dedication and hard work...the second I logged in to a phone, I went straight to my TSR 2, and demanded that he give me the project to take me off the phones. He agreed and I got to work on it for almost 3 hours until the supervisors called me up and wondered what the hell I was doing with 20 people on hold haha.

It's amazing how many people in this call center don't know how to create a proper trouble ticket. Oh yeah, so let me explain. My project was basically me going through all the open TSR 2 tickets in COMX and closing the invalid escalated tickets, meaning non-TSR 2 related documentation. Soooo, here are the top few that really pissed me off to read:

1) POOR POOR ENGLISH. MY GOD. Grammatical mistakes so severe a sentence CANNOT be made out. eg. My god I can't even think of eg. You know it's like one of those ESL students back in high school where you don't expect their english to be that great at all, but only worse... and here they are, working with our company...

2) In addition to the above lousy longass run-on sentences that no one can understand except the writer/rep and even that is questionable like this example only worse.

3) ALL FRIGGING CAPS. THIS DOES NOT MAKE THINGS EASIER TO READ. IT PROVOKES AND ANGERS THE SUN GOD TO MURDER SOME CROPS. AND NO, IT'S NOT TO EMPHASIZE A POINT. THIS REP JUST TYPES ALL DOCUMENTATION IN CAPS. SOMEONE DIE PLEASE.

4) Reps that DO NOT document what they did/said to the customer. All they put down is what the customer told them, then leave the ticket open and expect people to be able to figure out what was supposed to be done. Those tickets piss me off so much since there are certain things I'm looking for before force closing, that when I see one of those, I force close it anyways even though it may very well be a TSR 2 issue. :x I get so impatient.

This sentence is a tribute strictly to Miss S. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE YOU. Your trouble tickets are always legit and easy to read. And although you would be depressed on seeing how many of your tickets are left unresponded to (lol?), I still love seeing that trademark "**remarks**" in the long description. Ditto with Miss M. But she doesn't read this blog so too bad.

Anyways, while I was doing my project, chilling out listening to my mp3's and illegally chatting on msn, my TSR 2 walks over maybe half an hour into it and I'm thinking *aww crap I have to get back on the phones already*. But no, he was like:
"My god, are you even reading the tickets or are you just closing all of them? My page automatically refreshes to show me how many are in the bin and it's going down like 10 every minute. First it was at 100, then 90.. then 80.."
"WHAT! Of course I'm reading them. Well glossing anyways, it's pretty obvious most of them don't belong there. I'm just glossing over."
"Wellll... okay, not too glossy alright?"
"Fine."
*slows down and msns more*

I had a couple upset customers, but I was actually pretty lucky yesterday. I had a couple callbacks for cable, which were actually pretty funny. Here's how a typical callback goes:
*takes next call by getting out of work mode*
"This is an automated callback, the caller's name is: "
"Customer's name (but they can put whatever they want in here)"
"Press any key to continue."

So I have this customer where they start screaming "WHY DO YOU NEED TO KNOW MY NAME. I'm not giving my name. This is the 5th time this month my cable has been down. Fix it and call me back right now."
*dreading, presses a key on the phone to initiate call*
*BUSY TONE*
*giggles in delight and releases call*

And the next callback, pretty similar. "Rob, AND I'M PISSED. CALL ME."
*presses a key on the phone to initiate call*
"The number you have called is out of service, please check the number and call again."
Lol, that customer screwed up putting in his phone number. That's pretty rare.

The one callback that did go through that was a bitchy customer was one that I needed verification on since it was billing related. So here I am:
"And your drivers license number please?"
"I've never been asked that before."
"It's for your own security."
"I've dealt with you guys for years and never had to give my drivers license number."
"It's company policy for our customers own security, you gave it at the time of sign up for a reason."
"I'm not giving my drivers license number."
"Look lady, this is our policy, if you'd like to discuss this with billing I can transfer you over, but they are even stricter on this policy than technical support."
"ALL I WANT TO KNOW IF I WAS CHARGED OR NOT. If I am, I'm not paying the bill. *Click*"
But that's fairly typical. I thought I'd blog it since I haven't had an irate customer for awhile. Hey no way I'm gonna get my ass pwned for not doing my job properly.

Then finally, the last interesting call I received near the end of my shift was a distraught customer who called in insisting that someone was stealing his internet signal even though he disconnected his wireless router. I thought it was interesting cause he insisted that, verbatim, word for word, that his "modem was possessed because all the lights on it stay on after he turns off his computer."
"... Sir, your modem's power is in no way correlated with your computer power, unless they're both plugged into a power bar and you shut off the power bar."
"But it never used to be like that. And I even brought my modem to a friend's house and tried it there. It did the same thing! Can I swap my modem? It's obviously faulty."
"Or you could just hang a cross over it to get rid of the demons haunting your modem." (lol, I wish)

Ok, long blog, hope that makes some of you happy. It was steady at < 40 callers all night, and the queue died at 10 pm. Funny how low queues follow me around no matter what shift I take eh? :P

Hate to disappoint

No interesting calls tonight.

Well except for the poor cantonese speaking only lady who's lost her dial tone 4 times since installation one month ago and usually gets home at around 9 pm. (when chinese gate closes) But hey, that's normal for us. There's a reason why I DO NOT promote SDP to our chinese customers. Just when you thought our service could not get any worse, voila! And god, that is one huge run-on sentence.

On the other hand, coffee really does improve my mood. I am much less cranky / unenergetic on the phones after my coffee intake. Heh, they should just shoot caffeine straight into my veins every morning and I'll never be tired. Er, at least that would be a good idea if I wasn't deathly scared of needles. I literally shake just thinking about getting a shot.

Oh yeah, got coached again today. Surprise surprise, coaching on calls that no other supervisor would coach on, aka SDP and Cantonese. Haha, I got slammed for saying "No problem" to a customer when he said thanks to me. Oh I'm supposed to say "Thank you" back. Kk. *rolls eyes* Whatever you say boss.

There were only 87 on hold for repair queue at 8 pm. That's a pretty good number I'd say. Totally manageable with only 30 minute waits! Woo!

*puzzled*

So my sup finally gave me my raise and cheque. Took forever but what can you do right? Part timers are of the utmost unimportance... only not really. They need me dammit.

Anyways, I'm happy. It's the max raise that most will get. I was actually pleasantly surprised, wasn't expecting that much seeing my phone stats are kind of subpar comparatively to some I've seen I suppose. Maybe they just give the max to China gate members to keep their mouths shut since chinese calls suckass so much.

Speaking of which, proof again that my chinese is severely lacking...this lady didn't know what outlook express or a keyboard was in english. So here I was, trying to awkwardly explain what a keyboard is. Here's the rough translation of how I approached it in chinese:
"Do you see the CTRL button on your keyboard?"
"Keyboard? Please don't speak english, I don't understand."
"Uh... ok.. I mean the CTRL button on your (damn, how do I say keyboard?)... well it's the thing that your hands hit on to get 'a, b, c'."
"Where??? I don't see anything on the screen." (Of course she has a chinese keyboard as well)
"... Nooo, it's not on the picture thing in front of you... it's on the keyboard!! Uhh where your.. (shit, how do I say fingers) .. hands hit stuff to umm.. get stuff on the picture."
"Oh, you mean the *insert term I have no frigging clue of*"
"Uh. Yes sure >.>. Do you see a label CTRL in the lower left?"
"Oh yes!"
*Whew*
I still don't know what a keyboard is called in chinese... one up for me! When those calls come in, I always feel like an uber loser. *sigh*

Another funny call I got was a concerned customer who wanted to watch "Super size me", but saw that it was to cost $9.99 for 1 hour. The documentary itself is an hour and 40 mins to watch so he was like wtf @ the price and the duration seeing that normal movies are $3.99 for 24 hours. Usually we charge $9.99 for adult movies, so I was thinking... oh my god? super size me? What if... *DOUBLE CHECKS* And I then sighed in relief when I found it to actually be the documentary hahaha.

Anyways, I transferred down to sales, and the person that picked up of course didn't know anything as usual. Man it seems like the seldom few times I do have to call down there, I always get a new hire. There's a reason I stopped transferring for a long time... this must be the first transfer in a month at least.

Don't remember much other than those two calls, except that I nearly failed my Database quiz. That pissed me off just a little much, to say the least. Maybe more funny stories today will be posted. After all, it's the weekend eh?

Ahhh, Mr TSR 2 where is my project? Screw the call volume!!! I want my project/break 7. You know you need me. :P

p.s. D never figured out what the number was that you wanted me to test to Macau, so I couldn't do it. Send it to me via email if you want and I'll take care of it.
p.p.s. What're your days off next rotation S?

Power to the little people.

It's been awhile since I've blogged eh? Usual too lazy too tired too non motivated excuses etc etc. I did call a sick day on wednesday though. *whistles* And yesterday, there wasn't anything notable except for my work time being 55 seconds (best ever yet... for the past 2 months?)

Speaking of which, I found another girl in my BCIT class that also works at this company... and also as a TSR. It's a small world after all eh? The funny thing is, we both skipped out on Wednesday HAHA. Ah.. anyways..

Why do people ask if they should plug their power cord back in? I should say "NO, KEEP IT UNPLUGGED YOU TARD." If I wanna get fired fast that is...

I've seriously ran out of stories to tell. Nothing out of the ordinary happens anymore. Not that I would want it anyways. It's quite quiet today. 20 on repair, 3 on cantonese. Crazy for a Saturday night. Maybe people finally realize it's futile to call us. Good stuff.

Oh I did remember the time they had to take me off our weekly meeting cause there was literally no one manning the phones for SDP. So I grudgingly go away from my meeting and find that there are 12 on SDP queue holding, and surprisingly 8 on Cantonese. O_O doesn't even begin to describe it cause the first SDP call I take has waited half an hour. This doesn't mean alot for say an internet/cable hold, but for SDP?!@!# That's atrocious when our average pick up time for SDP is probably like... < 1 minute.

Speaking of atrocious hold times. WTF? I'm continuing to hold here waiting for chinese billing to pick up. I think I've been waiting for half an hour at least. Shit, I can't even release myself cause I have to explain to the CSR what's going on... 54 minute call already. Fantastic.

The surprising thing is though, the queue basically died at 8 o'clock tonight. Literally no calls waiting. That is absolutely insane. For a Saturday night. Jealous anyone?

YAY MY WEEKEND IS BACK.

I was seriously contemplating skipping work today. Like seriously. Then I thought, shit what if I see the sup tomorrow that marked me as sick. Then he'll be like eh? Unsick so fast huh? That sure would be awkward hahahaha.

Anyways, people are too reliant on the boob tube nowadays. There was this guy who said that his wife was counting and naming gummy bears while waiting for me to bring back the TV. I mean hell it was funny but uh.. sad when you think about it hahaha.

For a Saturday though, it was not busy at all tonight. And I thought it would be pretty standard, except that just after 11 pm I got a crazy ass guy call in. It went like this:
"Thanks for choosing SDP, how..."
"WHO'S AUTHORIZED TO MAKE CHANGES ON MY ACCOUNT."
"Uh, what?"
"I SAID, WHO THE HELL IS AUTHORIZED TO MAKE CHANGES ON MY ACCOUNT."
"Well, whats your account info first?"
"Yadda yadda yadda."
"Okay, well... you sir."
"Then why the fuck are your employees using my voicemail to commit fraud? You guys are really fucking with me and I'm tired of it."
"Uh..."
"And another thing, why the fuck was that S tech out here today to install my internet?"
"There are no pending work orders or service calls or anything on your account sir and we've confirmed that this is indeed your account."
"Why the fuck are you lying to me now? You're trying to cover each others butts!!"
"Sir, I'm reading what is in front of me and I don't see anything."
"I JUST PHONED THIS MORNING AND TALKED TO BILLING. THEY SAID THEY HAD A TECH TO COME TO INSTALL INTERNET."
"I don't know whom you were speaking with, but I see no such thing."
"You guys are fucking with me. Cancel my SDP NOW."
"Uh, I can't. I'm tech support. I'll send a template in and we'll have someone call you back tomorrow to discuss that."
"What's my balance on my account?"
"350."
"THE CSR TOLD ME IT WAS 272 TODAY."
"I'm reading what your account says sir. You may call in again to confirm, but we have no record of any other such information."
"Just get someone to call me tomorrow. I want SDP cancelled immediately. Can I get two voicemail passwords set up?"
"No. We'll call you tomorrow."
"Fine, bye."

Oh yeah, another CSR pissed me off today. I know, I know, some of you are like GOD! FINALLY A CSR STORY. Anyways, she called me up from billing and it seemed like an average transfer, but no - she introduced the customer to me, and guess what. She stayed on the line. How can we tell? Well the conference light stays on red, indicating the other person hasn't hung up yet. So I think to myself, oh okay, she's just finishing uh, her trouble ticket... I mean NS notes... I mean... ?? Well she'll be gone soon. But no - she stays with me and the customer for the whole damn call which, btw was like 25 minutes. I was thinking to myself, who the hell is this woman?? Is she really a CSR or a TSR in training? I was tempted to ask her while the customer was playing around with the wires, "Hey how you enjoying the call so far..."

Anyways, I look her rep number up and lo and behold she is listed as a CSR. I was thinking, what the hell, maybe her RLS (release call) button is broken or something?! But no, she must have been at least semi-listening to my call cause she released just before I said my goodbyes to the customer. I figure she must have been slacking off and talking to her co-workers or something in mute while keeping on the call so she doesn't mess up her stats majorly.

I pondered on it for a bit, and let it go after a few calls. Then what do you know, I get her. AGAIN. And guess what. She does the same goddamn thing. AGAIN. Holy fricking hell. At this point I really wanted to ask her wtf she was doing. I get very uneasy when I know someone else is listening in on my call. I mean I get it from time to time, but most of the time, the transferer will ask for my permission before listening in on the call. That's why I was totally thrown off by this call. Anyways, that's a weird thing to be pissed off about, but I was. *shrug*

Who knew. I shouldn't drink coffee at night. I get so wired after my shift is over it's not even funny. Yay my weekend now.


PS. S, that is one faaaaaaaaaantastic idea. Link me up plz :D. Btw. COMX delay = too awesome.

I'm convinced...

That I'm a masochist. Who else would be crazy enough to wake up bright and early to go to physio, do exercises, then get killed? All before 10:30 am. My god, that's too damn early for anything, much less exercise. Geez, I actually fell asleep on the heat pad this morning and they had to shake me to wake me up. Droopy eyed, I then crawled through the exercises and then got a major torture session with my physio. Fun.

A funny thing when I went in today was we usually have a waiting period in a room for the physio to show up cause he's busy with other clients. So the minute he walked into my room, the Moonlight Sonata, movement III starts playing. For you who don't know what that is, it's a fast/angry classical piece by Beethoven. Very dramatic. And I make a point to tell him, to which he laughs and then proceeds with the torture.

Anyways, onto the good stuff. Oh wait there is no good stuff. Tonight was an easy night. Almost too easy. No irate customers wowzers. And it wasn't busy. Crazy. What will I complain about then. Where is my f***ing raise/bonus cheque. I think my sup must have gone on a vacation or something damn.

Database. That useless textbook. I do my whole assignment based on the notes that come from the textbook, just to go to the lab and have my instructor tell me a competely different method today. Wow I sure was ticked. Useless textbook yay! Oh well at least I didn't buy it like a moron haha.

Mmmmm company barbeque tomorrow. How fun. Free food and rides. I get nauseus easily though. I better take some dramamine before hopping on any rides, or I can expect to throw up alot :(. Oh speaking of bbq, you're going to it now, S? Thought you had to work?

Anyways, I'm off to do homework. Yum, lets redo the whole assignment.

Fuh. Fack. Fuzzballs. Etc etc.

I think Wednesday evenings are problematic. Maybe it's cause it's in the middle of the week and everyone is kind of cranky. Every customer who calls in seems to be pissed. About legit issues too yay!

Today I had this insistent SDP customer who wanted to know exactly what the problem was and exactly when it was going to be fixed. I told him the truth that well, we don't know since he was one of the first few to report it. He requested a callback when we got an update, but by the time we were updated on our website that only gave us the street addresses affected, the problem had already been fixed. So I called him back to let him know that. And again, even though the issue was resolved, he demanded an explanation or what the problem was. He even wanted to know the location of our hubsite for gosh sake's (building that holds our equipment supplying the services) when I told him, being told by TSR 2, that the outage was due to a "faulty ac power supply". Then he got all freaky deeky on me when I told him he's like "How come Telus ac power supplies don't become faulty every other week." And I'm finally like like "sir, I have no idea." Finally that ended that call.

Ok, so maybe that was a stupid call. Nevermind. But whatever. It just seemed like it was one pissed off customer after another phoning in to bitch about random legit issues that naturally make me feel bad. I really hate coming into work more and more nowadays. Plus, I still haven't gotten my frigging bonus/raise yet. Where the hell is that supe.

Oh on another note, a certain TSR 2 sent me on a nice joyride today before work. I asked him where I could confirm whether or not I was on the list for our company barbeque on Sunday, and he told me to go find a lady named lets say, Debbie on 9th floor. So I go to 9th floor and ask the receptionist for Debbie, and she's like kind of in a bad mood or something so she's like ON THIRD FLOOR. So I go find Debbie on third floor and she says, NONO you're asking the wrong person it's actually Michelle on 9th floor. So I go back to 9th floor and the receptionist is even pissier. She was glaring at me :(.

Thanks mister. I owe you one for that.

At least it was relatively quiet today. Hardly any calls on wait... thank god. Enjoy it while it lasts.

It's September alright...

Just for Ms J's comment, I'll do another blog tonight about yesterday. (Yes, I do love comments hint hint)

Yesterday, we had aklsdjfkl I mean too many f***ing people on hold. It was like constant 100+ on hold for JUST repair. I think people said 150+ for internet. I wouldn't know though hehe. Holy cow, I've never seen it that bad. Everyone customer call you take they have to bitch and moan at the beginning of the hour and a half wait they waited to talk with you. Woohoo!!! Then I got stuck on a 1 1/2 hr call for HDTV wiring. I hate wiring calls. They always take forever and a day to complete.

And to top it off with a cherry, I had an 8 1/2 hour shift with only a half hour break too. Lol. That's so funny. Of course I talked to someone about it but man... retarded.

SDP is retarded. I hate it so much. The more I talk, the more I feel like BS is coming out of my mouth. I especially hate explaining how our battery "backup" failsafe works. My ass it works. Has there ever been an instance where it works? For fucks sake, many times, if you unplug the power to the modem and plug it back in, you'll lose your dialtone till you hit the reboot pinhole in the back of the modem or call tech support for us to reset it.

My god, it gets old really fast when we make some elderly customer crawl on their hands and knees in their dark dusty garage with spiders crawling around to unplug this and that and plug their cordless phone into the modem, just to find out there's no power source for the cordless phone nearby anyways. What kind of insane customer service is that??? And now, the TSR 2's for SDP have moved to the other side too. That makes me sad. Now it's gonna take alot longer for me to run over and get someone to help. Maybe I should move over to the other side. But I like my SDP corner. It makes me feel special. I should have some kind of pride after being yelled at day after day.

Yeah, I really want my bonus cheque now. Screw the pride. Where is that lazy ass supervisor. I hate people who really make you believe that they're going to do something, but in reality, they don't do anything but don't even bother to grace us with his presence at his desk and suck up to the manager to keep their job. Okay, maybe that got a little bit too specific directed to him, but in general it's true. I'd rather know that I can't depend on someone rather than think that I can and be let down instead. It's happened time and time again, and not just to me, but to other team members as well.

Oh well. Life goes on yeah?

**edit** I forgot to mention how fun it was after 9pm to release the callbacks. Basically our phone system has a feature where a customer can leave their name and number on our system so they don't have to wait on hold or lose their place in line. But after 9 pm, oh it's "too late to be calling our customers," so what do we do? Release them HAHAHA. Releasing 20 calls in a row in the most exhiliarating feeling I've gotten working here. It's fantastic.

**edit 2** 50th blog mark. I'm all about keeping track of interesting milestones. Eh, Mew?

Where's my bonus cheque.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. They're giving out bonus cheques again. Not alot mind you, maybe $200, but hey whatever works. Free money woo! Now I just have to hunt down my lazy... I mean laid back supervisor to give me my money and my raise whatever it may be. Can anyone say 15 cent raise? *sigh*

Anyways, you'll find I start complaining about school as well as work effective almost immediately cause well obviously that's what my life is right now. School and work, work and school. Whichever order you'd like to place it in, it basically means in big fat letters: FUN IS NO MORE. NIENTE. FINISHED. THE END. Instead what do I get? A nice dose of java, database, frontpage, boolean algebra, and lets not forget, challenged customers.

No stupid customers today. An angry one but whatever, that's normal. You know, I have a bad feeling about working after the china gate closes. Everyone hunts you down to do chinese callbacks. Somehow I can see it happening where I'll be put on a special queue after the china gate closes, and I'll be waiting by my lonesome all night for calls transferred from other TSRs to the chinese queue. *sigh* Fun and games.

One more day of work, then a one day weekend. Woohoo! Celebrate good times, c'mon!

Night shifts...

It's official: I'm part time now. (20 hrs)
Don't expect alot of blogs. I'll either be
a) too tired
b) too cranky
c) too busy with homework
d) all of the above

Btw, night shifts suckass. Yay for 200 on hold. I feel your pain at last Miss J. And shit, there are a ton of cranky ass bitchy customers on the night shift. I feel like it was one stupid issue after the other today.

This guy kept insisting that he has to use resolution 1080i instead of 720p cause 1080i was having problems with pictures. OMG THERES NOT DIFF. JUST LET IT SLIDE DUDE. IS IT REALLY WORTH A MILLION HOURS OF YOUR TIME. Then again, he did have like five 55" plasma TVs downstairs, so I guess he should care after spending that major money. I wish I had a setup like that in my basement... even though I'd never use it.

But yeah, crazy ass. And this woman geezuz christ. She didn't know what a drivers license is even though she provided it to us at signup. She's like, "drivers license?? you mean my plate number."
"No ma'am, your drivers license card number."
"My car number? Ok hold on I'll get it my car's outside."
"I SAID YOUR CARD NUMBER, C-A-R-D. THE THING ICBC GIVES YOU TO CERTIFY YOU CAN DRIVE."
"My car number, gotcha, hold on. I'll go outside."
"CARD! CARD! CARD!"
"Hold on *puts phone down and hangs up*"

At least it gets quiet... for half an hour. Time to enjoy. Maybe. I foresee a porn related call coming in for some reason. Had to check a few of those tonight. *sigh*

*edit* I was SOOOOO RIGHT. Last call of the night was porn related. Man I am good.