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*
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Monday, October 30, 2006
Friday, October 27, 2006
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**
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**
Monday, October 09, 2006
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.
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.
Friday, October 06, 2006
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
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
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)