[QUOTE=gaffa]
Why couldn’t the MeatBot have transferred me to someone who knew what he was talking about without spending an hour (between the time waiting to talk to useless in the first place, talking to useless and waiting to talk to someone with a clue) and the blood pressure raising experience of talking to someone who had no idea what the problem, couldn’t help, and served only as a gatekeeper to prevent access to his opposite.
[/QUOTE]
Well, that started out as a question, and I’ll venture an answer…
Because of people who phone up tech support before unpacking the computer.
Don’t need no ‘level 2 technician’ for that. They more expensive than the meatbots with the script.
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Why? See post #2. Most people that the gatekeeper deals with in any one day are stupid and/or lying when they say “they did that already”. It’s cheaper for the company to hire 10 Meatbots at minimum wage and 2 Level 2 Technicians at a living wage than to hire 12 Level 2 Technicians.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=gaffa]
I don’t deny the necessity of MeatBots, just that they should be trained to get the hell out of the way when they are dealing with someone with a clue.
[/QUOTE]
How are they supposed to know?
No script can gift discrimination to them.
Prolly someone said that already.
[QUOTE=Silver Tyger Girl]
These threads are incomplete without The Vinegar Boy Saga, wherein a hapless clerk sells malt liter to a dumbass kid, who proceeds to drink it and get sick. He sics his mother on the clerk and, well, I don’t want to spoil it.
It is epic and brain-breaking.
[/QUOTE]
That is hilarious and sad at the same time.
[QUOTE=glee]
While waiting for the Head Office program to give approval, she states that I will need payment protection insurance. :smack: **I ask her why I need to insure a loan when I have ten times the loan amount arriving in one month’s time.
[/QUOTE]
You could have had some fun if the PPI had a 30-day cancellation period
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
I dunno about you folks, but if I were that angry, that stupid, and then found out they were selling T shirts about me, I’d be on my way over there with an AR-15!
[/QUOTE]
Don’t ask me why, but lately Skype has been giving me the BSoD when trying to conenct. It most often but not always happens when I’ve been talking to someone, we hang up and I try to start another call without restarting Skype completely.
Last Saturday I was talking to Mom when the call fell. I restart Skype and it decides to go BSoD, restart the computer and call Mom to her landline as her computer now shows offline. She’s all worried about “a blue message saying I have to restart something I don’t understand.” “A blue message… is the whole screen blue?” “Yes!” “OK, with old-fashioned white letters.” “Yes!” “OK, what you have to do is use the red button, that’s all.” “Oh, OK! Thank you!” The red button is the one on the surge protector.
[QUOTE=Anastasaeon]
My co-worker had a weird one today.
Customer: Can you tell me about anti-microbials and Microban?
Co-worker: Sure. Microban is an anti-microbial that inhibits the growth of mold, mildew, bacteria…
Customer: I know all about that. My husband and I are microbiologists.
Co-worker: …
Me, looking up from my paperwork behind the front counter: …
Co-worker: Well, what would you like to know about it?
Customer: What exactly does it do?
Co-worker: … it… inhibits… the growth… of… mold…
Customer: I know that. My husband and I are microbiologists.
They went around and around for a while, him trying to figure out if she wanted to know about its role in paint products, how it effected paint products, etc. No, it all came down to the fact that she already knew all that, as she (and her husband!) were microbiologists.*
We’re still unclear about what she wanted. Let me get my manager; oh, Mr. Pasteur!
Your suit’s lumpy and you smell awful. Hey, I call 'em like I see 'em. I’m a whale biologist.
[/QUOTE]
I think I can help with this one. She wanted you to explain whether it inhibited the growth by interfering with cellular growth, division, etc. You know, sort of like someone being told to take a cough syrup and wanting to know the exact molecular mechanism by which it stops the patient’s cough? I don’t know about you, but when I can’t stop coughing all I want is for the cough to stop, and if I’m worried about, say, whether the antibug is poisonous for my kid to lick… well, it’s an antibug, so YES, whatever its mechanism it WILL be a bad idea for your kid to lick it :smack:
I used to work for a company whose main product line is base paints. We made big tanks of white stuff, the stuff got poured into tank trucks, then the people with brands would pour it into paint cans (with or without added color). We also made biocides (not in that factory) which could be sold as such or added in small amounts to the paints. During “off hours,” the EHS and Customer Service person for the factory was the lab tech. One of my cotechies once got a call from a distraught man who wanted to know whether drinking half a liter of a biocide we used in ppb amounts was going to be bad for his cat… uhm, yes… “so I should call the vet?” “more like the pet cementery, I’m sorry to say, sir.”
[QUOTE=Nava]
I think I can help with this one. She wanted you to explain whether it inhibited the growth by interfering with cellular growth, division, etc.
[/QUOTE]
I was thinking the same thing, and there’s two things wrong here. One is the question–“How does it work?” is more likely to get the answer she wants that “what does it do?” Two, the salesperson probably isn’t the person to be asking about what mechanism it uses. A better person to ask might be a, oh I dunno, a microbiologist
[QUOTE=Nava]
I think I can help with this one. She wanted you to explain whether it inhibited the growth by interfering with cellular growth, division, etc.
[/QUOTE]
Why would a clerk in a paint store know the answer to that question? Nothing against paint stores clerks at all, but does she think Lowes requires a Biology class before selling paint?
Ahhhh, just thought I would share what just happened to me.
Me: Thank you for calling XYZ, this is Litoris. How may I help you?
Idiot Customer: Yes, I would like to order some stuff, and I need your opinion.
Me: Of course (sets customer up in the system) I am ready for your first stock number and/or question.
IC: Ok, I am looking at the clear plastic bag in the small size – is it totally clear or is it frosted?
Me: It’s got a very subtle frosting to it, but it is relatively clear
IC: (asks a series of questions about tissue paper quantity and pricing) I like the xyz tissue pattern, do you think that will match?
Me: do I think it will match what?
IC: those bags
Me: … the clear ones?
IC: yes, do you think it will match them?
ME: since the bags are clear, I am pretty sure any tissue will match them
To her credit, as soon as I said that, she started laughing and said, “that was a stupid question, huh? I guess I really just want to know if the xyz tissue is as pretty in person as it looks online.” I reassured her that it was.
[QUOTE=gaffa]
Actually, I tend to run into stupid tech support more often. Well, probably not actually stupid, but ignorant and following rote instructions. Like the level 1 “tech support” at SBC. These people have no idea what is going on, and are simply following a script. And you have to follow their script to the fricken letter before they will let you talk to somebody who actually has any idea what is going on.
(snip )
Why couldn’t the MeatBot have transferred me to someone who knew what he was talking about without spending an hour (between the time waiting to talk to useless in the first place, talking to useless and waiting to talk to someone with a clue) and the blood pressure raising experience of talking to someone who had no idea what the problem, couldn’t help, and served only as a gatekeeper to prevent access to his opposite.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I was one of those MeatBots. Got paid $7.50 an hour, which was quite a bit less than I’d made at my previous job as a newspaper editor, but it paid the rent. I used to hate asshole IT people who forced me to drag them through the script for an hour instead of just stepping through it with me so I could escalate them to Tier 2. About once a week I’d run into one of these buttheads who SAID he/she had “already done that” but, when going through it with me, clearly hadn’t. I loved it when they realized they’d been found out – they usually dropped their superior fucking attitudes, but it didn’t make them any less abusive. I always wondered, if they were so damned smart in the first place, why couldn’t they figure out that they weren’t really talking to SBC but to an outsourcer whose job was to screen out the 97 percent of problems that are easily resolved by rebooting something?
[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
I’m not quite sure how you pulled that out of my post, but it’s not true. I absolutely consider Texas hold’em to be a form of poker (one of the “dozens of other games” I referred to in the post you quoted).
[/QUOTE]
Hmm, I seem to have misread “encompasses” in your quote for “encompassed.” Oops.
Ah, but my point was, how many times have you seen a draw poker table in a casino? A stud table? Perhaps occasionally, but not NEARLY as many as a HE table, I’d think. I was talking purely about what one would reasonably expect at that one specific type of business, certainly not what’s played at the WSoP or in one’s dining room. That’s why I felt no further clarification was really needed, especially with the modern media environment and the recent hype.
[QUOTE=Daithi Lacha]
I know I’ve told this one before, here:
I worked in the gourmet cheese section of a nice deli. We carried a grating cheese called Sap Sago. It’s green due to an infusion of herbs. A (blonde) customer wanted to know why it was green. “Because it comes from the moon,” says I, the kindly (snotty) nineteen-year-old.
Her jaw drops.
“REALLY!?!”
:eek: :rolleyes: :smack: <– me, not her.
[/QUOTE]
I just had a follow-up to this one!
Someone from another team: “Blah blah blah and I just don’t know how we’re going to make this changeover work with the new billing structure.”
Me: “Well, I heard they’re going to hire elves to come in at night and do all our work for us.”
Her: :eek: “REALLY?!?”
Me: “No, not really. There are no elves in South Florida.”
Her: “Oh. Darn.”
And let me tell you: She doesn’t have a sense of humor, so she wasn’t being droll. :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=Leaper]
Ah, but my point was, how many times have you seen a draw poker table in a casino? A stud table? Perhaps occasionally, but not NEARLY as many as a HE table, I’d think. I was talking purely about what one would reasonably expect at that one specific type of business, certainly not what’s played at the WSoP or in one’s dining room. That’s why I felt no further clarification was really needed, especially with the modern media environment and the recent hype.
[/QUOTE]
I understand, however you have to realize that the vast overwhelming majority of poker players don’t go to casinos. I think I’ve seen Texas Hold’Em tables twice in casinos, as compared to many dozens of times for video poker. Why? Because I don’t go looking for card tables, so I don’t notice them.
You can’t just say “poker” and assume everyone will understand it means Texas Hold’Em.
[QUOTE=iamthewalrus(:3=]
They thought that an extra 12 hours would make things easier. But what if it turned out that it didn’t. What if, in fact, Blockbuster knew that it would lead to more late fees, probably as a result of using a few stores as a testbed for the new policy. Is that really so far-fetched?
[/quote]
Incredibly so. You couldn’t remember when to return videos despite being told a specific date and time, so it was a deliberate plot to confuse you and steal your money…? That’s like saying your crops failed not because you salted the soil but because witches put a hex on them.
I learned from that job that about 50% of America is too stupid to figure out how to rent a movie. I have no idea how the country keeps working.
[/QUOTE]
Ok, I was the dumb customer the other day. I spent some time on the phone with a woman from the local community college, but she couldn’t find any record of my application. I was talking to San Jacinto College in Houston, TX, not Mount San Jacinto Community College in Temecula, CA.
OTOH, boy, are those names similar, especially if you don’t know there’s such a thing in Houston, which I didn’t. I don’t know how far the area code extends, so I just wrote off the area code being different. Maybe I should have noticed.
My conversations with the ditz at the sporting goods store today (important bits only:
Me: Are you in the lot with the Walmart?
Her: No, we’re before the Walmart
Me: I don’t know what “before” is
Her: Before the Walmart
Me: Uhhhh…
Her: We’re across from the Big 5
Me: Across what (this is at an intersection)
Her: Across from Big 5.
I hung up.
(I call back after not finding it)
Me: Are you on the east or west side of McKinley?
Her: The north side
Me: McKinley runs north-south
Her: Right.
do I think it will match what?