And boy, you must be a joy to work with. :rolleyes:
I’ve been working in callcenters for going on 10 years. First rule? Ignore the obnoxious telecommunications types that never consider the idea that the instrument, rather than the user just might be at fault.
Since Badtz said that he never had a problem on his old phone and since now has a problem with a new phone, we have to ask ourselves “What changed?” Answer: “Jeepers! The phone! Perhaps it’s defective!”
I’ve personally seen phones that will switch users to wrap or ready if jiggled, phones that you have to pound the button multiple times to get it to switch states, etc.
After my last warning, I created a Wordpad document that I keep open all the time that says ‘Out of Wrap’ in big letters. Most of the time I remember to bring it up on the screen when I take the phone out of Wrap. The purpose, of course, is to show when I am hitting the button to leave Wrap and see if it is recording afterwards.
It did. My boss said he watched a monitored call where I finished up my notes, brought up the OoW document, then minimized it and went to a non-work-related site and it continued to record for 10 seconds. I did not get written up for that instance.
But then, another time, it showed me surfing in Wrap for 38 seconds, and I am now on ‘Incident Probation’. I know for a fact that I did not do this because it’s not the kind of mistake you can make and not realize you made it - if I had realized I was still in Wrap while I was surfing, I definitely would have remembered it after the repeated warnings.
I requested a meeting with HR. My boss says he went to the IT guys and they said the system is not making a mistake, that I was really in wrap until after 38 seconds of web surfing. I know this is not true. Unfortunately, this was one of the times i forgot to use the OoW document.
Boss says the OoW document doesn’t really help my case because there’s no way to prove that I’m not bringing it up and then going to surf while remaining in Wrap - it’s my word against the computer’s. I explained that I have NO motivation to do that, though. If I want to surf between calls for a minute or two, I can go into Idle, which we use to take a breather when we need to. We are allowed 15 minutes of Idle a day and I rarely use 10 of them due to my late schedule, so I have no motivation to use Wrap instead of Idle, especially as they are a lot stricter about Wrap times and surfing while in Wrap can get you fired…I guess the company can’t afford to assume that their employee is logical, interested in preserving their job, and halfway intelligent.
At the risk of sounding like “let them eat cake”, I’d say that you should find a job with a lower Big Brother quotient. That level of micromanagement of employee activities is sweatshop-ish…
Meet with HR and ask them what you should do. Maybe they’ll send someone down to watch you work and you can show them what is happening first hand. If they tell you the only way for you to be sure of not getting in trouble is to not surf, I’d stop surfing (and probably look for another job). Otherwise, ask them to help you solve the problem.
Are you officially allowed to surf while not on calls? I know at my job, surfing is specifically forbidden, except for business-related purposes of the sort that could be justified in writing. Of course most people ignore this rule, but it’s only enforced in cases where they’ve already decided to fire somebody.
Could you have gotten yourself into a situation like this? In which case, the solution is not to convince them you’re surfing legally, but instead, to keep your nose very, very clean. Don’t surf at all. Work hard all day. Impress them.
Golly, am I coming across as a corporate cheerleader? I hate that. But if they’re looking at you hard, you need to perform perfectly.
Maybe it would help if you kept a log of the exact times you hit the button to exit wrap, down to the second. Then if they claim you were surfing during wrap, you could check their logs against yours for discrepancies. If they’re at all reasonable (and interested in isolating problems in their own system), they have to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who’d go to the trouble of keeping such meticulous records.
It would be a shame if you lose your job over such a small thing. I have to get out of wrap at my job, too, and even without a malfunctioning system, I sometimes forget to hit the wrap button. One time, I sat for over a minute (we’re only allowed seconds) in wrap gabbing with workmates, until my boss came over to me and asked me what I thought I was doing. (And I had no clue why she was asking. God, I was embarrassed. heh)
It’s so automatic to hit wrap that if you somehow forget to do it, you don’t think to worry about whether or not you’ve done it.
I’ve also thought I’ve gotten out of wrap only to glance over at the phone later and realize the light is still flashing. Our supervisor monitors our wrap times, but no one gets in trouble for slipping up and forgetting once in a while.
Haha! Noting his location, I was going to ask the exact same question! Been there, done that. (Not in the TX office though.)
When I was there, our phone system booted you out of Wrap automatically after 1.5 minutes if you didn’t do it yourself. But surfing the web was strictly verboten.