[QUOTE=Otto]
… this is the Pit, asshole. This is the place where rants, large and small, go to be aired. If I feel like using the steam-blowing-off section of the board for blowing off steam (a whole six times in the last three months, ooh such continual complaining), then fuck you in the neck if you don’t like it.
[/QUOTE]
Better here than in the cube, I say. From your posts on this thread, it sounds to me like you support banking of some sort – probably handle between 120 and 130 calls a day, the vast majority of which are from people who refuse to accept any responsibility for their own overdrafts and general financial shenanigans. The ones who aren’t accusing you of stealing their money are generally condescending as hell, and at least twice a day you get told by a customer that he/she has so much money in “your” bank he/she could have you fired with the snap of his/her fingers.
Yep, been there, done that, got the psychological scars to prove it. Worst call I ever took was from D’marquene in East St. Louis who screamed at me that she was tired of uppity white folks stealing money from every n***** (aw, Jesus, I can’t even type that word any more!) they could find. When I asked her to be a little calmer so we could figure out what happened with her account, she told me to kiss her black ass. I terminated the call, no longer caring whether D’marquene had any money in her account.
For all the discussion about why first names only are used, when I was taking calls in a cubicle, I was told it was for my safety and the company’s security. Also, because we were an outsourcer, to provide “transparency” to the client – if a customer didn’t have my last name, he couldn’t pester our client to find me and then discover that he’d been talking to a third-party provider all along (although anybody with any brains in the IT world knows it anyway.) When I became a manager, I discovered the real reason: The client has inserted the third-party (outsource) call center between himself and his customers because it’s cheaper than actually providing customer service. He then gives the outsourcer a very narrow range of services to provide and prohibits anything outside of that. The outsourcer gets paid per call, so it behooves him to take as many calls as possible, taking as little time per call as possible; there’s no incentive to actually provide service, only to provide a set of scripted responses to all queries (some minor service actually does take place, but nothing like what the customer expects.) By refusing to give the service rep’s last name, the outsourcer is helping the rep maintain the necessary disconnect from the customer (although most reps – and I suspect **Otto ** is among them, despite his efforts to convince us otherwise – end up caring about customers enough to find ways to provide “prohibited” services and get away with it.) Using only first names or only last names or only badge numbers or only extension numbers allows a service rep to maintain that disconnect.
Rant on, **Otto ** my friend – I do believe that’s what The Pit is for. Just know that most Dopers are smarter than your average (bank?) customer, and don’t understand the real extent of ignorance and supidity you have to deal with on a daily basis. I do, and you have my empathy. My only question is, why do you still work in a call center, when you could earn a lot more money as Mike Tyson’s sparring partner, and suffer a lot less pain?
Have a good day, and thank you for calling …
