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I have found a legal substance which gets me high, quite by accident. AND at work, no less! We had a team pot-luck lunch (I made coq au coca-cola) and M. brought ice cream cake. Upon the ice cream cake was blue gel decorating stuff.
It kicked in about half an hour later. I could not stop giggling. I could not stop talking. I was trembling. I was utterly, completely wasted. I'm sure it was the blue stuff because that was the only thing eaten that day that I had never ingested before. According to T., it was hilarious.m (And oh, boy, the shakes I got later that night.) It was like me on Pixy Stix, magnified tenfold.
Another thing which happened on Friday was that I took my first escalation. I don't usually, because while I am the same "rank" (so to speak) as floor support, that is not actually my job. However, they were short-staffed on Friday and I got tapped. An escalation, for those of you lucky souls who have never worked in a call-centre, is what happens when a customer asks to speak to a supervisor/manager/someone they hope will give them a different answer. The customer in question was asking us to do something frankly illegal and in violation of all kinds of privacy protection laws, and refused to accept that we could not do it. He was also refusing to allow us to close the file. I listened to him, empathised with his wanting to know the information, and then advised him that the agent he'd been dealing with had in fact been completely correct, that we could not give him the information he was seeking, and asked if he had any other questions before I closed his file, which I would answer to the best of my ability if it were legal to do so. He screamed something along the lines of "I'm suing you personally, bitch" at me, and then hung up. His file is now closed and annotated.
It was kind of fun. I am not allowed to be quite as stern with my own customers when they get stroppy, but frankly if someone is as abusive as this fellow was (he was questioning the agent's ability to comprehend simple English and calling him all kinds of insulting things, and was not particularly polite towards me either once he realised I wasn't about to break the law for him), I am not going to be tripping over myself apologising and bending over backwards to placate him. I was polite and professional (I even spelled my name for him!), but firm. It was nice sitting down and saying, "Good afternoon sir, my name is Emily F------ and I'm a supervisor here at the General Motors Customer Assistance Centre. I understand you wanted to speak with me today."
I don't know how it is at other places, but we bend over backwards to do everything possible for our customers. We had one guy call in and ask for information on a WASHING MACHINE from the nineteen-twenties, and by golly we got him information on that washing machine. I really do not understand why people think they're going to get a different answer from a supervisor - when I was newer, I ran all my "no"s past someone anyway to make sure there was nothing I'd missed. (I don't now, because I don't miss anything).
It kicked in about half an hour later. I could not stop giggling. I could not stop talking. I was trembling. I was utterly, completely wasted. I'm sure it was the blue stuff because that was the only thing eaten that day that I had never ingested before. According to T., it was hilarious.m (And oh, boy, the shakes I got later that night.) It was like me on Pixy Stix, magnified tenfold.
Another thing which happened on Friday was that I took my first escalation. I don't usually, because while I am the same "rank" (so to speak) as floor support, that is not actually my job. However, they were short-staffed on Friday and I got tapped. An escalation, for those of you lucky souls who have never worked in a call-centre, is what happens when a customer asks to speak to a supervisor/manager/someone they hope will give them a different answer. The customer in question was asking us to do something frankly illegal and in violation of all kinds of privacy protection laws, and refused to accept that we could not do it. He was also refusing to allow us to close the file. I listened to him, empathised with his wanting to know the information, and then advised him that the agent he'd been dealing with had in fact been completely correct, that we could not give him the information he was seeking, and asked if he had any other questions before I closed his file, which I would answer to the best of my ability if it were legal to do so. He screamed something along the lines of "I'm suing you personally, bitch" at me, and then hung up. His file is now closed and annotated.
It was kind of fun. I am not allowed to be quite as stern with my own customers when they get stroppy, but frankly if someone is as abusive as this fellow was (he was questioning the agent's ability to comprehend simple English and calling him all kinds of insulting things, and was not particularly polite towards me either once he realised I wasn't about to break the law for him), I am not going to be tripping over myself apologising and bending over backwards to placate him. I was polite and professional (I even spelled my name for him!), but firm. It was nice sitting down and saying, "Good afternoon sir, my name is Emily F------ and I'm a supervisor here at the General Motors Customer Assistance Centre. I understand you wanted to speak with me today."
I don't know how it is at other places, but we bend over backwards to do everything possible for our customers. We had one guy call in and ask for information on a WASHING MACHINE from the nineteen-twenties, and by golly we got him information on that washing machine. I really do not understand why people think they're going to get a different answer from a supervisor - when I was newer, I ran all my "no"s past someone anyway to make sure there was nothing I'd missed. (I don't now, because I don't miss anything).
