Welcome back, friends and neighbors. Greetings, new meat.
For those unfamiliar with my long standing relationship with customer service, I direct you to this site's older sister. There you'll find a year or so worth of hate and discontent. Or if you're a lazy SoB (and aren't we all, really?), you can skip to my section below, where I attempt to sum things up for you.
So, how will OSB v2.0 differ from OSB Classic? In basic content, not a whole lot. We dealt with the dredges of humanity before, and we're still dealing with them, just in a brand new class. You see, whereas before we were part of an outsourced third party for hundreds of companys, we're now official billing agents for just one company: a national and fairly prominent DSL company. We're part of corporate America. We have our own cubicles. We're likely to get bitched about by name on a variety of DSL Bitch Sites.
This has both its good and bad points. On the good side, we love our cubicles. On the down side, the basic nature of our calls never change. If someone's calling us, it's because they're disputing something on their DSL bill. The days of having five reports each dealing with a completely different subject matter are gone. On the even better side, you haven't heard anybody get truly pissed about something until you start dealing with their money.
How exactly this will affect OSB v2.0 for the long run, we can't hope to say. Maybe after a few months we'll have hit absolutely everything possible, leaving us with nothing new to say. But maybe not. We'll never know until we try.
For now, however, you'll have noticed that there's no Fuck of the Week award. As of now, I don't feel we have enough varying reports to warrant a weekly award. This could change in the future, but for now, we'll just have the basic daily reports.
Which is a good lead-in for when you can expect updates. I don't have anywhere near the time on my hands that I used to in my old job. I'm going to make my best efforts to update every night, but could very easily fall behind. If so, then I'll be catching up on the weekend. Ahh, weekend. Did I mention that we now have true weekends off? After 10 years or so in the workforce, we finally have a "normal" schedule, working from 9am to 6pm PST Monday through Friday. I feel so typically American!
Now, let's meet your suffering entertainers.
For the lazy SoB newcomers, that sum-up I mentioned earlier: I spent over five years working for an inbound call center in Louisiana. During my time there, I found that yes, you can become more hateful and cynical, you just have to find the right environment.
March 2001, my fiance Mike came to join me in Hell. He had been encouraging me to publically document all the things I'd been bitching about for years, but I never got around to it. With him now in the thick of things with me, we had double the coverage for double the fun. 20 March 2001 saw the debut of the original OSB.
It was no secret that I was unhappy with my life's situation. I loathed my job, I loathed Louisiana, and I wanted out big time. So we made a plan and stuck to it. June 2001, I quit my job. July 2001, I left the South, never to return (well, except perhaps for holidays to visit my mother, but I digress).
We now live in the Pacific Northwest, land of green trees and true winters. Things have improved dramatically. We took a month off, driving across the country and settling into our new home. But eventually the money began to run out, and finding a new job was inevitable.
Which brings us to now. Mike and I are back in customer service, although in a much different environment. I love the weather. I have a place of my own. Life is good.
Well, if you ignore the idiots.
Much to my naive surprise, the morons are still managing to find us. Admittedly their volume is not quite what it was, and they're not quite so violently adamant about most things, but this has been exchanged for an entirely new avenue of overblown stupidity. You'll have to read the actual reports to see exactly what I mean. And I'm sure you will.
Those familiar with my exploits on OSB Classic might find a different Jet Wolf here. A kinder Jet Wolf. A gentler Jet Wolf.
Don't be fooled. I've brought my tongue under control, yes, but then a huge jump in pay and a brand new working environment can do that to a girl. Not only that, but I've been "promoted" somewhat. I'm working as what they call a "SME" (pronounced "shmee", like Captain Hook's buddy) which means "Subject Matter Expert". It's a flashy title for a fake-supervisor role. What I do is patrol the floor, fielding questions and taking escalated calls. This is really cool for the reader, as it means I get to hear pretty much every really pissed-off call. Whee!
I still hate everybody. I'm just not so burned out that I have to show it constantly. This is A Good Thing ... isn't it? <looks at pay check> Yup, sure is.
My duties here remain much the same as before, I'll be documenting stupidity and providing my own insight while Nikki does all the web work. Like they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and I think my cushy position here was quite not broke.
Working in a DSL call center proves to be an enlightening experience, not only staunching the building hatred I was developing for all of humanity (since I take fewer, longer calls, which means a slight net loss of stupidity,) but proving to me that it can be just as annoying dealing with someone who doesn't understand the concept of "Call us to let us know your service is down so we can try to fix it, or you won't get credit" as one who doesn't understand the concept of Pay-Per-View.
Still, it's good to be back, and I hope (for your sake, certainly not for ours) that our callers across the nation do not disappoint in their zeal to prove themselves intellectually subservient to the person who just got off the phone before them.
My favorite color is still red, and I still have a Goatee. The best things in life never change. ;)
If e-mail isn't public enough for you, then I invite you to The Wolf Pack, my token message board where OSB has a forum all its down. Come share the pain.
Want to link to OSB? Sounds peachy keen to me. Check here for some link graphics you can use, as well as a request. I don't yet have any OSB v2.0 specific graphics, but give me time.
And finally, as always, huge thanks to my best friend and Official Art Slave for working during her vacation to provide me with a shiny new logo. Ain't she sweet?
