[quote="WD40"]

Maximilia wrote:

But seriously, Max - Is there no higher authority you can go to beyond this guy's best mate? Failing that - keep a diary, make a blog and e-fame that stuff!

Hee. I should. XD

And no, sadly there is not. There is the owner, of course, but he doesn't give a damn so long as he gets money.

So my main job is working at a call center. I've been there about 14 months, and have been trained on most of the things you can do in my account. I'll be getting trained for another aspect of it this week. I work as an assistance agent in our account chat room, answering other people's questions, etc.

I am not, however, a Lead Operator (LO) - these are the agents who take Supervisor calls and are supposed to know everything about the account before being promoted. They're past all of the newbie mistakes and have been there for a while. They know shit.

Theoretically. It's a very mixed bag.

Our account also offers the option of being a "home agent" (HA) and taking calls at home. Some of our LOs do this. Home agents are supposed to be relatively independent, capable of getting their own answers, knowledgeable, etc etc - makes sense, then, for LOs to be HAs if they can.

One LO who's a HA regularly sends closed member accounts to our retention team - you know, the people who try to convince you to not leave the company or close - once you do, they have nothing to offer you.

We have LOs who have yet to be trained on how to reply to e-mails or transcribe voice-mails that are left for us. They have not been trained on how to handle high-priority alerts that come in through the system. WTF? I got that training about six months in!

LOs are meant to know more than me, to be better than me, and their word trumps mine in answer to a question...but I am answering their questions in chat as well as those of regular agents.

My "favorite" LO, however, is the one who's been with us about 9 months now. She hired on to the account, and within about 2 months, became a Quality Assurance agent - in other words, she was somehow qualified after 2 months to monitor calls from the rest of us. Including calls that they don't train you on initially when you join the account.

They then removed her from the QA position when it became clear it wasn't working out. She spent some time on the phones with the rest of us, learning how to handle the calls, etc. And now...she's an LO. And giving out wrong information or transferring callers to the wrong places and is occasionally unable to find even basic answers using our various resources.

How the fuck did she become an LO? Easy? She's the daughter of one of the existing Team Leads.

*Headdesk*

In other problems with the account, our head trainer has been on the account for six months. It shows. The newbies know jack shit. Stuff I had drilled in to me every day during the two-week training course before I hit the call floor is stuff they've never heard of. Basic stuff. Like how much certain specials are. Or how to read the information on the account.

And I can't complain about her to anyone - she was specifically brought into our account by our director, who was brought in about 9 months ago to shape things up. The client had been considering ending the contract.

We recently switched over to the ~Store of the Future~, after training on the procedures for a few months. Other than the obvious retail bullshittery of the title, some of this makes a great deal of sense. Things like not making us try to stock the store while there are customers (needy, needy customers) in the store. Almost all stocking is supposed to be done before the store opens. I worked this shift for a while, but decided I was sick of NEVER seeing sunshine and barely seeing my manthing because our shifts were so different.

Only about 3 people I'd worked with on this shift have been retained. The new crew is so bad that the AM is having those three people come in at the usual time, then the newbs come in 2hrs later. I understand they are new. I know that people will fuck up when new. That's ok. What is not ok is when I keep finding bags full of merchandise hidden behind random shit because they just didn't want to put it up. Seriously. Found two big bags full of bags of corks hidden behind stacks of foam sheets last night, and found various other boxes/bags hidden around the store previously.

One of the other new changes is that we have a customer service lead (full-time) and a nights/weekends lead (part time). The former is freaking awesome. I love her to bits. The latter... She has never worked retail before. She has never been a supervisor before. She was slow and lazy as a cashier and now, as a supervisor, she has decided that we are her peons and she will never have to do a damned thing again.

I was supposed to get off work at 9:30. We got out at 11:20. To be fair, some of that was because we were super busy and short-handed. Some of that is that she will never let us run through our side of the store and recover it before she starts wandering the aisles to pick up reshop (items that are misplaced). This means that she might scoop up 30 packages of stickers from the sticker aisle. It takes about twice as long to put shit up if it's been tossed into a cart than if she'd just left it there near where it goes. I've asked her repeatedly to let me recover the aisle before she walks because in the end, it will save us a lot of time and energy. She is the only person who doesn't listen. With any other manager, even on such a busy night, I could have my aisles looking pretty freaking good and have maybe a cart of reshop to show for it, two including the shit people leave up at the registers. Instead, my aisles all looked like shit at the end of the night and we had five goddamned carts FULL of reshop. We never, ever, ever get out on time when she works. And she does not listen to people who know wtf they are talking about so that we can actually get a good recovery done.

My school got all new administrators this year. The new principal is pretty competent, but the new Assistant Principal--to say she's scatter-brained is a compliment.

I arrived at work this morning (please note that this is the last day of work for me until August), and was greeted by her saying, "Lady Anne, I need to talk to you!"

My immediate reaction was to go over my recent activities and wonder where I'd fucked up. I asked, only half-jokingly, what I'd done. She said it's what I was going to do.

She walked with me to the library, where she told me that they were going to offer three new classes next year--health, child development, and study skills--and she wanted to make sure that I had enough books.

This came totally out of the blue. We librarians had a big meeting back in April to discuss what books we needed for next year--and these classes were not on the list. In fact, none of these classes has been offered at this school in years, so I had no books left--they had all been transferred to other schools or were being used for Independent Study, which I am also in charge of the books for. I told her this and asked why I hadn't been told about it in April, when I could have gotten the books from other schools, or put in an order for them (which cannot be done now because the district has no money left).

She told me that the handful of books I had for Independent Study could be used as a class set, and also told me that the health books I had given to another school needed to come back. Um, no. That's not happening. I don't remember how many I gave them, and if she wanted them kept at this school, she should have told me about the new class back in April and not waited until my last work day for the school year to say something. I couldn't get them back anyway because the librarian at that school has already for the summer and is spending it in Colorado, aka not around here.

I made some frantic phone calls to other schools and managed to get promises of (hopefully) sufficient books for next year--to be delivered in August after we all return. The AP laughed and said it was her fault; she could be such a scatterbrain sometimes.

Yeah, you're something, lady. (She also told some of the teachers about the new subjects they will be teaching by text late last night; others won't be informed until the day before school starts in August, leaving them no preparation time.) In addition, she decided to move a number of people to different rooms, for no discernable reason, meaning that the custodians had to move furniture instead of getting the deep cleaning done before summer school starts, which made their head supervisor at the district office mad that his instructions weren't being followed.

One of our foremen tried to blow up Venice.
He is currently resentful that we're giving him the cold shoulder for it.

The bad supe is leaving. This is good. But the girl who got the job I was applying for? Despite having worked at another store in the same company, she has no idea where things are (I understand not knowing which aisle it's on but come on how fucking hard is it to realize that one kind of glue is next to ALL THE OTHER FUCKING GLUE?), meaning that I'm still going to be doing the job. But she's going to get paid for it. fdjsal;skjkfla

The current special ed teacher is driving everybody nuts. Her desk is on the side of the alternate ed office that also contains the restroom door, and she's "uncomfortable" with anyone walking behind her desk, so no one in her office is allowed to use that restroom--meaning that everyone has to use the staff restroom in the main building. There are only two stalls in each bathroom, so it's overcrowded and there isn't time for everyone to use it between classes. She's also "bothered" by the sound of the copier, so no one can use the copier in that office, meaning everyone has to use the copier in the main office, which is extremely slow and breaks if you look at it cross-eyed.

And yet, somehow, admin puts up with her demands.

That Special Ed teacher sounds a bit "speshul" herself...