Technically correct

Well when I go into work tomorrow and ask how my weekend went I can say that

" I flew a plane, started construction on three evil robots to go in my new army, performed to a packed venue and was invited to sit on a back row by three girls at once"

and I'll be telling the truth at least technically speaking.

I'm sure that the facts that the plane was only one in Wii Sports resorts for the Wii, the three evil robots are 28mm scale and plastic models, everybody else in the Leicester YSA was also singing at the same time ( thank goodness) and the three girls were the members of the YSA presidency and it was only the back row of the stand in the Leicester stake centre would be of no interest to anyone whatsoever :-)

Well it's the start of March tomorrow which means we are already two months into 2010 which also means I have two months left on my probabation which is a scary thought as six months seemed like such a long time three months ago!

I'm on a week of lates this week which should be interesting as it certainly prved to be a good learning experience last time round.

Later folks.

Performance guessing

I was a bit surprised to read in the newspaper today that Weatherman get rather large performance related bonuses. Now I'm sure weatherman work very hard but it is the last job you would expect to get bonuses because once you get rid of all of the technical terms isn't what their doing essentially guessing?
" I said it would rain on Thursday and it did. Cheque please!"

Still this wasn't the weirdest news of the day. Far from it, obivously taking a play from Sky news when during his trial they used lookalikes to recreate the courtoom a show in the USA used a lookalike to stage a recreation of the Death of Michael Jackson, from when he was first found unconcious all the way to showing the lookalike being prepared for autosopy and then slid into a morgue drawer!

In another somewhat weird news story a man who won 10,000 euros on a scratchcard on a flight reacted rather badly to the news that he would have to wait to get his money, by eating the card! Which probably means that firstly patience was not one of the virtues of this particular passenger and secondly he's eaten the most expensive snack he'll ever eat as of course, no winning card no cash.

Our loft has now been finished, and all of the boards have been laid which means we can now put a lot of stuff up there and confuse Owen at the same time as he still hasn't been able to figure out what's going on when people disappear through the hatch in the ceiling.

Anyway,

Later folks.

Oh how I wish I could answer that

Anyone who has ever worked in customer service in some form or another will know that at somepoint you will get a statement or question for a customer usually a very nasty/obnoxious one which you could answer honestly. Well I got one of those today
" Just how thick do you think I am?"

I just ignored him and kept going whilst wishing he would cross that line which would give me the excuse to cut him off. He didn't though, staying just the right side ( if barely) of the line. This call prompted a lot of amusement from the rest of the team with lots of suggestions as to how they would have responded if they could have done.

Speaking of my team as it were, I'm starting to feel like I'm getting to know them all better which has been difficult as my new team is almost three times the size of the team at my last place. The main thing I've noticed are the different ways people have for dealing with stress. A couple of the guys are so laid back about things they could be walking horizontal, one of the girls plays with a pen, another drumbs her fingers on the desk and a third tends to start playing with her hair. Myself and the other trainees have started to feel more at home in the team as we've started to be gradually drawn into the banter which goes on between the veterans.

Banter which is usually started by BeeBee. The best staff member on the team and a young lady with a especially wicked sense of humour. When I listened in on her calls to get some tips the other day she welcomed me with the greeting of " Now I get to teach you my dark and wicked ways" . Last night she was having a back and forth with one of the other guys before suddenly saying that she was sure if the other guy didn't want a affair with her I would. I looked up to see most of the team staring at me.
" Well?" she asked a smile on her face " Would you?" my quick witted reply was along the lines of " ehhhh? say What now ?" her reply was much more quick " Why is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with what you see?" at this point there was much sniggering from the rest of the time. " there's no right answer I can give at this point you know" I told her. " Yeap" she responded with a smile " Still want one though" I responded with the only thing I could think of at this point " Not tonight dear I have a headache."

Finally when I came back from lunch today I discovered my computer turned off. Somebody explained that everyone had needed to exit a program and as I had locked my computer all they could do was turn it off. Our senior agent for the team walked past and she told me that she's had to push my button to solver the problem. I looked over to BeeBee who was smiling and said" Push your button did she? Bet you weren't expecting that?" I responded " No, especially as I wasn't present for the event" " Sounds a lot like marriage" one of the other girls suddenly added.

I sat down and was waiting for my computer to turn back on before suddenly being struck by a fit of the giggles. One of the girls what was so funny and I explained that if people at church ask how work was they might be a bit taken back if I tell them that a girl offered to teach me her dark and wicked ways and offered to have a affair before another girl pushed my button.

Quotes of the day;
" It's small and light"
and
" It's twice the size of a ipod"

anyway,

Later folks.

Really doesn't help

Today was a day that I heard some people start to refer to as a hell day as we were just overloaded with calls from shall we say somewhat difficult customers. Things didn't start to ease off until mid afternoon by which time a lot of people were just feeling exhausted.


One of the quotes of the day was this

" It's 600 cm long, by 40mm wide as is half a finger thick"


These set of measurements were apparently the dimensions of a a4 sized envelope. No amount of patience explanation could persude this customer that a A4 envelope is not six metres long.


Still on the plus side it's Friday tomorrow and thus another dress down day although this one is for charity so we're having to each pay a pound if we don't want to have "uniform". Some people do complain about having to pay to in their words " wear their own clothes" but no matter how well they try and phrase it they still come off sounding cheap.


I also have my next training session for the NVQ in customer service which I'm studying for by simply doing my job essentially, tomorrow which should be interesting. There's a lot of work to do which although requires basic answers it does make you think a lot about things which are you do with out much thought.


If that makes any sense whatsoever.


Anyway,


Later folks.

The universe continues to mock me

Unlike my last job where the traffic was fairly constant asides from the occasional accident the route to my current job is rather different. Sometimes it's relatively easy to get out of geektown and other times it can be less so.

I also discovered that trying to best my travel time estimates on previous experience doesn't work well either. I was on the 10 to 6 shift today and I knew from the last time I was on this shift that I needed to leave plenty of time as the traffic is very heavy at that time of the morning.

However the traffic wasn't heavy this morning. Far from it as a matter of fact, it was light, very light. In fact so light I got to work nearly an hour before I actually started. D'OOOHHHH!!!!!

Still better to be early then late I suppose. It could have been worse, people coming from the other direction were having great difficulties as the motorway was shut on both sides between two sets of junctions.

I got to leave early as they needed me to start early as it was very busy when I went into the office ( after spending sometime reading in the canteen). Of course as they only had me start five minutes early, I could only leave five minutes early and as the bus didn't arrive till five past six it wasn't a whole lotta help. Still if I had been on the phones till six I'm sure the universe would have organised for me to get a difficult call at 5:59 and 59 seconds.

Work is going well right now. It's still a challenge don't get me wrong there, but I think that's good as it's keeping me on my toes as it were and encouraging me to keep pushing myself. I was surprised to find myself helping one of the new trainees today as it made me realise that " I do know what I'm doing".

anyway,

Later folks

I hope not

One of those random conversations started at work today about if we would ever get video phones in and actually have to speak to people face to face. The general consensus was that this would be a bad idea as the customer would be able to see if you were get frustrated as it's a lot easier to control your tone of voice then it is body language. However I suppose it could have it's benefits the other way as well because if the people could see you theres a good chance they would be a lot less rude. I've noticed this effect recently and I've come to the conclusion as they don't talk to you face to face people find it much easier to be rude to you.

Quote of the day and the winner of the " That doesn't really help award"
" It's not big or small and it's also not that heavy."

It started snowing about a half an hour before I finished work and didn't stop for quite some time. However as it was really quite wet none of it settled, turning the snow from a thing of wonder to something of a cold wet annoyance.

I mean if it's going to snow at least let it snow long enough so I can get snowed in and get a day off work.

Later folks!

Lets just chalk that one up to experience

It's been one hell of a day.


There's no other way to it to be blunt anything and everything which could go wrong seemed to go wrong. I was in a little bit of a panic by lunchtime as I had visions of actually finishing a day without getting anything on the board as it were in the way of targets.

Still things picked up massively in the afternoon, it's funny how a good lunch can make the day seem so much better and I ending up having a really good day.

Asides from one very very nasty customer who got to me more then usual due to how quickly he 'changed' from being nice and polite to screaming down the phone at me for what was quite really no reason whatsoever.

Still on the plus side nice customers seem to outnumber the nasty ones like that quite dramatically.

I'm on what I like to refer as to the early middish shift this week, which means that I still get a greater lie in then when I'm on earlys but I still get home at a reasonable hour.

anyway,

Later folks.

It'll be allwhite on the night

Apologies for the lack of bloggage yesterday folks. I got so engrossed with what was on TV by the time I realised I hadn't done a post yesterday it was too late as it was time for bed. So all I can really say to that is Oops.

When I woke up this morning I noticed it was really quite light. Surprisingly so and it too my still none too awake brain a few moments to notice something out. The light coming through the windows wasn't only light it was also quite white as well.

Yeap it had snowed overnight. A lot! Which delighted owen as he really enjoys going for a walk in the snow and I'm sure he's managed to go for a walk more times in the snow in his short life then our last dog did in the entirety of his.

Of course Owen might have been delighted with the snow. I was not as snow usually means ice and as long term readers know there's nothing else which scares me when driving quite like icey conditions. To be perfectly honest I did almost turn round and come back within mere minutes of leaving the house as I found myself slipping and slidding whilst trying to climb a hill. However I perserved and my ever faithful, (if a little battered after several years of use) didn't let me down.

I was surprised on reaching the main road to discover that the roads hadn't been gritted at all!! The road between geektown and Loughborough was thick with snow which didn't help my tension levels at all. Fortunatly although there was snow, there wasn't any ice.

However I was even more surprised to discover at the end of church that the snow had disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared, melting in the rather bright sunshine leaving only a few piles here and there.

Very strange weather indeed.

anyway,

Later folks.

Not a moment too soon

It's the weekend! And to that I can only say Thank goodness. I found today a real struggle which started as all work days do with the struggle to drag myself out of bed.

Although there was some heavy snow to start with it cleared up pretty quickly proving once again that the weather deadzone that likes to hang around geektown is still as strong as ever.

Despite the struggle to make it through the day especially as we reached mid afternoon my spirits were considerably lifted by my first six month review/assessment. Now for all you regular readers are probably wondering how the heck I could have a six month review when I've only been there four months, and in department for just over three. Well your right, I didn't but I did. Basically it was one of those occurances where I had to have one as everyone had one even though they only had two months worth of data to base a six month review on.

Confused yet? Try sitting through it a explanation of it .

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes spirit lifting and I don't mean a postman collecting beer.

I'm doing really well, very well, much better then I thought I was to be honest. I've only got one area where I do need a lot of improvement and I'm working on that. Among the high points I was complimented on was my brilliant phone manner, my amazing level of attention to detail, and my ability to stay calm in the face of angry customers. I was also complimented that my confidence seems to be growing in great strides which made me realise it had. I've built my confidence in myself back up to where it was before the events of last September and I think I've even surpassed that. This job has taken me out of my comfort zone and I seem to have risen to the challenge very well indeed.

All in all the assessment was a nice way to round the week off.

Anyway,

Later folks.

Getting more then you bargained for

Well it's snowing. Again. If it was the weekend I would probably be quite happy but as it's not, I'm not. I have still got one day of work before I get to the weekend. I think the week of early starts is starting to tell, that and the fact that I only had one day break between the end of last weeks shifts and this weeks as I had real trouble getting out of bed this morning.

A rather large fit of the giggles hit our bank of desks at work today as one of the girls managed to get her words mixed up in a rather amusing way. Instead of saying to a customer " I can give you my extension if you want to speak to me again" what she actually said was " I can give you my dimensions if you want to speak to me again" There was a brief pause before the penny dropped as to what she had actually said and she quickly corrected herself, but it was too late at that point as everyone who heard her say it collapsed into hysterics.

It started snowing just as I left work and of course irony being what it is, I missed the bus due to a late call and I had to wait out in the cold for ten minutes for it to come back. Fortunatly I was able to get home quickly even if the snow was so heavy it was difficult to see very far. I just hope that they've put down enough grit or it will be a interesting challenge getting to work tomorrow.

Grumpy and I were left some dumbfounded over the latest " Public information film" that was put onto the tv this evening. It was a animated cartoon which ran for nearly five minutes during a ad break. It went on for so long they had to keep flashing up a caption to say it was a public information film. It was the story of two aliens on the moon who found a strange object. As the cartoon kept going we were wondering what it was about. What important message were these two aliens trying to impart. Why don't play with lighters and a warning to adults to not let kids play with lighters either.

Quite why that needed to be five minutes long I have no idea and I dread to think how much money they spent on that insanity.

Oh well, only one more day of work. Roll on the weekend!

Later folks

And the universe is mocking me

I woke up this morning and immediatly thought I was late and started to rush round in a panic trying to get ready as quickly as possible. It was at this point that I noticed the time on my clock. I wasn't late. Far from it, in fact it wasn't this morning it was still last night, a mere ten minutes after I had gone to bed bizarely enough. I quickly got back into bed and hoped it wasn't some sort of sign.

It was another somewhat weird day with the selection of the slightly strange and bizare I had to deal with being more strange and bizare then normal. The customer who had the most massive overreaction I had ever heard a particular stand out.

My new role is a lot more KPI focussed then my last job. I have three main KPIs to focus on each day. One of which I'm slightly behind on where I need to do be, the other two I'm doing great in. In fact really, really great, in one my average score is three times higher then it has to be, which of course down to irony or the universe deciding to mock me means of course that I keep doing really well every day in this area and not having much luck in the one where I need to. All I can say to that is D'ohh!

C'est la vie I guess.

Later folks.

Here we go again

Due to Tap dance still being away with Grumpys car it was time for another round of musical cars this morning as Grumpy had to run me into work so he could borow the car so he could go out and get some things done before coming to pick me up this afternoon.

Of course having a special tendancy to get in ironys crosshairs a heck of a lot nothing went to plan. The usual massive traffic jams in the morning failed to materalise so I got to work stupidly early and I got a call this evening at bang on my quitting time a mili second before I could log off meaning I was late out.

It was also another busy day at work with the usual mix of the weird, wonderful and downright bizare, including having to explain why a bunch of car keys couldn't be considered documents and why we can't just send something to a whole country without knowing the city it's going to.

They also showed the first part of the trilogy of CSI episodes where a character from CSI las vegas first goes to miami, then new york then back to Las Vegas. However the slight flaw with this " Television event of the year" as they've advertised it, is that although CSI and CSI New york are in the current series, CSI miami isn''t. In fact we're a series behind, so not only have they blown the cliffhanger for most viewers we also had a lot of new characters who we had no clue as to who they were!

Anyway,

Later folks.

Oh so early

My first thought this morning when I woke up was why am I having to get up when it's still dark out. Isn't there some law againist it?

But there isn't and with that pesky rule that companies only pay you when you turn up for work I wasn't faced with much of a choice and had to drag myself out of bed, like it or not.

Still the early shift proved to be a rather interesting experience as initially you tend to get all of the people who are very focussed and know exactly what they need, then as mid morning approaches you start to get the more general queries and then by mid afternoon it switches to the more urgent calls with people who need things in a rush.

And I'm not even going to get started on having to deal with what must be the rudest customer ever.

It was also nice as the person who sits next to me is back after being off for a couple of weeks so I don't feel quite out on a limb as much. Not that we have much time to talk mind you, especially this afternoon when it just suddenly went totally, totally maniac and didn't let up for over a hour.
I could really do with not having that happen again for a loonnggg time.

I also realised that I'm in need of a new project as it were, to do something constructive and or meaningful. I'm a bit unfocussed right now and need something to direct my energies towards as I just keep doing lots of little odds and sods rather then anything really constructive.

Any suggestions anyone for a new project and or hobby?

Anyway,

Later folks.

Scuttle, Scuttle

We had to play musical chairs with my car this morning because as Tap Dance has borrowed Grumpys car he needed to borrow mine so he could get to his bowls morning but of course as I needed the car to get to church I had to drive to the chapel and he then too kthe car to get to bowls before coming back to pick me up.

Physics had one of his random thoughts this morning when he leant over to me and said " Do you think that anyone would try to claim political asylum in heaven by using the human rights act?" when I asked him what he meant he explained " Well they could say that if they were sent to hell they would be burned or tortured with pitchfolks and that would violate their human rights".

I decided not to ask him how he had got onto that train of thought. Somethings are best left unanswered.

The primary were singing a musical item and both Physics and I were amused to see midway through the song a guilty looking little head poke around the chapel door. This was followed unsurprisingly by the rest of a little lads body who proceeded to scuttle through the chapel bent over as low as he could before throwing himself down in a gap between the pews in a obivous attempt to avoid the gaze of his primary teacher.

At the start of Sunday school physics was telling us about he had been speaking to a girl he knew online who asked him when he was getting married. He responded asking her when she was going to get married. Her response was to say that he should ask her boyfriend that question. When we asked what his response was to that he simply smiled and stated in his matter of fact way that he told her that her boyfriend wasn't his type.

In Priesthood the ward music director came in to help us practise for a musical items the priesthood is supposed to be giving in a couple of weeks. She spilt the group into tennors, bass and all those who don't have a clue about sining who would be singing the tune. She seemed to be getting quite frustrated that the 'tune' group was far from in tune. She asked if we all knew if we were singing in tune or if we were singing one or two octaves below where we should be. I did want to point out that if we knew exactly what octave each of us sung in we wouldn't be in the middle group.

Well it's my first early shift tomorrow which should be interesting.

I hope.

Later folks!

Somewhat overdressed

Well I survived my first Saturday shift even if I was cursing when I arrived as they had forgotten to mention something rather important. Saturdays are always considered a dress down day so as you can imagine being in a shirt and tie I looked somewhat overdressed compared to everybody else on the floor.

Still the Saturday shift wasn't as bad as I was expecting, it wasn't quiet but it wasn't manic either, it was nicely busy, so you weren't busy all of the time but it wasn't quiet enough that you got bored between calls.

The other good news was that as my line manager was running the shift he took the opportunity to have our monthly catch up. I am progressing nicely in all areas and I'm surpassing my promotion targets which is good. The challenge now is to lift things to the next level as it were and start hitting the targets for 'regular' full timers.

Which is harder then you'd think as the job is surprisingly complicated and needs a lot of skill.

It's a bit strange only have one day 'break' before I'm back to work but at least I'm on earlys next week which means that I should be home well before 5pm.

anyway,

Later folks.