It’s long, don’t do TL;DR for the whole tale; you came for a story, you’re going to read one. Grammarly run, whatever mistakes are either on purpose or IDGAF about.
Anyone working retail call centers or tech support for retail stores may agree with me on this, yes the customers are assholes, but the hardest thing to deal with is the in-store employees. As a lifer in call centers, customers stopped bothering me years ago, sometimes a customer’s sheer stupidity with stick with me, but that is mostly so I can imagine the ways to eliminate them from the gene pool, but I digress. In my position, I, unfortunately, must contact our physical locations or other corporate depts. regularly, this has led to some interesting interactions.
I will preface the following by saying, most customers are assholes and give employees way more shit than they deserve, but when you are dealing with someone on the same team as you, don’t be a dick. In my company, the call center is loathed by the physical location staff, mainly because we force them to do their jobs and prevent them from just hanging up on callers or blowing them off; my T1 group is considered corporate agents and a report for the failure of duty from us can get an employee fired, however in the cases that it happened, 95% were the employees own doing. I will tell a story about that below. TL;DR of this preface, sometimes employees are justified in being dicks, but don’t score a goal for the opposing team.
For All Stories
M: Me
C: Caller
E: Employee
MG: Manger/T2 Rep
Tale One: Restroom Bandit
*Note: When calling an instore extension, it will ring to each extension in that group. This will make sense in a minute.
M: (General Greeting and info gathering) How may I help you?
C: Yes, I need to know if you have 24pk Coca-Cola in stock; they’re on sale. I spoke to E, and he said that he was in the bathroom and couldn’t look and hung up on me.
*At this point in my time here, this honestly doesn’t surprise me, but the part of my brain that exudes professionalism thinks, W(hy)T Effing F would you tell them that, make something up or transfer them.
M: I apologize for that; let me see if I can locate someone who will assist you.
*Generally, grocery is a ‘cold’ transfer, now I have to ‘warm’ transfer…
M: (Store transfer script intro), (when E said their name, I knew it was the same person caller said). Hi, I may have a customer you spoke to on the line regarding avail on (soda).
E: Yeah, I can’t do anything I am in the bathroom. So, yeah.
*Yes, they said, “So, yeah.”
M: I understand, is there anyone who might be able to find that out for me?
E: (Genuinely confused by this question). I don’t know, call the EXT for MG and see if they can, I gotta go.
*Here is where that phone system comes into play if he is in the bathroom and ‘occupied’ he didn’t have to answer the phone, he can let it bounce to any of the other food E/MG or even let it bounce to the Store MG if no one picks up, the fact that he answered the call while answering nature’s call baffles me.
*Ring MG EXT
M: (Script). Yes, I need to find out if we have (soda) in stock; called grocery, and E told me they were in the bathroom and couldn’t do anything.
MG: (audible groan of annoyance) They said they were where?
M: Bathroom
MG: (long exacerbated sigh) I am sorry, let me ask my Grocery MG.
*Short Pause, could hear the chatter of MG repeating the location of E to Grocery MG.
MG: Thank you, no out of stock…(There was more boring info, but it doesn’t matter for here)
M: Thank you, (Script)
*Pausing a couple of moments to laugh at the absurdity of this call and wondering is QA is pranking me to see if they can get me to break (I have a 98% QA average).
M: (Script) (Relay info)
C: Thank you. Do you know why he answered his phone in the bathroom?
M: No, I do not.
*End of call.
Tale Two: I really fucking hate fashion & Bonus: We have these EXT why?
This is a combined tale that encompasses two things that annoy the fuck out of me. The biggest being why do we have and EXT list that we are mandated to use when half our stores don’t use the EXT we are supposed to dial.
Part One: Fucking Fashion
This tale relates to our GM departments. In most of our GM areas, they can multitask, hardware may know some automotive, electronics can handle sporting goods, etc. Then there is fashion.
*Same cast as above
*Basics, caller wanting Sporting Good, they never pick up, call bounces.
E: Thank you for calling Fashion; this is E, how help? (yes, there was no middle to that last part)
M: Hello E, I am sorry, I have someone looking for Sporting Goods Item…
*before I can get anything else out of my mouth
E: I FASHION, NOT SPORTING GOODS, WHY YOU CALL ME? I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THAT! WHY YOU NOT CALL SPORTING GOOD?
*The ranting continued for about a minute. Also, I am not mocking her speech; she is not American, I am not going to guess ethnic origin, but her speech was very broken. I have dealt with her a few times, and I really think she hates me.
M: I am sorry E, I was trying to ask if you knew if anyone was in Sporting Goods right now?
*This may have been said through gritted teeth, but I tried to keep that “Voice” during it.
E: (sounding more pissed that I would ask her that) *screaming again, no caps this time, you get the point. You always do this. Why you call me. I don’t know. I FASHION, you understand, fa-sh-ion (yeah, condescending annunciation with an accent.)
*E and I have had the “How the phone system works” conversation more than I can count; they still think I am purposefully calling them.
M: Thank you. I will contact the manager.
*Yes, bitchy and slightly vindictive, but I am so over them.
*Levels the customer that I am still working on it calls MG EXT.
M: Hello MG, (Explains a TL;DR version of everything above)
MG: I will take the caller, and I will speak with E; this is the third one of you guys that has complained about them today.
*Put myself into “Break” state and transferred the call.
RANT Portion of the Tale:
There are about five departments that we have EXT for that, 98% of the locations don’t staff. They lump then together with other departments and are shocked that we would call the EXT for that DEPT and not know that the other DEPT handles them. Now, I am going on year four here (I think it might be five), and this has been going on since the beginning. I have alerted our Leads/Sups/KB Overlords; pretty much anyone who will listen, and that my emails don’t bounce when I send them. NOTHING has been done about it until we now have to WARM transfer to one because calls were continually dropping. You may be asking yourself, “If you know this, why don’t you just transfer to the EXT you know they use?” Good question, here is the answer, I fucking get marked down on QA because I am not using the EXT code listed on the EXT sheet.
Further gripe, one of the QAs that marked me down even noted in the notes that they called the correct EXT, and it was dead, and they called MG and was told the other EXT handles that department’s calls. I still lost points. That one really pissed me off because it took away my perfect month, 5/6 QA were 100%, and that one, 92% with a flag for ‘failing to follow transfer guidelines.’ I had to have a meeting with my TL about it. He told me he would forward the 25 emails I have sent him regarding the EXT to the higher-ups again, and we chatted about my new computer for the rest of the 15-minute meeting (I love my TL. He’s awesome and trying to get me a promotion right now).
Okay, this is long enough—storytime over chickadees. I will post Part Two when I next feel like thinking about work. It is 8:29 PM on a Monday, I am logged out early for a headache, and I am off for the next two days.
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