Living at my sister’s for two weeks was good. I got drunk one night, and had a 2 day hangover. That was bad - 2 whole days on one bottle of red wine. Great wine though, but I would say I am getting old. I was cold, her house may as well not had walls it was so cold, and then when i was sleeping in her bed, the three dooners she had on the bed basically meant that I was forced to lie still like i was trapped under their weight.

I am so tired this week, stress from work has been mounting, and I applied for another job, within the same company, just doing a different role. Would be good if I get it, because it would be out of the firing line in some aspects. I applied for it because MM thought it would be a good opportunity for me.  So did my parents and friends, but I really wanted to just ditch my job and move over to be with MM.

I got an email from an immigration person who said that MM and I don’t qualify as defacto because we haven’t lived together, we’d have to get married. I told him that last night.  Then of course, him saying I should apply for the job, means I would have to be here another 6 months at least. It’s an emotional issue, and we got a little snappy at eachother, because I really don’t want to do the long distance thing forever. I broke down and cried for a bit, I think in my head I had committed myself to leaving, and was getting ready for it, and now I feel like the rug has been pulled out from underneath me.

I don’t know what to do anymore. I just want him to make up his mind about what he wants. He kept changing the subject to something less serious, but this is very serious. I know however, it’s probably not the best time for us to talk about it because I am so stressed, and probably a little too emotional. He’s probably stressed about it as well.. but it did remind me of X and he’s nothing like X, so it’s an unfair, irrational comparison.

I frequent Whirpool - someone posted this up on an IRC channel I use, and I screen shot it before it was deleted.

The name has been deleted to protect his stupidity, but it’s great entertainment value.

Not that i podcast particularly alot, I do download and listen to things from time to time - it is with some degree of pride that I note that Australia’s very first podcamp is going to be in Perth. Perth got the most votes of all, their total vote, more than the other cities combined. Excellent work perthies!

Since the Podcamp is going to be in October, it’s perfect spring weather, great time of year for any type of event. Awesome work, I will have to see if I can attend, depending on my travel timetable.

We get different types of customers obviously at work, some are good, some are not so good. The good ones are the ones who laugh with you, or interact so that you feel good about yourself when you hang up. The ones who aren’t so good, are the ones that leave you feeling a bit crushed after a call.

We have the cheater customers. The ones who ring up and ask questions like

“can you send my phone bill to my work address? I don’t want my family (read wife) getting the bill” or

“please remove itemised calls from my account…” or the ones who ask

“will my wife be able to find out what websites I have viewed from my phone?” my reply to that question was “no sir, but she will see you have downloaded several screen savers like ‘tits and ass’ ”

Most of us who have worked at the call centre for any length of time have been accused of breaking up marriages/relationships because a partner has cheated on the other.

Other customers have rung up, told us they are on their deathbeds and causing them to die quicker of whatever cancer/disease they have at the time due to their phonebills. I’ve had this happen to me recently, and it just took my breath away in shock as this angry angry human vented their bitterness and anger at me.

One woman once said to another supervisor who is a co-worker of mine, after she purchased a dialup CD.. “no one told ME you needed a modem to connect to the internet” After we picked up ourselves up off the floor from laughing so hard we just gave her the money back and closed her account.

I remember when I was doing time in the complaints department so to speak, I rang back a woman who had lodged a complaint through the TIO. As I completed introducing myself, she started screaming at me at the top of her lungs. I sent her a letter instead.

A funny customer once rang up..totally off his face drunk and said “I think, *hic* that this is a mistake for the both of us” I paused, and replied “so does this mean you’re breaking up with me?” no idea who he was, but apparently he was!

My favourite customer of all time, was a little old man who rang up to pay a massive phone bill racked up by his grandson. He was asking about his payment options, and explained the circumstances, and I asked him, “Can’t you get his parents to help pay?” and the little old man sighed. “No, I can’t” he replied, “see they have a surprise waiting for him for his birthday, and I don’t want to spoil it for him”.. seriously, I just wanted to whip out my credit card and pay the bill for him instead. My heart just melted.

Working in a call centre can be funny and shocking at times. I know I wrote a post a few days ago about how I felt when I took those nasty calls, but we do get some enjoyment out of the other calls too.

All I did was buy a nice bottle of Coonawarra Shiraz and have it with some nice chinese food last night and kept drinking. It was tasty. I drank the shiraz like I did good coffee, in measured but appreciative sips, savouring each mouthful as it slid down my throat and made me so so warm.

Then I stumbled to bed.

Then I woke up at 7am, rang work and croaked “what time am I starting today? 11.30am? Great, see you then” hung up the mobile, reset the alarmclock and slept whilst my hangover settled in.

I showered, washed hair, makeupped myself, and slid into work feeling like death. Who knew what a call centre was like, when the volume was turn up loud. Damn.

I had many calls to deal with, I wanted people to treat me delicately, but instead, they laughed. Oh how I hated them. Now, i sit here at 1.20am, I still have my hangover headache, and I wish that I could just drink like I used to, and not feel the consequences.

*sigh*

I admit it, I am into escapism. When I was in primary school, being bright didn’t mean you were popular, it meant that you were bullied. So I took refuge in the school libraries of every school I went to at lunch times. At recess times, I hid in the school chapels (until I got to an all girls school). I took part in the school choirs, and school orchestras so that I would find refuge in similar people. I read alot though. I discovered the TinTin in Tibet series, and Asterix and Obelix. One of my favourite books of all time was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Then I discovered science fiction and fantasy novels, my sense of detachment from the real world whilst I was growing up became pronounced.

I flew with the dragons, rolled the dice with the wizards, read Jules Verne, HG Wells (War of the Worlds), marvelled at writers like Greg Egan and Philip K Dick. Then many novels I read were turned into movies. Philip K Dick seems very popular:

Completed Films

1. Blade Runner (1982) Based on “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
2. Screamers (1995) Based on “Second Variety”
3. Total Recall (1990) Based on “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”
4. Confessions d’un Barjo (French, 1992) Based on “Confessions of a Crap Artist”
5. Impostor (2001) Based on “Impostor.”
6. Minority Report (2002) Based on “The Minority Report.”
7. Paycheck (December 25, 2003) Based on “Paycheck.”
8. A Scanner Darkly (July 7, 2006) Based on “A Scanner Darkly”
9. Next (April 27, 2007) Based on “The Golden Man”

Minority report is similar but different to the movie. Read the book first.

So then I got hooked up into playing star wars with my Xbox. It’s all death and drama, the dark side V the light. Good versus bad, the moral and immoral choices. At every twist and turn of the story, there is a clear moral choice to be made. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy Star Wars movies (cept the last one - seriously, how corny was it having Darth Vader screaming “noooo” when padme died? - did anyone else laugh? I sure did). Corny factor aside, It’s very much about real life, minus the bloodshed.

A good science fiction book these days, is less about the monsters, and more about the choices and circumstances that lead the characters to make moral decisions which can have a far reaching ripple effect on the universe. One of the best authors who writes about these kinds of decisions, is Philip K Dick. I can’t recommend him as a read highly enough.

Well, perhaps that’s a bit too deep for people reading this, so I will be adjourning the post whilst I go to the wookie planet and slay some very bad wookiees.

As is my wont, when I am stressed on the real life side of things, my online life gets interrupted and I don’t really do much, or participate much in the online lifestyle. This includes, reading, posting and commenting on my, and other people’s blogs, even forums have suffered. The source of my current stress is of course home and work. I don’t think really there is much else.  Whilst mother dearest breaking her wrist was indeed stressful, and she’s now in the midst of another health scare that I really do not want to participate in, I have found the constant staying at home, cooking on the weekends, going shopping for food, dealing with parents arguing over smoking and the like, is indeed, stressful.

Moving home when you are an adult, like myself is a smart move when paying off credit card debt, and saving money. I am aiming to save enough to pay off the CC, and ensure that I have enough to travel on overseas for several months before considering employment opportunities. This naturally leads to my next stress point which is work.

I would like to rant and rave about it, but what’s the point. The amount of customer contact has increased by.. I don’t know - close to 20% from what it used to be. As a TL - I am forced to take escalated calls from customers who want to rave about the lengthy call cues, their bills, and anything else they can think of whilst they have been on hold for nearly 45 minutes. They are writing down key points whilst they listen to our hold music, and some nice lady telling them about how important their call is to us.

Newsflash - we know the call queues are long. We know you have been on hold for 45+++ minutes, we’re sorry. Very Very Sorry. Shouting at call centre staff about the wait does nothing but make them and sometimes, me, want to cry after being abused for 10 minutes on the phone. Thanks to the woman who screamed at me for 20 minutes over $1.80 that wasn’t refunded back to her account. I’m very glad then you got that off your chest, now please, hang up, and let me try and pull my shattered self together so the consultants sitting near my desk don’t see my face and how I feel, since I have to keep them motivated and flying the flag.

Still I get up every day and go to work. Because today, a man who escalated a call to me, who was angry about some detail about his plan, remembered that I spoke to him 2 yrs ago about his mobile phone issues. He remembered that I tried my best to help him with the phone, and he said thank you, and that now his phone was working, and he appreciated the effort I put into him. That made me smile, and that is why I post tonight, because after a shit 2 weeks at work, he reminded me why I still worked there.