When I moved departments, I picked up a new Manager of sorts - I was being managed by 2 ppl based on the eastern seaboard.  Neither of whom were particularly interested in working with me. The only projects I got to complete were the ones I got before those two became my official bosses. I finished them, and had no other project stuff to do. Not necessarily a bad thing, because I had more time to learn about my job, but another project was handed to me to help with, and that really made me learn a whole new world of lingo and I loved it. Then the takeover talk started, more redundancies, and I realised that it didn’t matter what I put into my job, I wasn’t going to get the reward..

So I put in my resignation after I got this new job. I called up one boss and told them, whilst the new manager of the perth call centre (other one was made redundant for no reason) phoned up the other boss and told him. The bizarre thing, is I will be working for a direct competitor yet,  i’ve not been escorted out, they still want me there.  The other boss hasn’t called me, emailed me to wish me luck, or to say sorry you are going. They want me to go, like they want everyone else in that call centre to go. It’s pretty sad to see a company I loved working for, for so long just .. crumble into dust before my very eyes.

So I am going, on my terms, and I couldn’t be happier.

I have been offered a position in another call centre as a team leader!!! I will be exiting the hell hole I have existed in for the last 9 months in just a few short weeks.

Very happy. Very happy indeed. The pay is almost 10k more than what I get paid now.

All I need to do, is decide when I want to quit So I think I’ll arrange to quit and start my new job in mid March.

Due to my work not paying a bill for a medical test I had to have, the medical centre have in turn, billed me - and about to send me to a credit agency and blacken my credit file forever.

I’ve contacted a few people / organisations to help me. I could pay the bill, but I shouldn’t have to. I’m pretty devastated that this has happened to me. It really does show the lack of care the company has for me. Scary thing is, it’s happening to others in the same office - we’re all getting sent off to a credit agency. Unbelievable.

Yes.. just a short note to comment on something funny that happened at work today.

A customer called to get help with his modem.

He had to do a hardware reset

He used a wooden toothpick

“what’s that smell?” he said.

“what smell?” the CSO replied

“why is the modem hot?” the customer asked, “is that smoke?”

“erm” says the consultant

“what’s that glow?” cries the customer

“go unplug the power pack, and smother your modem in a towel” replies the cool headed CSO, “I guess we need to order you a new modem”

Massive post here, so be prepared - I suggest coffee, some chocolate, and the William Tell Overture for background music as I fill in the massive gaps over the last few weeks.

To summarise, I’m still alive, but working 7 days a week. I picked up a second job to earn money - I moved out of my parent’s house, because I don’t particularly want MM sharing the same room with me under my parent’s roof when he comes over to visit in a couple of months or so. 2nd job pays for the extra rent I am forking out each fortnight from what I used to pay. The median is about $350 per week here in Perth, my previous place got bumped up to $230 from $145, so when I moved home I payed off my credit card, and needed to move back out. Now I have moved, I’m paying rent of $250 per week.

The pluses for this, is I get my own space again, and I can watch TV the way I want to, I can cook and eat the food I want to, sleep in, and not have to do dad’s laundry. Other thing I guess is mum doesn’t see me when I am stressed. She’s realised how stressed I am and has started worrying about me. Being out of her immediate eyesight, I can deal with my stress privately.

I wish I could say something positive about work, but I can’t. Except that we’ve lost our customer focus. When our GM resigned, we had no idea just how much shit he was protecting us from. Now we face mass resignations that we can’t control, from our support team, and pretty soon about half of the team leader group in our cust. service team  are about to resign. We lost 2 last week, and there’s about 3 more about to resign in the next 4 weeks.

I have another job aswell, market researching.  It’s perfectly legal for me to call people on Sundays - so quit whining, don’t you think if market researchers could afford not to work on a weekend, that we wouldn’t be doing just that? I don’t want to work weekends, but I don’t have much of a choice right now. Neither do the other freaks I share a call centre with. You think there are desperate people on Dole queues? Gads, You should see who I work with right now :/

What is it?

Acoustic incidents are sudden, unexpected loud noises occurring through a receiver during telephone or
headset use. They may be crackles, hisses, whistles or shrieks or high-pitched noises.

Although many acoustic incidents occur in call centres throughout Australia, only a very small proportion cause
the symptoms known as ‘acoustic shock’ in employees who have experienced them.

The noises can come from a wide variety of sources, either within the transmission system or from the customer end.

Quite a few have been had in the call centre since about February this year, I’ve had 6 people in my team have them, and tonight I had one. So what can cause these nasty sounds?

Within the transmission system:

• faulty or damaged networks, telephones and headset equipment;
• broadband and narrowband interference; and
• mobile phones or fax machines used in call centres.

From the customer end:

• noises made close to the receiver;
• such as people whistling and babies screaming;
• feedback oscillation from some cordless phones;
• alarm signals and signalling tones;
• phone receivers slammed down or dropped; and
• tones from misdirected facsimiles and modems;

Awesome! Some symptoms include, headache, ear ache, sharp pain, ear feeling full, that type of thing. So I guess tomorrow, I will be sent off to get forms signed and hearing test conducted so I can be told officially i am deaf! w00t

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.

Once again my mighty keyboard warrior persona has reared it’s ugly head again to prattle on about the world.

I have had a shit week. Yes, complete crap. It started on Monday, I was called @ 9.35 in the morning, AFTER I had caught the bus to be told I would need to work until 8pm due to someone calling in sick. GREAT! Of course, I had to work back one day the week before due to someone else calling in sick. I don’t get home until 9.30pm at night when I work till 8pm, so it’s a real pain in the ass.

Wednesday morning when I was rushing to catch the bus.  I was looking very nice, you know, black long coat, awesome scarf, hot shirt,  black pants, and I had two bags with me, my shoulder bag, and a calico bag holding my lunch. I had my hair nice, make up,  I was the picture of professionalism.

Until I tripped over an invisible pixie in my haste to cross a rather large highway, in front of a rubbish truck. I hit the bitumen very inelegantly.  Arms outstretched, I had a moment of wonder as my body lost contact with earth, and I stared at the blue metal rushing up towards me. “oh shit” I think was the thought as I slammed into it with my right knee and arms outstretched. I looked to my right to see a rubbish truck approaching and picked up my shit, all over the bloody road and hobbled quickly to the centre island, valiantly pulling myself together again and not rubbing my knee as internally I screamed in pain.

Mother of F%$^ that hurt. I hobbled across the rest of the highway, acutely aware that about 12 cars had seen my spill, thankfully the snobby girl who catches the same bus as me didn’t see my fall. I sank gracefully onto the bench and rubbed my leg surrupticiously as the occupants of various cars goosenecked at me.  I got into work and negotiated the 20 steps up to the main entrance, and stayed put in my seat all day. I could feel my leg bruising up quite nicely, my right hip ached dully and I glowered at anyone that wanted me to do anything remotely active.

Thursday, the day before my long weekend.  I had my knee brace on, and had to negotiate the delicate matter of washing my hair, and doing my brassiere up. See, I have long hair, it was my washing day, and the pain in my shoulders from the impact of the day before was pretty severe. Until I tried to put my brassiere on. WOW. Who knew how many shoulder muscles are actually used. That should become one of those exercises for women who want awesome shoulders, we use alot of muscle there to just clip the bra you know. That signalled a crap day for me again. Friday arrived. Mercifully. I slept in and had a great time in bed.

Sunday … well apart from the gale force winds, my washing from Saturday being blown off the line and into next door’s back yard, it was fine. Until I went out, forgot to turn off my headlights, got a flat battery. Had to call J as she was on her way home for help. We went to Bunnings, found some 400amp jumper leads, some kind of wind up torch that doesn’t need batteries and got my car running just fine. Eventually, after finishing coffee at 5pm, I got home at 7pm. That particular trip cost me an extra $44 I wasn’t expecting.

Let’s hope this week is better.