An entirely regrettable day
This day was one that was bad right from the start.
I came down with this "cold" about three weeks ago. I had to use a sick day on the following Monday because I could hardly talk. That was the 15th. By the end of that week I had thought I was over the cough. Actually, I was, sort of. The cough that resulted from sore throat was gone. And so was the cold, for the most part. So I stopped taking medicine. Then, at the start of this week the cough was back, but different. It felt like the cough I had when I got whooping cough back in 2001. But I figured that it couldn't possibly be that, and I've been medicating again. Then I find out this morning that there are cases of whooping cough cropping up here around town, so...it could be that I'm battling it again. Joy of joys! And while it's not going to kill me, it's no fun to deal with, either.
Then I get in to work. It was a quiet day, as Fridays have seemed to have been for the last year or so. I'm waiting for 32 minutes before I get my first call. The customer doesn't even let me finish my opening. She wants a supervisor. I try to get her to give me her phone number so I can pull up her account and hand her off to my supervisor. She doesn't want to, and instead starts talking about wanting to cancel because we haven't been able to help her. I ask her if she means that she wants to cancel the Premium Tech Support, or her DSL service, but she doesn't answer the question. Instead, she goes on about how no one wants to help her and that they just want to help her to cancel, and asks for the supervisor again. I again explain that I need her phone number. She continues to resist. I tell her that I can't give her to the supervisor until I have her phone number and her name. I stay firm and she finally gives me that information, after blaming the lack of customer support on the US being a democracy and saying that the US shouldn't be a democracy, but rather a fundamentalist government based on the Holy Bible (emphasis hers). I finally get her to my supervisor. While talking to him, she talks about how people are out to get her. How people look at her suspiciously because of her fine, flowing African robes. She had something to say about how people are out to get her and that's why black men date white and Asian women instead of her.
The lady's issue, what she couldn't be helped with by a plebian like me, was an email problem. A religious manifesto that she was sending out to people was in .wps format (Works word processor file) and the people receiving it couldn't open it. So all it took was a simple conversion to .doc format. While my supervisor doing this, I noticed the title on the document. It was "Crucify Barabbus and Spare Jesus Christ" and there was some sort of subtitle to it. Does she not realize that the point of Christianity is that Christ had to die on the cross to take away the sins of the people? Ugh...the ultra-religious really bug me because the don't seem to understand the scriptures that they seek to make us all live by.
Then at the end of the day I got a 3 1/2 hour call that caused me to be more than 1 1/2 hours late getting out of work. Thank goodness the customer was patient and understanding and easy to get along with. The problem was with the Verizon security software that she was trying to download. And I think we finally got it working for her, but I can't be sure.
Then I get home and the lappy isn't recognizing its hard drive. It only took me about 15 minutes to get it fixed (I'm posting from it now), but it was an annoyance on top of all of the rest of the wonderful annoyances of the day.
I came down with this "cold" about three weeks ago. I had to use a sick day on the following Monday because I could hardly talk. That was the 15th. By the end of that week I had thought I was over the cough. Actually, I was, sort of. The cough that resulted from sore throat was gone. And so was the cold, for the most part. So I stopped taking medicine. Then, at the start of this week the cough was back, but different. It felt like the cough I had when I got whooping cough back in 2001. But I figured that it couldn't possibly be that, and I've been medicating again. Then I find out this morning that there are cases of whooping cough cropping up here around town, so...it could be that I'm battling it again. Joy of joys! And while it's not going to kill me, it's no fun to deal with, either.
Then I get in to work. It was a quiet day, as Fridays have seemed to have been for the last year or so. I'm waiting for 32 minutes before I get my first call. The customer doesn't even let me finish my opening. She wants a supervisor. I try to get her to give me her phone number so I can pull up her account and hand her off to my supervisor. She doesn't want to, and instead starts talking about wanting to cancel because we haven't been able to help her. I ask her if she means that she wants to cancel the Premium Tech Support, or her DSL service, but she doesn't answer the question. Instead, she goes on about how no one wants to help her and that they just want to help her to cancel, and asks for the supervisor again. I again explain that I need her phone number. She continues to resist. I tell her that I can't give her to the supervisor until I have her phone number and her name. I stay firm and she finally gives me that information, after blaming the lack of customer support on the US being a democracy and saying that the US shouldn't be a democracy, but rather a fundamentalist government based on the Holy Bible (emphasis hers). I finally get her to my supervisor. While talking to him, she talks about how people are out to get her. How people look at her suspiciously because of her fine, flowing African robes. She had something to say about how people are out to get her and that's why black men date white and Asian women instead of her.
The lady's issue, what she couldn't be helped with by a plebian like me, was an email problem. A religious manifesto that she was sending out to people was in .wps format (Works word processor file) and the people receiving it couldn't open it. So all it took was a simple conversion to .doc format. While my supervisor doing this, I noticed the title on the document. It was "Crucify Barabbus and Spare Jesus Christ" and there was some sort of subtitle to it. Does she not realize that the point of Christianity is that Christ had to die on the cross to take away the sins of the people? Ugh...the ultra-religious really bug me because the don't seem to understand the scriptures that they seek to make us all live by.
Then at the end of the day I got a 3 1/2 hour call that caused me to be more than 1 1/2 hours late getting out of work. Thank goodness the customer was patient and understanding and easy to get along with. The problem was with the Verizon security software that she was trying to download. And I think we finally got it working for her, but I can't be sure.
Then I get home and the lappy isn't recognizing its hard drive. It only took me about 15 minutes to get it fixed (I'm posting from it now), but it was an annoyance on top of all of the rest of the wonderful annoyances of the day.