Monday, April 28, 2008
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Lobster and the carrot on the string pt. 2
Back to business. As I had alluded to some time ago, Jenn basically had sent out a request to permanently switch shifts with someone else in the call center so that we could have the same hours/days off. Well it turned out that someone on my team took her up on her offer and the gears started turning towards a shift swap. It was decided that the switch would occur the first work week of the following month, which was several weeks away. During this time it was made known to management that Jenn and I were engaged and we made sure that this was not against any sort of policy; everything was approved and she moved onto my team. Coincidentally the person that left my team had the top stats, and being that the switch technically took place 1 or 2 days before the month ended, I took top performer by default (Woo! Default!).
Anyway, Jenn and I were on the same team with the exact same hours and days off. All was good. However, before our first week together was through an ominous cloud had appeared on the horizon. Apparently, two people on another team had started dating and their manager was making one of them change teams. Somehow our names came up (I have no idea how, nor any idea who the two people were) and they asked why we got to be on the same team while they couldn't. Rather than allow that couple to stay together, or even deny them and treat this situation on a case-by-case basis, Sprint did what it does best: it went back on it's word.
After several meetings and a very heated (but professional) email to my supervisor/manager it was decided Jenn would have to move to another team. The decision was very offensive to me because we were basically treated as if we had somehow arranged this behind managements back, when in reality we had gone out of our way to get approval before the change took place... and then waited weeks for the change to go into effect. Ultimately, she was able to keep the same shift, so overall it was a bittersweet ending.
Sprint's repeated lack of professionalism as an organization, combined with mandatory overtime, the stress of being thrust onto floor support with no training, and the cruel reality of being placed into a position to help people (customer service) and not being empowered to do so had really started to wear me down. The button I use the most on my phone is the transfer button...
I sent another strongly worded email to my supervisor which basically said that I had no interest in building a career with a company with such blatant disregard for the satisfaction of it's customer's and employees (at least they're unbiased in their indifference). As such I asked to be removed from floor support and requested my position be given to someone with an eye for advancement. Interestingly this sparked a lot of support to my cause. I met with my supervisor, Danielle, and she completely agreed with the issues I raised. Danielle, in turn, talked to one of her supervisor friends (who was actually one of Jenn's old supervisors) for advice and got her all worked up. She is half Puerto Rican and very feisty and sometimes hot tempered, but overall very nice and funny. She ran into her manager's office and basically started yelling and venting her own related frustrations. She also made the point that something was really wrong with the company when someone like me, who really likes helping people, has become so jaded.
It escalated further and the supervisor that runs the floor support program came and pulled me off of the phones and we walked around a little and had a talk about my frustrations. Basically he said that he really didn't want to lose me, that he thought I would make a good supervisor and that floor support is a good way to get noticed for advancement. He asked me to take a couple or three weeks off from the program to distance myself a little and think about what I want to do, which I greatly appreciated. So much of our communication at Sprint is handed down impersonally through Memos and emails that it is nice to communicate with a face.
Anyway, enough of that. Since then, mandatory overtime has been done away with (earlier than expected!) and I am feeling much less burnt out at work. Positive changes are taking place, though sometimes excruciatingly slowly. Still, I am planning to write a letter (essay?) to the director about my views on why I think Sprint ultimately fails in regards to customer service in the hopes that we can turn things around, but I have not had the energy yet.
Things are looking up, I have a three-day weekend coming up for my birthday. Roughly two weeks after that Jenn and I will be on vacation! I can't wait! We've weathered quite a storm and I am ready for some good times again.
Today's word: Carrot.
Anyway, Jenn and I were on the same team with the exact same hours and days off. All was good. However, before our first week together was through an ominous cloud had appeared on the horizon. Apparently, two people on another team had started dating and their manager was making one of them change teams. Somehow our names came up (I have no idea how, nor any idea who the two people were) and they asked why we got to be on the same team while they couldn't. Rather than allow that couple to stay together, or even deny them and treat this situation on a case-by-case basis, Sprint did what it does best: it went back on it's word.
After several meetings and a very heated (but professional) email to my supervisor/manager it was decided Jenn would have to move to another team. The decision was very offensive to me because we were basically treated as if we had somehow arranged this behind managements back, when in reality we had gone out of our way to get approval before the change took place... and then waited weeks for the change to go into effect. Ultimately, she was able to keep the same shift, so overall it was a bittersweet ending.
Sprint's repeated lack of professionalism as an organization, combined with mandatory overtime, the stress of being thrust onto floor support with no training, and the cruel reality of being placed into a position to help people (customer service) and not being empowered to do so had really started to wear me down. The button I use the most on my phone is the transfer button...
I sent another strongly worded email to my supervisor which basically said that I had no interest in building a career with a company with such blatant disregard for the satisfaction of it's customer's and employees (at least they're unbiased in their indifference). As such I asked to be removed from floor support and requested my position be given to someone with an eye for advancement. Interestingly this sparked a lot of support to my cause. I met with my supervisor, Danielle, and she completely agreed with the issues I raised. Danielle, in turn, talked to one of her supervisor friends (who was actually one of Jenn's old supervisors) for advice and got her all worked up. She is half Puerto Rican and very feisty and sometimes hot tempered, but overall very nice and funny. She ran into her manager's office and basically started yelling and venting her own related frustrations. She also made the point that something was really wrong with the company when someone like me, who really likes helping people, has become so jaded.
It escalated further and the supervisor that runs the floor support program came and pulled me off of the phones and we walked around a little and had a talk about my frustrations. Basically he said that he really didn't want to lose me, that he thought I would make a good supervisor and that floor support is a good way to get noticed for advancement. He asked me to take a couple or three weeks off from the program to distance myself a little and think about what I want to do, which I greatly appreciated. So much of our communication at Sprint is handed down impersonally through Memos and emails that it is nice to communicate with a face.
Anyway, enough of that. Since then, mandatory overtime has been done away with (earlier than expected!) and I am feeling much less burnt out at work. Positive changes are taking place, though sometimes excruciatingly slowly. Still, I am planning to write a letter (essay?) to the director about my views on why I think Sprint ultimately fails in regards to customer service in the hopes that we can turn things around, but I have not had the energy yet.
Things are looking up, I have a three-day weekend coming up for my birthday. Roughly two weeks after that Jenn and I will be on vacation! I can't wait! We've weathered quite a storm and I am ready for some good times again.
Today's word: Carrot.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Lobster and the carrot on the string pt. 1
My how time flies. It seems it has already been several days since my last entry. I would like to say that a lot has happened since then, so I will.
One nice perk at work is that each month the top performers on our teams are generally rewarded with gift cards. Each team and/or supervisor will decide what the goal for the team is (be it your average time on each call; conformance -- how well you conform to your schedule -- i.e. not taking unscheduled bathroom breaks, etc.). It is not uncommon for me to squirrel away one or two of these cards each month as my stats are rather good, but lately I have been having some trouble getting a hold of any. This is mainly due to the fact that my manager has not been handing them out.
The excuse given to us was that her cat had run away. Regardless of whether or not it was the cat's responsibility to do the shopping, waiting nearly two and a half months for the cards seemed a little excessive. However, I finally had the gift cards from January and February in my hands and was quite impressed with their randomness: $25 for Red Lobster, $25 for AMC movie theaters, and $15 for McDonald's. I had thought to give back the McDonald's card but this seemed rude on the off chance it was the parting gift of my manager's feline companion.
Friday night came and Jenn and I decided to head to Red Lobster. At the entrance we passed the smiling benefactors of our feast-to-come, laughing and jostling for position within the lobster tank. I wished I could eat them all; as it was I decided on a barbecued chicken with shrimp, which was very good. Jenn, on the other hand, went for the Ultimate Feast and mercifully ate one of our friends from the entrance along with some of his fallen comrades. I supposed they could they could have been the bitterest of enemies but they seemed happy enough on the plate with one another. If they weren't, they said nothing.
The next night we took advantage of the AMC card to go see The Ruins. It was pretty standard horror movie fare, but was suitably gruesome to scare Jenn and I. So as not to ruin it for anyone else eagerly anticipating the film, I shall give my breakdown in white text and you may select the passage to reveal it's message: Some people lived, the likable characters were not among them. Some people died. There was no twist, which I suppose is a twist in itself. The ruins themselves didn't actually kill anyone. The least likable character with the fewest lines became the hero. Highly recommended.
Last but not least... Jenn was able to switch schedules at work to have both the exact same schedule as me and be on my team, courtesy of management. However, by the end of the week the decision was made that she would have to move, courtesy of management. More on this next time in The carrot on the string pt. 2. Please look forward to it.
Today's word: Lobster.
One nice perk at work is that each month the top performers on our teams are generally rewarded with gift cards. Each team and/or supervisor will decide what the goal for the team is (be it your average time on each call; conformance -- how well you conform to your schedule -- i.e. not taking unscheduled bathroom breaks, etc.). It is not uncommon for me to squirrel away one or two of these cards each month as my stats are rather good, but lately I have been having some trouble getting a hold of any. This is mainly due to the fact that my manager has not been handing them out.
The excuse given to us was that her cat had run away. Regardless of whether or not it was the cat's responsibility to do the shopping, waiting nearly two and a half months for the cards seemed a little excessive. However, I finally had the gift cards from January and February in my hands and was quite impressed with their randomness: $25 for Red Lobster, $25 for AMC movie theaters, and $15 for McDonald's. I had thought to give back the McDonald's card but this seemed rude on the off chance it was the parting gift of my manager's feline companion.
Friday night came and Jenn and I decided to head to Red Lobster. At the entrance we passed the smiling benefactors of our feast-to-come, laughing and jostling for position within the lobster tank. I wished I could eat them all; as it was I decided on a barbecued chicken with shrimp, which was very good. Jenn, on the other hand, went for the Ultimate Feast and mercifully ate one of our friends from the entrance along with some of his fallen comrades. I supposed they could they could have been the bitterest of enemies but they seemed happy enough on the plate with one another. If they weren't, they said nothing.
The next night we took advantage of the AMC card to go see The Ruins. It was pretty standard horror movie fare, but was suitably gruesome to scare Jenn and I. So as not to ruin it for anyone else eagerly anticipating the film, I shall give my breakdown in white text and you may select the passage to reveal it's message: Some people lived, the likable characters were not among them. Some people died. There was no twist, which I suppose is a twist in itself. The ruins themselves didn't actually kill anyone. The least likable character with the fewest lines became the hero. Highly recommended.
Last but not least... Jenn was able to switch schedules at work to have both the exact same schedule as me and be on my team, courtesy of management. However, by the end of the week the decision was made that she would have to move, courtesy of management. More on this next time in The carrot on the string pt. 2. Please look forward to it.
Today's word: Lobster.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
I have a blog
It has occurred to me recently that since graduating from college it has become increasingly difficult to keep in touch with friends and family. Strangely enough, one of my friends who I feel the most up to date with is Erik... and he's in France. He keeps a [somewhat] regular blog about his adventures in Europe and I have decided to start my own to detail my fabulous adventures in Denver.
Lately Jenn and I have been really busy with work. We have been working at a call center for Sprint for many months now (me since August, Jenn since October) during which time it has gone from 'fun' to 'ok' to 'bad' to 'worse.' Basically what we do is we take calls from dealers and retail agents calling in from stores (Best Buy, Radio Shack, Sprint Stores, etc.) who are having problems placing orders for cell phones and service and we solve these problems.
It all began with several weeks of training. This basically consisted of:
As I sat pondering the situation I couldn't help but think that the answers to this dealer's questions couldn't be found at the bottom of a box of Crayola, and I told him so. Through some coaching I soon learned this was not an acceptable response and thus began the descent from 'good' to 'bad' to 'worse.' As it stands now, the only coloring I see is on the conformance report I receive from my supervisor indicating in bright pink ink that I may have used the bathroom too many times for a Wednesday and I may need to rethink the efficiency at which my body digests liquid.
Though not all was bad in the land of Sprint. After months of me declining the offer and showing no interest, my supervisor was finally able to convince me to join our floor support staff. By signing me up when I was not paying attention she was able to bypass my reluctance. Floor support is basically a group of people from the department that know their way around the systems well and walk around with walkie talkies and answer people's questions around the call center. Most of the supervisors did not come from our department originally and are unable to assist with a lot of issues, so we are really the last line of help.
I decided that going from telling our sales agents, "there's nothing we can do for you" to telling my friends and co-workers, "there's nothing we can do for you" might be a good change of pace so I decided to play along. The week leading up to my fist shift on floor support was filled with excitement and anticipation. However, as the day grew nearer it occurred to me that I had no idea how to do it really and as it turned out, my supervisor was on vacation for 2 weeks. Fortunately, one of the women on my team is on floor support and she took me under her wing.
She put in a schedule request to take me off the phones for a bit so I could shadow someone on floor support and get the hang of it. This was denied. No matter, I thought, surely someone else can help. Unfortunately, neighboring supervisors had no idea either.
Finally the big day arrived. Luckily it turned out that Jenn's supervisor, Jenn, knew what she was doing and was able to assist me in getting started. Fortunately, it was a slow day and everything went smoothly. However, 45 minutes later I soon learned that through some error all of the codes we had in the system for the price plans we offer had somehow got deleted or changed, causing mass panic. Mistaking the walkie talkie in my hand for a never-ending supply of knowledge, I was called upon again and again for solutions... which I gave in spades. Only time will tell whether or not they were of use.
As it stands now, we are on week 3 of 7 weeks of mandatory overtime (8 hours per week minimum). Things are going well, considering, and we have a paid 2 week vacation coming up in May. That's it for today.
p.s. I have decided to feed Youtube videos at the bottom of my blog based on my word of the day. Today's word is KITTENS. Please enjoy responsibly.
Lately Jenn and I have been really busy with work. We have been working at a call center for Sprint for many months now (me since August, Jenn since October) during which time it has gone from 'fun' to 'ok' to 'bad' to 'worse.' Basically what we do is we take calls from dealers and retail agents calling in from stores (Best Buy, Radio Shack, Sprint Stores, etc.) who are having problems placing orders for cell phones and service and we solve these problems.
It all began with several weeks of training. This basically consisted of:
- Playing games
- Coloring with markers
- Learning about fun games you can play with markers
- Getting free cell phone and service
As I sat pondering the situation I couldn't help but think that the answers to this dealer's questions couldn't be found at the bottom of a box of Crayola, and I told him so. Through some coaching I soon learned this was not an acceptable response and thus began the descent from 'good' to 'bad' to 'worse.' As it stands now, the only coloring I see is on the conformance report I receive from my supervisor indicating in bright pink ink that I may have used the bathroom too many times for a Wednesday and I may need to rethink the efficiency at which my body digests liquid.
Though not all was bad in the land of Sprint. After months of me declining the offer and showing no interest, my supervisor was finally able to convince me to join our floor support staff. By signing me up when I was not paying attention she was able to bypass my reluctance. Floor support is basically a group of people from the department that know their way around the systems well and walk around with walkie talkies and answer people's questions around the call center. Most of the supervisors did not come from our department originally and are unable to assist with a lot of issues, so we are really the last line of help.
I decided that going from telling our sales agents, "there's nothing we can do for you" to telling my friends and co-workers, "there's nothing we can do for you" might be a good change of pace so I decided to play along. The week leading up to my fist shift on floor support was filled with excitement and anticipation. However, as the day grew nearer it occurred to me that I had no idea how to do it really and as it turned out, my supervisor was on vacation for 2 weeks. Fortunately, one of the women on my team is on floor support and she took me under her wing.
She put in a schedule request to take me off the phones for a bit so I could shadow someone on floor support and get the hang of it. This was denied. No matter, I thought, surely someone else can help. Unfortunately, neighboring supervisors had no idea either.
Finally the big day arrived. Luckily it turned out that Jenn's supervisor, Jenn, knew what she was doing and was able to assist me in getting started. Fortunately, it was a slow day and everything went smoothly. However, 45 minutes later I soon learned that through some error all of the codes we had in the system for the price plans we offer had somehow got deleted or changed, causing mass panic. Mistaking the walkie talkie in my hand for a never-ending supply of knowledge, I was called upon again and again for solutions... which I gave in spades. Only time will tell whether or not they were of use.
As it stands now, we are on week 3 of 7 weeks of mandatory overtime (8 hours per week minimum). Things are going well, considering, and we have a paid 2 week vacation coming up in May. That's it for today.
p.s. I have decided to feed Youtube videos at the bottom of my blog based on my word of the day. Today's word is KITTENS. Please enjoy responsibly.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
