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...does not mean you have the right to be a prick.
OK I *know* I haven't been on here in who-knows-how-long so forgive the length of this post.
If you can't tell from my nick, I'm in NZ & for anyone who missed it, bout a month ago we had an earthquake of disastrous proportions. I won't go into details.
Anywho, pretty much from minute 1 I - like many others in my company, who I'm so proud of - just jumped in & started doing any & everything we could. We'd come up with *anything* we could do to help people. I work in telecommunications, so it was - is - pretty damn important to people (just sayin').
I put in over 20 hours OT in the first week, by the 2nd week had pretty much burnt myself out - and I'm not saying this to be immodest, I'm saying it cauz I was *freaking* over ppl I know down there - and there's a lot - and so both emotionally fragile AND physically exhausted and everyone I dealt with those 1st 2 weeks were wonderful. It was truly humbling. Then, I guess, things wore off.
I've had 2 people have me in tears in the last couple weeks.
First lady, I pulled out all the stops to try get her stuff working (I work 3rd lvl faults) cauz there's rubble & downed stuff EVERYWHERE & there's no way I could get any techs to her anytime soon, and even with the magic ppl were working, I didn't trust getting orders run in the time she needed it (ie - yesterday).
Then I'm talking to her, on her mobile, and just basically out of nowhere, she (TOTALLY) misheard something I said as "I understand" or something to that effect.
She started going nuts.
Like, "you have no idea what I'm going thru!" and ranting about all that she's going thru (while my heart is just breaking, in all seriousness, it was so hard to hear
) and then started being really personal, really nasty.
She just went full-steam and then hung up on me and I literally was nearly in tears.
Mainly cauz I truly, honestly, felt for her - and cauz I felt so horrible that she'd just totally gotten things wrong - that wasn't what I said, and that definitely wasn't what I'd said.
Then I went outside for a smoke & to chill out, and my coworker pointed out, she didn't even know I wasn't FROM Christchurch cauz - as all the locals know - we have a huge building and base down there, not to mention it was plastered all over the news.
FWIW I worked magic and got everything exactly perfect - free of charge - and called her work to test it. I was still shaky & the lady I talked to actually asked *me* if I was alright. I mumbled that the customer had gone off at me, and then made some excuse for her. And she says (to the effect of) "oh, I'm so sorry. But then, it's pretty stressful here!" ... Yeah, I got off the phone pretty quick.
A) that's no excuse to scream & carry on at a stranger, and B) again, you don't even know where I am.
Then last week I had to cut off a customer (likewise, down in ChCh) who'd been repeatedly warned about spamming cauz they kept ignoring us. The 2nd lvl guy who talked to him told me that he just "couldn't care less".
Same customer logs a fault for no internet (dunno how it got put on the wrong a/c *sigh* but oh well), and I pick it up & call the contact - a young guy - back & explain why. Say we talked to <contact> and warned him repeatedly.... He's cool, very apologetic, says he'll get his IT onto it... Puts me onto his boss, who is likewise all of the above, I give them my number & say to get their IT to call me ASAP so we can all get on it & work it all out together. Everything's friendly.
Then about 3 minutes later our number rings. I pick the call up. It's the boss's boss - the very guy who had not been interested.
He says "Are you <myname>?"
I say yes...
And he says, "I heard you cut our phones & internet off?"
I say, "no, I had to suspend your internet because..." AND HE STARTS SCREAMING. OBSCENITIES. Personal ones - at me. I just sat there stammering.
And don't get me wrong, I'm a pretty tough chick (just ask my minions) if I do say myself. And being a female [and] in this industry, I've had my fair share of abuse.
This. Had. Me. Shaking.
I finally say, "can I speak to your manager?" or something & he laughs & says
"<expletive>, I'm the Managing Director of this company" so I quickly get a word in to say "Well, I'm gonna put you onto my manager, OK?" then put him on hold. My manager saw the whole thing & made me keep the guy on hold :P
Shitty thing #1? I talk to the nice young guy & his nice boss & mention that he screamed at me, and they say "Oh, you know, everyone's just so stressed here. He's not normally like that."
Shitty thing #2? My boss turned his net back on
Shitty thing #3? My boss initially said "oh it's just your attitude. that's why he vented at you. He just wanted to vent about the company & how this was handled."
Um, no. I repeated word-for-word some of what he said & well, my boss never actually took back what he said, but when he found out the next day that they'd INCREASED their spamming, he was *much* less nice talking about them.
*shrugs*.
But yeah. OK, I get that there's stress. I won't even pretend to understand what you're going thru. But screaming at the stranger at the end of the phone *WHO IS JUST TRYING TO HELP* .... what the hell. Go scream at the planet. That's what f*cked you up.
OK I *know* I haven't been on here in who-knows-how-long so forgive the length of this post.
If you can't tell from my nick, I'm in NZ & for anyone who missed it, bout a month ago we had an earthquake of disastrous proportions. I won't go into details.
Anywho, pretty much from minute 1 I - like many others in my company, who I'm so proud of - just jumped in & started doing any & everything we could. We'd come up with *anything* we could do to help people. I work in telecommunications, so it was - is - pretty damn important to people (just sayin').
I put in over 20 hours OT in the first week, by the 2nd week had pretty much burnt myself out - and I'm not saying this to be immodest, I'm saying it cauz I was *freaking* over ppl I know down there - and there's a lot - and so both emotionally fragile AND physically exhausted and everyone I dealt with those 1st 2 weeks were wonderful. It was truly humbling. Then, I guess, things wore off.
I've had 2 people have me in tears in the last couple weeks.
First lady, I pulled out all the stops to try get her stuff working (I work 3rd lvl faults) cauz there's rubble & downed stuff EVERYWHERE & there's no way I could get any techs to her anytime soon, and even with the magic ppl were working, I didn't trust getting orders run in the time she needed it (ie - yesterday).
Then I'm talking to her, on her mobile, and just basically out of nowhere, she (TOTALLY) misheard something I said as "I understand" or something to that effect.
She started going nuts.
Like, "you have no idea what I'm going thru!" and ranting about all that she's going thru (while my heart is just breaking, in all seriousness, it was so hard to hear
) and then started being really personal, really nasty.She just went full-steam and then hung up on me and I literally was nearly in tears.
Mainly cauz I truly, honestly, felt for her - and cauz I felt so horrible that she'd just totally gotten things wrong - that wasn't what I said, and that definitely wasn't what I'd said.
Then I went outside for a smoke & to chill out, and my coworker pointed out, she didn't even know I wasn't FROM Christchurch cauz - as all the locals know - we have a huge building and base down there, not to mention it was plastered all over the news.
FWIW I worked magic and got everything exactly perfect - free of charge - and called her work to test it. I was still shaky & the lady I talked to actually asked *me* if I was alright. I mumbled that the customer had gone off at me, and then made some excuse for her. And she says (to the effect of) "oh, I'm so sorry. But then, it's pretty stressful here!" ... Yeah, I got off the phone pretty quick.
A) that's no excuse to scream & carry on at a stranger, and B) again, you don't even know where I am.
Then last week I had to cut off a customer (likewise, down in ChCh) who'd been repeatedly warned about spamming cauz they kept ignoring us. The 2nd lvl guy who talked to him told me that he just "couldn't care less".
Same customer logs a fault for no internet (dunno how it got put on the wrong a/c *sigh* but oh well), and I pick it up & call the contact - a young guy - back & explain why. Say we talked to <contact> and warned him repeatedly.... He's cool, very apologetic, says he'll get his IT onto it... Puts me onto his boss, who is likewise all of the above, I give them my number & say to get their IT to call me ASAP so we can all get on it & work it all out together. Everything's friendly.
Then about 3 minutes later our number rings. I pick the call up. It's the boss's boss - the very guy who had not been interested.
He says "Are you <myname>?"
I say yes...
And he says, "I heard you cut our phones & internet off?"
I say, "no, I had to suspend your internet because..." AND HE STARTS SCREAMING. OBSCENITIES. Personal ones - at me. I just sat there stammering.
And don't get me wrong, I'm a pretty tough chick (just ask my minions) if I do say myself. And being a female [and] in this industry, I've had my fair share of abuse.
This. Had. Me. Shaking.
I finally say, "can I speak to your manager?" or something & he laughs & says
"<expletive>, I'm the Managing Director of this company" so I quickly get a word in to say "Well, I'm gonna put you onto my manager, OK?" then put him on hold. My manager saw the whole thing & made me keep the guy on hold :P
Shitty thing #1? I talk to the nice young guy & his nice boss & mention that he screamed at me, and they say "Oh, you know, everyone's just so stressed here. He's not normally like that."
Shitty thing #2? My boss turned his net back on
Shitty thing #3? My boss initially said "oh it's just your attitude. that's why he vented at you. He just wanted to vent about the company & how this was handled."
Um, no. I repeated word-for-word some of what he said & well, my boss never actually took back what he said, but when he found out the next day that they'd INCREASED their spamming, he was *much* less nice talking about them.
*shrugs*.
But yeah. OK, I get that there's stress. I won't even pretend to understand what you're going thru. But screaming at the stranger at the end of the phone *WHO IS JUST TRYING TO HELP* .... what the hell. Go scream at the planet. That's what f*cked you up.
Been pretty hectic for us as well, and customers started losing their sympathy about a week after the quake. They think we should be able to get everything working (both staff and services) straight away, and don't quite realise it is a little more complicated than they realise.
's service back off again.
It's symptomatic of a deeper sociopathy on their part; the attitude is "I can get away with this, so why shouldn't I?" They literally do not believe they're doing anything wrong, because it benefits them and that's their definition of "right". SCness distilled to its essence.
but not that big mobile company :P full props to *anyone* working thru this tho *hugs*
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