Self-motivation, sackings, and snackings.

First day back at work today, felt like I’d both been away forever and no time at all. Found myself for the first time ever sitting in the car park with exactly three minutes to spare, my eyes closed and having to will myself to turn off the car engine and go into that god forsaken cunt of a place. Nothing had changed, not that I really expected it to given that I’d only been off for a week. Tell a lie, there was a difference: one of the guys in my team got sacked, and I’m not all that pleased about it.

The guy in question (who I think I named here ages ago, but I can’t be arsed hunting it down now) had given out a few free upgrades to friends and family members, got caught, and got thrown out the door. It was a rather naughty thing to do, but it seemed largely like an excuse to get rid of him, given that someone who was doing the exact same solely to profit from it (and wreaked havoc with people’s bills as a result) was apparently going to get another chance if only he hadn’t been a bit of a cunt in the disciplinary. As a general rule of thumb: Fucking the People = Bad, Fucking the Man = Not so Bad. That’s in my book anyway. If a multi-billion pound company loses a few pennies due to a couple of employees giving out things to friends while still raking in money as part of subscriptions and more than likely tying those same people into new twelve month contracts just to get their fancy new DVR then I’m not going to shed a tear. Sure it was his own fault, but now some guy is left without a job in a really fucking shitty job market with no good references and more than a years hole in his employment history to justify, idiocy on all sides.

You might be able to tell that I’m not too chuffed to spend my days sitting in front of a PC all day listening to cunts, even sitting in front of a PC all day playing computer games was better. My voice has slowly been returning, now sounding more like a shit Billy Connolly impersonation that anything else, but still has the habit of breaking at the most inconvenient times, usually when a cutie from customer services is walking by or I’m having to explain in detail why someone is an idiot. The lowest point of today however had to be the woman who called up shouting that her internet was slow/intermittent/wanted to cancel/unhappy/blah/piss/moan. She hadn’t called up in the last six months, she was entirely wrong about everything she was determined she was right about, and I fixed the problem and hold a slight glimmer of hope that she feels like the cow she is. But all that is par for the course, what really annoyed me was the fact she opened up a packets of crisps and started eating them on the call. One of my real pet hates. Some of you might think it’s an overreaction, but imagine this already arrogant fucking arsehole slobbering and chewing and panting and blowing out through their nose as you’re trying to fix the mild problem they’ve treated like scurvy of the clit or something, and they’re doing it right in your ear. Was determined not to let it bug me, really I should’ve either told her to quit filling her usually cock filled gob for five minutes or just hung up. I’m just rusty after having been off for a while, normal service shall resume tomorrow!

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Back once again!

A rather belated hello to 2013, I know I’ve not been around in a while. I start a post, get distracted, leave it for days or weeks at a time then wipe the slate clean and repeat. That’s been going on since my last post. Read through the last few post I’d made dating back nearly a year, I’m treading over the same ground each time, and probably would be again today, so I’ve decided to keep the catchup as short possible…

Things wot is the same:

Still in the same job, finding an easy groove where I mostly get peace and half-consciously think about getting myself sacked so I’d need to find a new one. Same car. Same room in the same house. Same glasses. Same weight. Same mattress. Same shit haircut. Same relationship status: single, happily, but needs more shagging. Probably the same jeans. Same boots. Same cycle of getting high for a while then being sober for a while. Same procrastination and tomorrow attitude day after day. Same kind of bleak mindset.

Things wot is diff’rint:

Marsha had a baby! A beautiful little girl who popped into the planet back in October and who has had enough pictures of her appearing on Facebook every day that you could easily make one of those time-lapse videos you find plastered all over YouTube. Um… That’s the biggie I guess. Another one of my friends had a baby too, sadly not nearly as cute but as it’s a big strapping laddie you don’t want him looking like a wee poof eh? Both my little brothers have been in for operations, one due to a fractured eye socket because he picked a fight with a sink, the other for a hernia that he didn’t tell anyone about until two days before he was scheduled to get it done. And that’s about it, it’s been a miserably static few months where I haven’t done anything remotely constructive and have in many ways gotten worse in most respects. Go me!

I think that’ll be enough for now, just dipping my toe in the water and getting used to hitting the publish button and setting this shite out onto the internet again. I’m going to make a more concerted effort to not only post more here but actually do more worth posting about, not that you haven’t all heard that before. Expect moans about the public, you all love them!

Night night, sweet dreams!

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Gremlins and repeat calls.

Things have been breaking left right and centre around me over the past week, and while it started off as a fun oddity I’m getting a little bit tired and paranoid. The phones and computers at work died upon my arrival for two days in a row, on the third day within twenty minutes of starting myshift the mouse in my hand more or less disintegrated and the padding in the armrest of my chair fell off. My lovely Galaxy S2 started playing up, and only got worse once I’d called up my carrier and been told to upgrade the firmware, so now not only does it keep thinking it’s constantly charging, but it brings up an error message every couple of minutes and the battery is a fraction what it should be. My computer got a BSoD for the first time ever (though that may be down to drivers not installing correctly) and my car has a slightly more desperate sound to it on the motorway than it did a few days ago. There’s a gremlin following me about, trying to shove me back into the dark ages.

The phone has been the main thing though, I’ve rather come to rely on my fix of mobile internet. I got thinking about it, is it a sign of addiction and a modern malaise? Or is it, in a roundabout way, a nice symbol a humanity’s insatiable curiosity and inherent sociability, a need to know what’s going on in the wider world and be connected to all those we know? More than likely I just want to look at funny pictures on my lunch break. Right now I have to confess my phone isn’t particularly essential as I’m going through one of those anti-social patches where I haven’t been in contact with anyone for a while, my 5000 texts and 500 minutes going largely unused. I’m going to have to start socialising a bit just to justify my mobile contract!

Still been feeling quite shit since my last post, bored out of my mind and thinking far too much. I sat in work today, getting the third call of the day from this old man that owed more than £1,400 on his account as he kept on phoning premium rate numbers. He’d called more than forty times yesterday, and began again at eight this morning and just didn’t let up. His phone was cut off so he wanted to be transferred through to his car insurance then his bank, and through it all I was trying to convince myself that this was an entirely sane but just utterly fucking determined old cunt who wouldn’t take no for an answer and was going to use us as a switchboard even if his phone was cut off, but I couldn’t completely beleive it. For all he seemed lucid, it seemed like that was a confused elderly guy with no-one that was there to catch onto this in time. The notes on his account mentioned a daughter, and I was on the verge of asking him for her number to try and get this sorted out. Overstepping the mark by a mile it no doubt would have been, but ten straight hours this poor fucker had been calling us up and getting nowhere, I pictured him sitting in a pokey tower block forgetting what year it was. In the end though I just got the number for his bank and transferred him through, if nothing else he deserved it for sheer determination.

It got me thinking about the future though, what lies in store, how you only live once, all that bollocks. Made me shit myself looking forward, depressed looking back, and angry looking at here and now. I’m not going to pretend I had an epiphany, it just gave me a lot of nervous energy and made me unable to focus on anything in particular. But hey, least I don’t owe more than a grand to anyone!

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Delhi dumping, nostril digging, and suiting up.

Found myself on a bit of a downer over the past week or so, usual angsty bollocks that I try to fend off as best I can but still gets through and shows itself mostly as boredom and an inability to make my mind up about what I want to do from one minute to the next. Suppose it could be down to me coming from a week of late shifts straight onto a week of the early shifts, maybe my body clock hasn’t had time to adjust or some shit like that.  I think I’m just a bit more sensitive to people who call up their ISP at 8am to complain about something, and by sensitive I mean immediately angry at. For the past week or so the company website has been playing funny buggers, and a fair few people haven’t been able to get into their email, but there’s a neat little way to get into them by manually typing in the URL for the web mail and logging in that way, sorted. But that’s not good enough for some people, they want “compensation.” Not even for not being able to access it, but because they’ll have to go in a different route that seemingly throws them three miles out of their comfort zone, and all that really changed was four letters at the beginning of a URL and not having to look at adverts. I’d have more respect for them if they were just honest greedy bastards, but some of them seem to think they’re so fucking fragile the slightest inconvenience needs a monetary reward as a sorry for something they’re provided for fucking free.

Aside from that, the phone routing system was fucked as well, so the little experiment in only dealing with customers in the first few months of a contract has come to an abrupt halt for the time being and I was chucked back into “Gen Pop” to deal with regular calls. Intelligence levels of every caller plummeted, the sense of entitlement skyrocketed, and I’ve had to spend half my time telling people that no, I don’t give a pair of spunk-slicked hoor’s knickers if the man from India gave you a tenner credit to get you off the phone, you’ll be getting fuck all from me. To the man with “Wank” in his name: you are by name as you are by nature, ya cunt. And finally to the councillor from Wigan: only I’m allowed to slag the Indians, because they’re my brothers from other mothers in regards to this job, so I took offense at your request to be transferred to a British person, and made sure that you were deep into Delhi before I transferred you over.

Friday saw me in the pub that is quickly becoming the work regular. Along with one of the higher-ups (my open loathing of the public seemingly no barrier to networking) I found myself getting a headstart on the drinking, deciding to continue with my philosophy of a slow, steady descent in drunkenness then fucking off home when I had just enough money to pay for a taxi and wasn’t in any immediate danger of sobering up before I passed out in bed. I learned a few things that night, like I’m perfectly willing to steal the decorative hardback books in a pub just in the off-chance that the world’s greatest story is somehow hidden inside. I also learned that my attention span is not good enough to follow through with this idea after I’ve necked a day’s wage in cider. Also that for all the slut I am, it doesn’t matter how big a girl’s tits are when she picks her nose with her thumb in public.

The weekend proper seen me trying to find time to fill given that I couldn’t muster the motivation to go to the gym, or get myself in the right flavour of bad mood that makes me think “What’s the point in not going?” So I’ve found myself with a dozen books ordered from Amazon with a half-dozen more still en route, and a couple of Judge Dredd comics, one medium I’ve never taken an interest in. Tying that all up were episodes of Doctor Who that I’d never seen since they’d been aired seven years ago, both moderately enjoyable and triggering me to think what I was doing back then. I also bought a suit for my cousin’s wedding, my first proper suit, which will hopefully never be worn outside of weddings, funerals, and job interviews. Curious how closely related they are.

Today I’ve just worked, tomorrow I shall work some more, and I might just come on here and moan about the people I talk to. Who knows, play your cards right and it might just be you one day!

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An update.

I’m still alive, I’ve just been busy doing boring shit and finding excuses not to sit down and type up a blog post despite spending all day and night in front of a PC. Things have been going alright, spent a month off the phones getting training up on customer services and faults for both the TV and phone side of things, so work was mildly more interesting than it was before. Biggest benefit of it though was getting to actually have a bit of fun and be on the same shifts as the people I’m working with. Suppose if you wanted to get a wee bit poofy you could say that we bonded. Work itself is also a bit easier, most of the time we’re dealing with more recent customers who haven’t yet grown to hate the service or rack up any long running problems, they do generally seem to be a nicer bunch than before. The (now downright obvious to me) call diversions to specific parts of the call floor no longer apply, so I can sit down at the start of my shift and not silently cry to myself in the knowledge that half my calls are going to be from Birmingham or Bradford, or if they are they’ve at least got a decent phone line.

The start of training also precipitated a Facebook adding frenzy where everyone decided they now wanted to be aware of each other’s existence at all hours of the day. My manager appears to have been the one who kickstarted it, and I was initially hesitant to accept due to wanting to keep work and life separate. Then two things happened: I realised that I was in a go-nowhere job that wasn’t exactly shirt and tie just yet, and also we all got drunk on a night out at the end of training and I found myself with a hand down my manager’s bra, breaking down a little bit of that former formality. Like I said, the team bonded.

Other than that, not much has happened on my side of things: quietly saving up money, getting to the gym when I can, reminding myself not to eat constant shite when I’m not, and generally wishing I was a bit more disciplined in everything I do. Still living with my parents, driving the same car, and wearing the same pair of jeans. With other people? Marsha is thankfully still pregnant and beginning to show more each day, and she’s moved into a new house with her now fiance. Hans and the couple of other girls I went to college with have finished their access courses and are now going onto uni proper, and 28F has been off the map since january, but word on the grapevine is that she’s also out of the nest and into a flat with her long-haired pain in the arse boyfriend. The girl I had that slight dalliance with is still working in the same place, both of us successfully ignoring each other like pros.

And that’s about that, everyone’s growing up and moving on, but I’m not going to get all Bridget Jones about it just yet, I’ll give that another… year? Fuck knows. But for now it’s my day off, it’s getting dark, and I’m tired of sitting in front of a PC. Now that I’ve broken my renewed blogging virginity I’ll try (once again) to update a bit more often.

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Ten Things Callers Say

Time’s getting on, I’ve been doing proper tech support with the nation’s favourite ISP for the past four months now, and during that time more and more patterns have appeared in how customers speak and act. Below are ten things, some little oddities, others gripes, that I notice they all like to say or do. If you’ve got any more from your job, feel free to add them to the comments below. By the way, assume that the customer’s voice is that of a middle-class indignant English woman, as that’s the kind that drive me up the wall most of all.

1. “I’m paying for a service I’m not getting!”

Well no fucking shit, here was me sitting here handling calls to do with our non-existent free charity accounts and you’re coming along saying that you’re paying for the internet as if this is somehow news to me? Once was forgivable, but then you keep repeating it and fucking repeating it, as if this has any bearing at all other than lowering my opinion of you. I know your internet is fucked, that’s why you phoned up. I’ve got lights and numbers and facts and figures pasted all over my fucking screen telling me that your internet is broken. When I tell you what the problem is, don’t then repeat it like a fucking mantra as if the gods of broadband will suddenly turn it back on for you.

2. “What would you do if it was Richard that was calling up?”

For starters, me and auld Rich (as in Branson) are best mates, he sits four desks down from me as this is a small family run company of course, plus he wouldn’t be half as cranky on the phone. Secondly, he might own the company, but he’s too busy figuring out if his private island is big enough to have a runway for his space planes on it. Thirdly, don’t ask me idiotic questions like what would happen if the face of one of the world’s largest conglomerates was to phone me up, because you’ll know the answer will always be “the exact same level of service as you sir!”

3. “But I’m paying you for the internet!”

And the internet you have. That’s a thick white cable coming in off the street, firing bits of light down it into a box that makes sense of it. That cable is fine, the box is working, and would you look at that, you can even get it on every desktop, laptop, iPhone, Playstation and even the damn printer. You’re therefore not due a refund or a technician (more on them later) to try and get it working. Would you demand a repair man if you shrunk your shirts in the tumble dryer? Would you demand a refund from the garage because you bought a new radio for the car but you couldn’t get it to work? No? Then why do you expect me to know the intimate workings of that Thai knock-off iPad you got for £35 off the guy that also sells the fake Rolexes when you were on holiday?

4. “I want an engineer!”

Ah, technicians. Strange creatures who I control, sending them here, sending them there, and sending them fucking nowhere they aren’t supposed to go. They work for the ISP, that means they know all about ISP stuff. They’ll run a cable into your house, set up your telly and give you a shiny new modem to get online with. They’ll even make sure it’s working. And that’s all they do. Techs don’t touch your stuff, they aren’t computer repairmen, and for the last fucking time no I can’t send one out because you can’t get wireless three floors up when the router is under your ornate wooden desk wrapped in tinfoil. Now, I get that people might not know exactly what techs are and aren’t allowed to do, so asking once is fine. If you’re a lady with a voice like sex chocolate, you can even ask twice as I know I’ve got a pretty strong accent when I’m horny. But once I’ve told you, don’t demand, you won’t get it. Hell, if I did book someone for you I’d be popular down the tech shed, they’d take one look at the situation, know full well they can’t touch it, and thank me for the extended lunch I’ve gifted them with. And wanking in the toilet using wifi will still be merely a faraway dream for you.

5. “I want a new modem!”

So you’ve heard about one of our all-in-one hubs, you’ve went to your friend’s house and marvelled at its sleek design and elegant appearance. It’s quite simply the Rolls-Royce of internet equipment, and you so desperately covet one.  But wait, your modem is still working, your connection is fine, you’re even getting slightly more speed than you’re meant to! So why the fuck do you expect me to replace your fully working equipment free of charge? Is it the wireless router that comes built-in? But you’ve already got one! Is it that you don’t have a router? Tough, once again, you’re only paying for the internet. “But new customers get them, and I’ve been with you for X years!” Your point being? The shit works, it might not be stylish, but it does its job, and it’s done it damn well. Your speed won’t increase by buying one, I’ve told you that, but still you persist. This means you’re doing it purely for vanity, and I despise you for it. If you must, I can sell you one for an extortionate amount you’ll immediately be offended by, even more so when I say you could get it for free by upgrading your package to a higher speed as it’s only the hubs that handle them. Ironically, the hubs themselves are pieces of shite that I replace a few times a day anyway, kinda cutting off your nose to spite your face by furiously wanting one.

6. “I’ll move to <INSERT RIVAL COMPANY HERE> if it doesn’t get done soon!”

Cool, go ahead, I care not a jot. It doesn’t make me go faster, it doesn’t make me try harder or bother me in the slightest. You can rant and rave and scream and shout. While you’re doing all that it’s just white noise as I bring up the list of problems that’s in your area, what the line going into your house is like and my big ol’ database of what the modems in your town are doing right now. Saves me having to put any effort into making small talk while I do it, so feel free. The sweet talking department isn’t even in the same country as me let alone the same building, eventually you’ll threaten to cancel your contract and I’ll enjoy that little stutter you’ll have when I merrily reply “You wish to move? Certainly! I’ll transfer you to customer relations now!” rather than begging you to stay. I can’t do absolutely everything, and I can’t make it happen straight away, which brings me neatly onto…

7. “I want to speak to a manager!”

The battle cry of the ill-informed. Maybe call centres elsewhere are different, but where I work I have exactly the same powers as a manager when it comes to sorting out problems for a customer with the exception of adding a bit of extra credit, which I don’t do mainly because I hate you. Though it may not sound like it, I check out every avenue to get you online. I don’t want to spend 45 minutes guiding you through the innards of your PC, but I do it anyway, because I kinda have to. Managers can’t book earlier techs than I can, they can’t make the IT department go any faster, and they can’t magic your computer into a working state. Managers are there to give you that feeling of self-satisfaction that you’ve somehow grabbed the big nasty company by the throat. Let me give you a run down of exactly what happens when you say you want to talk to a manager: I’ll put you on hold, have a wee swear, walk over to the nearest manager, and tell them what’s going on. The might say they’re busy and they’ll give you a call back within a few hours, or they might come over. If they come over, they’ll sit back down in the same seat I was in two minutes before, and they’ll have a quick look at all my notes, then they’ll repeat to you exactly the same things I’ve just said, but with a nicer phone voice. Nothing gets done faster, but you get to beat your chest about how you took on the man. If you’re very lucky you might get a tenner taken off your next bill. The call will be handed back over to me, I’ll tell you again what I said I was going to do, you’ll give me the usual righteous threats and the call will be over. Five minutes later nobody will remember you’d called.

8. “I’m trying to run a business here!”

Once again, I don’t care. You’re on a house account, that’s for Facebook and every flavour of pornography, not trading in stocks or depending your livelihood on. For some reason though all these Trumps and Trumpettes never want to be transferred through to the business department to upgrade. It’s almost as if they thought they’d get preferential treatment but didn’t want the hassle of paying more money for a better service… If an internet connection is so vital, it seems to me like it’d be common sense to make sure you were on the most well supported connection you could get?

9. “I should warn you now I’m quite angry and stressed out…”

This one might just piss me off more than any of the others. It’s not often you’ll hear me saying something like this, but it’s just plain rude. Think about it for a second, you’ve just phoned up a complete stranger, someone who you want and need to sort out the problem you’re having, and the first impression you’re giving them is a disclaimer on how little self-control you have? So if you act like a cunt it’s somehow all more excusable? The selfishness behind “I’m not in a good mood and you better please me or else” will be one of the few occasions where I’ll not do much to help. If it’s not a blatant issue with the connection, then you can bet that I’ll find something in your PC to blame it on, something I’m not allowed to touch, and you can scream for all the managers in the world, no way in hell will they go through a half hour of looking for an issue on your PC. All you have to do is say hello at the start of the call, and I’ll help you out as best I can.

10. “No, no, NO! THAT’S WRONG!”

Anything that is completely true but a customer can’t accept it. A man signs up for the internet, along with all the online billing, the email addresses, all that jazz. One day, his wife calls up saying that she can’t remember her password to get into her email, but I tell her I can’t change it as it’s not her name on the account. She goes apeshit and I spend ten minutes listening to her screech. Goddamn it she’s a modern independent woman and anything with her man’s name on it belongs to her to! These women are easy to spot, all you have to do is ask for the name on the account and they’ll always say “Mr and Mrs” when it’s always one or the other. Having it the other way, when the guy feels all emasculated, is just as much fun. Include in here also the man who didn’t believe his speed was being throttled and the guy who threatened to have me sued if I didn’t take all the adverts off of every website he visited. Trying to tell someone that they hadn’t turned off their modem in six months when they thought they were doing it every night is a laugh as well.

So there we have it, ten little things that annoy me when people call up at work. I’ll finish with a short common sense guide to calling up a call centre. Mostly, it’s about being nice. At the start of the call, say hello, and ask them if there’s anything they need. That three minute witty rant you prepared while on hold, determined to cut those bastards down to size? Pointless, time wasting, and liable to piss off the person on the other end of the line. Give them whatever info they need, they can do the shit they need to faster that way. If they ask questions, answer them truthfully, and without a massive story behind it. Being asked when you last used the internet isn’t an invitation to regale the tale of what you did before or since. The most important thing though is not to be an arsehole: don’t scream or shout, or you’ll hit a wall of polite uselessness so fast you’ll think you’ve been greasily fisted by Alfred the butler.

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Bellend battery and call centre calamity.

Found out today that one of the guys at work had left for greener, molestier, pastures. Before he began his short-lived and very promising career in tech support young Wheezy (named after his similarity to the Toy Story character) used to work in a kilt shop, helping to get guys kitted out in manly skirts and pretend they’re William Wallace while walking down the street after the reception at the wedding they were no doubt going to. One day, while going about his duties, a customer turned round and slapped him about the face with his chunky erect cock. He promptly left this tartan brothel, rode the dole wave for nearly a year and landed in the same call centre as me. All five foot, rotund, balding, speccy, Eve Online playing social retardedness of him. He wasn’t even 25 yet. In any case, he was the closest to the stereotypical nerd there was in our training group, but a fairly harmless guy that has at least six years before he kills his own mother and scalps her to use her hair as a wig. Total puppy. He never liked working there and was open about his intentions to move on as soon as something better came up. The fact his concept of better is returning to work in the place he got dick slapped across the jaw immediately validates every complaint I have about the place. Or maybe he liked getting a mouthful from the public rather than an earful, who knows?

"I feel a molesting coming on!"

One other event helped to sate my inner drama llama and love of Schadenfreude today: that girl (with the boyfriend, accomplice in my bad behaviour, and who hasn’t spoken to me in months) had a bit of a breakdown on the call floor and was sent home. Tragically I missed the live show, but Marsha’s boyfriend saw her crying outside, so being the compassionate fellow I am I leaped onto Facebook to see if she’d posted anything about it. It would appear she burst out crying on the call floor after a customer said they couldn’t hear her and one of her programs wasn’t working, so she broke a keyboard and was sent home with a paid holiday. She’s blames it on her boyfriend keeping her up all night by not being in the bed with her. As time goes on, the more similarities I see between her and Ex, and the less I regret losing what friendship we had. I do feel kind of bad that she felt rough enough to fall apart like that, but on the other hand I can’t help but roll my eyes that she’d let some shitty call centre job get her down rather than just get her mad now and again. But hey, she can do whatever the fuck she likes, I’ll just be keeping an eye open in the off-chance she decides to Hulk out again.

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Broken zips and swollen ears.

Had the probation review, which seemed more like another tour of the entire building than anything else. At first I was lead to a small room by my manager, shown the same stats as yesterday, told that I was handling a fuckton of calls, and all I had to work on was “quality.” As far as I can tell it doesn’t seem to be tone of voice, or length of calls, or general rudeness, but more that I don’t tell the customer their own name all the time. I find it hard to care if that’s the main complaint. My probation was extended another three months, which changes absolutely nothing other than having to wait even longer for a staff discount, which is about the only perk going. There was a “between you and me” moment where the manager said she wasn’t confirming anyone’s post just now, from the sounds of it because she doesn’t want to appear too soft in her new job. Whether or not I believe her is another matter. She was very nice, saying I was a pleasure to work with and she was glad that I didn’t have any complaints or look like I hated getting out of bed in the morning to come to work. I was tempted to rant, but it wouldn’t do much use.

From there I was whisked away to the other side of the building to listen to what customer’s themselves had to say about me. They randomly select a few people, ring them back after they’ve gotten off the call with me, and ask them what they thought. It seemed like a flawed system, where one guy had nothing but praise but gave the lowest possible score because he’d waited so long on hold beforehand, another that was unhappy because I didn’t fix a problem I was specifically told a hundred times I wasn’t to touch, and one that gave a middle of the road response where everything was sorted out and the lot of it was uneventful. The numbers were shit, but what people were saying was good. I was given a sheet of paper to sign showing that I had indeed been told I wouldn’t be getting a staff discount for another three months and that I’d listened to a few voices I didn’t recognise and whom I would never speak to again.

It was a pisser of a day, and I had earache to top it all off. It’s swollen up and stopped me from being able to clamp my jaw shut properly. It’s that kind of annoying throb that can’t really be described as pain, but it just makes everything a bit harder to do. I couldn’t think properly, time dragged in, all I wanted to do was go the fuck home. Now I’m here I can’t settle my mind on doing anything. My zip broke on my jeans as well, so I was wandering around trying not to look either retarded or perverted, and also holding back the urge to scream at the top of my lungs that my zip had indeed broke, I was aware of it, and the problem will be rectified by tomorrow morning.

I need to go out now with my swollen ear, buy a new pair of shit jeans at a supermarket to do me until the weekend, and then see about passing out until morning. Goodnight!

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Thalidomide drumsticks.

I sat in the cafeteria in work today across from a man with a stunted arm whose hand was the wrong way round. He picked up two spoons, one in each hand, and proceeded to start smacking them together, his stub flailing about madly as he threw his head back and started singing and laughing. As fast as he had started he stopped, put the spoons down, and told me all about why I should tell every customer to rotate their cables, because all the fibre optic electrons will gather at one end if I don’t. With the show and the speech done, he hopped up, crotch-thrusted his chair back into place, and fucked off with a slightly effeminate wiggle. I spent the next ten minutes wondering if he had a special mouse to use, and what it looked like.

Got my “probation” review tomorrow, where I’ll either be kept on permanently, given another three months probation, or sacked. At least I think that’s how it works. I was given a formal looking envelope, telling me the details of when it would be (tomorrow, too late to be early, and too early for me to finish my shift straight after) and informed I could have a union rep in there with me. Does anyone bar teachers and those in the emergency services even have unions anymore? If it isn’t a job for life, you’ve got nobody standing at your back. The whole thing is just me and my manager, don’t even know if it’ll be done in a separate room or just on the call floor. Bit of a waste of the nice thick paper they printed the letter on if they aren’t going to bother going the whole hog and make it a shirt and tie tribunal.

If too many people call back, it's a shift in Azkaban.

Had a one-on-one session for a few minutes as well, something they’re keen on to help you progress and develop and other forward thinking words. The whole thing could be summed up thusly: I’m not making technical mistakes, I’m not rude, but I’m not a barrel of laughs either. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to phone somewhere up and hear a cheery voice at the end of the line. Why are you so fucking happy? I know the kind of place you’re working in. If your shit breaks, and you need to phone somewhere up to get it sorted, do you want to spend an hour talking to a lovely person who’ll ask you how your day’s been and what the weather’s like, or do you just want some cunt that will see what the problem is, fix it, and get you the fuck off the phone and back doing something more enjoyable?

You might not be able to tell, but I’m not really invested in the company. Sure, the logo is everywhere and we got free mugs(!) but man, I’m just not feeling it. Maybe because it’s an outsource company, which by its very definition means we’re doing the work that Daddy can’t be arsed doing himself. Now, when Daddy wants to cut back on some money, he doesn’t have to worry about looking bad in the papers with lost jobs, because all he’s doing is cutting back on the money he’s giving to another company. And the company I work for doesn’t need to worry too much, because they don’t have a large public presence, and have an easily replaceable workforce. Sure, you might get an article in a local paper if you lay off 1000 people, but wherever you go to next will love that you’ve made 300 new jobs there instead! I could work in that place for a decade, and if I dropped dead one day there’d be no mark I’d ever been there. I’m ranting again, I promise that I’ll make no more mention of that sort of thing until I’ve finished my manifesto and found a gorgeous idealistic young woman to have a tumultuous relationship with that will be remembered through the ages.

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Sore backs, surprise porn, and how you all get here now.

Back to posting in the middle of the night for a few days at least. I’m backshift at work so I clock off when others are thinking about heading to bed. Truth be told I’m just trying to kill time for a while and see about staying awake. I’m feeling a bit fucking rough today. Was over at that girls house, the one I had The Talk with more than a month or so ago yet we still keep bumping into each other naked. Rolled a couple of joints, sat and watched a Thai film with awful dubbing, shagged a half-dozen times then passed out in the wee hours of the morning. I spent the night there for once as I was too tired to move and thought that buggering off again would’ve been me acting thoroughly shittily. So I slept in a room that was too hot, on a bed that was too soft, next to a girl who monopolised all the fucking real estate and left me half dangling off of the bed. Not the best sleep I’ve ever had.

My day kicked off with workmen in the flat below hammering away, and my otherwise good mood going awry when I made a throw-away joke about her delivering me a pick-me-up at home, to which she replied that she didn’t actually know where I lived. Damn, I felt a little pang of guilt at that. I’d been up this lassie’s rear and she didn’t even know where it was I rested my head when it wasn’t between her legs? It seemed a bit cold, even for me. Was I that kind of guy? I decided no, because if I had my own place I wouldn’t be going out of my way to hide my address from the majority of women.

I stumbled back into my car with a sleep deprived hashover and found myself at home. The worlds most refreshing shower later and I was ready for work. Because I was starting in the afternoon, all of the decent headsets had been taken, as well as the chairs, so I was left with a rickety piece of shite where the back of it didn’t stay in the one place. This job is causing me more discomfort than working in the kennels or marching around as a landscaper ever did. My back is actually painful. I have a sore back, that’s old man stuff! Sitting on my arse all day doing nothing has given me a worse injury than dogs or heavy machinery ever did, and I’ve only been there a couple of months.

Things didn’t get much better from there, with cunt after complete cunt phoning up. I’m convinced that certain phones attract certain customers. There’s a least two I avoid because it’s nothing but people who don’t have a basic grasp of English, many of them without the excuse that it’s not their native tongue. Another channels pensioners and Apple customers, the latter I can detect from their tone of voice alone. I had the joy of spending half an hour remotely logged into a guy’s computer trying to figure out why his connection was going so slow when a little message that popped up in the bottom right of his screen proudly informed me that “Teen Jayne takes two big black dicks.avi” had just finished downloading. I gave him a stern talking to about the mechanics of porn torrents and sent him on his way.

My previous post has come up as being written over a month ago, it was actually only a few days, fuck knows how I managed to mangle the dates. And a big thank you to all the “zoophiles” out there, since mentioning the words “animal erotica” in the title of a post it’s now become the second most common way people find this blog on Google.

Thanks a bunch, you sick motherfuckers.

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