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This was my post in the discussion about whether Facebook and MySpace should be allowed at work.
Full article here


Ok, i just wanted to throw my 2 cents worth into this.
I work 40 hrs a week, 3pm-11pm thurs-mon. thats all weekend long.
I work at an answering service, and I am online for the entirety of my shift. (for those that don't know, if you have ever called a dr's office after hours, or a vets office, or a heating/air con repair service, or a plumber, you have spoken to someone that does what i do.)
We have a rush of calls at 5pm when everything closes, but most nights, after about 6pm, it pretty well dies. Very few calls, very little to do other than stare at the walls... or play online. I bring my laptop to work. I've done coursework for college while answering calls, I've coded websites while paging dr's for very pregnant women going into labor. I can honestly say in 2 years working where I work, I have never messed up a call due to being online. Have I ever hung up on someone? Yes, several people, but it had nothing to do with me being online and everything to do with them being rude and/or nasty with me.
Granted not everyone can pull this off. If you have trouble doing two things at once, like.. reading and paying attention to what's going on around you, you shouldn't try it. However in some jobs and in some circumstances, I see absolutely no harm in someone being online and on myspace, facebook, msn, yahoo, or anywhere else they please within reason. (yeah oki I do draw the line with viewing porn or nsfw things... they are called nsfw for a reason)

I could have gone on about it for ages, but i pretty much feel exactly that. If you can multitask and being online will not affect the work you do / security of the company that you work for, what exactly is the harm?

The Specifics - vacation rentals

Ok. So I wasn't expecting so many of you to read this.
Apparently my pain amuses you. *dramatic sigh*

Who am I kidding. Switch circumstance and I'd be laughing my ass off at you. So I've decided to make another post. Tonight I'm not dispatching. Or at least when I wrote this, I wasn't. My supervisor was. (Note- she rawks. She will probs never see this, or if she does she'll think 'oh that can't be about me'. Well it is. YOU. RAWK. Thanks, for putting up with the endless complaints of both me and my coworkers, and of the people calling in. And never once saying 'oh will you shut up' or being rude or nasty or any of that. <3 )

On with the post.

Ok. It’s Saturday night. And I don’t have to dispatch (woohoo!).

I do, however, still have to deal with complete idiots. Lots of them. Cause, well, it’s Saturday night, and that means checkin night for most of the resorts.

So…. Lots of calls about ‘omg the ac doesn’t work’ and ‘omg the housekeeper didn’t clean the unit’. Those I can handle. Get the info, name, number, unit name and problem. Send it to dispatch.

It’s the ones that call in for the stupidly trivial bullshit. The one that wanted to yell about someone having their dining room lights on after dark because of the sea turtles. Yeh ok they’re endangered. I highly, highly doubt that someone having the lights on in a dining room that HAS THE BLINDS AND CURTAINS CLOSED, is going to attract sea turtles. Maybe creepy stalkerish people that are annoyed about the blinds and all that…. Oh wait. Yeah. Or idiots like the ones that call me. ¬_¬

I will say, the call I got last year about the gator on the sidewalk was priceless tho. Seems in the middle of a rainstorm, a gator had ambled out of one of the lagoons and was laying in the grass at the dog run. This woman, frantic because 'someone might not see him' and let their dog in there, called about 30 times in maybe 20minutes. Now. We are talking an 8ft gator. Big, greenish black, shiny scaly toothy gator. In a dog run thats about 20ft by 10ft. HOW could you not see him? WHY would you venture close enough to actually open the gate with him in there? (He had pushed over part of the fencing... apparently he had a thing for being behind bars?) The oncall guy loved it too. He didn't know what to do, ended up calling animal control who waited till the downpour stopped to go remove the gator. And the removal? dragging him back to the lagoon and dumping him back into the water. Brilliant.

Other minor things that have crossed my mind.

Do not assume, when you call in at 6pm on a Saturday night, that I am the same person you (or your oncall person) spoke with at 9am this morning. At 9am on any given day, I am still laying happily wrapped in blankets with my arm curled around a small sleeping cat in my bed.

I don’t do mornings.

So whoever it was that you are looking for, it’s not me. If you ask nicely, I can and will look up the message in question and tell you who the operator was that took the call, or that spoke with your oncall person. If you get shitty with me over it, after I have very nicely said that it was not me and that I do not work that shift, I will be forced to have my boss call you back. On Monday.

And no I can’t page her, she’s out of town with her family.

Actually this goes for the people that call back in after leaving a message in the mornings. If you call back in at 8pm, after leaving a message at 9am, stop and think for a moment. Do you really think that it will be the same person answering that took your message the first time?

It won’t be. So don’t assume it is. I can, however, pull up the message you left if you tell me that you called in. I’ll verify your name and the number, but please, please, do not go through every little thing that you will discuss with the nurse/oncall tech. I don’t need to know it, thanks.

Also, when I ask if there is a number they can call you back at, that means I would like for you to tell me the number. Don’t say ‘yes’ then sit there grinning idiotically into your phone. I’m not psychic, you need to actually say the numbers.

And if you are from out of town, or are using a cell phone that is from Elsewhere Montana when you are currently in Beaufort South Carolina, you need to give me the area code. I don't live wherever you are from, so I don't know off the top of my head that the area code for half of North Carolina is 304. (it's not. it's actually West Virginia, I think. Somewhere with far too many people that order idiotic golf things. At 5pm. That's a whole diff. story for another day tho. )

Tonight hasn't been *too* bad. I've actually been dispatching for about the past hour (I'm here alone starting at 8 or 9 pm depending on who works with me) and except for the one woman who was crying, yes actually SOBBING, about the water smelling of sulphur. We don't page out for that. They live in the middle-of-nowhere-Georgia. It usually smells of sulphur. It's from a well, thats just how it is here. But to be sobbing over it on the phone with an operator who obviously doesn't live anywhere near there, and can't do anything about it... you need to call your psychiatrists office, not me. Cause it's fairly obvious that you have gone off your meds. Thx.

I'm sure I will have more to rant about later. I actually have another post already about half-written involving a specific wrecker service, and exactly what I'd like some of their customers to do with mile marker signs on I95. But I think I'll save that one for another day.

Totals for the night - 2 in labor (both full term) and 1 at 15weeks that swears she's having contractions but refuses to go to L&D, 1 cat hit by a car (is fine, but will no longer be allowed to roam the streets near his house) 1 dog allergic to the fleabath his owner bought and another that got into a package of chocolate chips (both are fine. One's just about as bright as a burnt out flashlight and the others owner matches that same description.) The L.o.L with high blood sugar is doing fine tonight, but the young guy with the TPN still has a retard for a mother ( I feel sorry for him on so many lvls) Phone, cable and DSL went out for an entire county I think, but they should be up and running before my shift ends.
Fairly slow shift tonight, only 244 calls in, 104 out. (this doesn't count the dozen or so on the radio to the wrecker drivers) And tomorrow night should be even slower.

Rant about my job. Answering services suck!

Ok. There is just something I need to get off my chest.

I work for an answering service. Y’know. The people that answer when you call the Dr. after hours, or when your water goes out, or your ac/heater goes out on a day when its 98f/20f outside and you’re melting/freezing your ass off.

Just to clarify.

- I do not work for the HVAC company, Dr’s offices, Rental company, vet or water company you have just called.

- They do not sign my paycheck.

I do not report to their bosses or owners. I am aware that the vast majority of the people that answer the office phones do not know their ass from a hole in the ground. Believe me when I say I wish they would hire someone intelligent enough to actually forward the phones properly, and be able to answer all your questions/call you back before the office closed. Would be less work for me, and I wouldn’t have to hear you whine.

For those of you calling the water company:

- I do not have, nor do I need or want, access to your account information.

- I do not know why they cashed your check for payment of your water bill, then turned the water off 3 days later.

- I know exactly how many times the pump has gone out due to faulty wiring at 9pm. I am the only operator here at that time, and I have to answer your asinine questions every single bloody time.

- I do not know why that idiot was outside digging in his backyard with a backhoe at 10pm at night. I do not know why he didn’t check before digging up the property line and destroying the *ONLY* waterline into your neighborhood. And all I can really say to you, why don’t you hobble your cranky ass down there and ask him. I’m sure he will be able to answer any questions about it.

- I do not care that your wife just had septuplets and you are not quite clear on how to actually carry your happy ass down to the office and pay your bill on time. I'm not calling the Oncall guy for you. Go pay your bill tomorrow and it will be turned back on.

For the people calling the Vet offices:

- No, I don’t care that your precious little Muffie or Poopsie or whatthefuckever ate chocolate out of the garbage 6 hours ago (while the office was still open) and you neglected to call in THEN to have it checked. I will page it out for you, but if you scream in my ear one more time about it I swear to God I’ll let it sit in dispatch while I go on my 30 minute break. And no, I won’t feel bad about it.

- They close at 6pm. Every. Single. Day. And they have for the past 2 years. (That I know of) Do not call me at 730pm and tell me ‘but someone just called me from there’. You know that’s bullshit, I know that’s bullshit. If you have a problem or want to talk to the vet, just say so, I will page it out for you. If you don’t annoy me too badly.

- Grooming appointments are not emergencies.

- Neither are boarding appointments.

- For that matter neither are fleas (see ants in the resort post for exception).

For those calling the Dr’s Office:

You fall into 3 main categories.

- People calling to cancel/confirm appointments. – Those of you that can speak clearly, and actually realize that if you have a name like Pfhottsenmaeyer you will need to SPELL IT OUT for us, bless you. May the Phone Goddess forever smile on you and smite any telemarketer stupid enough to bother you. The rest of you, go away. Please?

- People calling with some asinine request for your pain medication, 4 hrs after the office has closed, when you ‘just realized’ your medication runs out in 3 days, and you ‘really really really need it’ refilled tonight.- Piss off. Seriously. I will take a message for you, and I will send it to the office. I will not call the Dr at 9pm on a Monday night when your Rx will last till Thursday and it’s not a week long holiday. He gets cranky when I do, and frankly, if he yells, I may yell back, which will result in me being fired. And as much as I hate this job, I do have bills and a rather fat housecat that needs to eat and a roof over her head, so I would kinda like to keep working here. Thanks.

- People with legitimate emergencies. – Those of you that keep your shit together enough to give me your name, phone number, age and problem, even tho you are in pain (27weeks Ob and your water just broke, or your kid fell out of a tree and the bone is obviously broken, or your 3 week old just gave you a diaper full of blood) I applaud you. Really. I will page the doctor, nurse, paramedics, whoever is on call for you. And I will not let your message sit for any reason. I will go down the list of every number and pager I have until I speak with a real live person to get back to you.

- If you scream and cry in my ear, expect me to type slowly. If I can’t understand you, you *will* be forced to repeat yourself, possibly multiple times. I can not page out something with no name, phone number and quite frankly, if it is *THAT* fucking bad, hang up and dial 911. Thanks.

- If you are holding a screaming child, chances are I will hang up on you. Put little Winston, or Precious, down and take a few steps away. If I can’t hear/understand you, I’m not paging it out. This also goes for loudly barking dogs, loud television sets, loud music, traffic. Basically anything that is going to force me to ask you to repeat yourself more than once, is too loud.

- If you are on a cell phone that you *know* is dying, or about to lose signal, get your ass to a landline and call me. If you are breaking up too much to be heard, I will hang up on you.

If you are calling a Resort company:

- If you want rates and availability, you heard the recording saying the office hours. You heard it tell you that someone from the answering service would be with you in a moment. You saw online that their office closes at 6pm. Why the FUCK would you think that I have all the information about your particular unit, when, seeing as you got this number from the website, you see that there are over 500 units in this company. No I don’t know them all. Hell I don’t even know one of them. I'm in a call center, in a completely different state. I’ve never even BEEN to this resort, NVM actually affording to stay in the condos on what I make answering calls for jackasses like you. So stop asking, k?

- If you have a problem with your unit, CALMLY tell me what it is. Screaming, ranting, cursing, crying at me will result in one of two things. One, I will hang up on you. They don’t pay me enough to listen to it, simply put. Two, I will actually stay on the line long enough to get your information. I will not page it out if you piss me off. I will hold it for the office, and you can take it up with them in the morning when they call back. Same goes for being rude, talking over me when I attempt to explain that we *can not* call out for there being ants outside your unit at 1030pm on a Friday night unless they have actually formed squadrons and are currently carrying you and/or another guest off the property. Thanks. (And it’s the fucking south. We have roaches the size of mice. DEAL WITH IT or find somewhere with fewer bugs.)

- No I don’t care that there is someone in the parking lot without a pass. No, I will not call the owner of this company at 9pm on a Tuesday night just so you can yell about it. I will call security if you like, but they probably won’t do anything about it either. Those people have been there since Sunday, and probably are friends of the owners, and security really isn’t being paid enough to go knock on doors and find out whose Jag that is beside the Beemer that’s in the handicapped spot.

Those calling the HVAC/plumbing companies: (for those that don’t know, HVAC is ac/heating stuffs. Yeh, love the technical explanation.)

- Yes, I do know what it’s like to have your AC die when it’s summer. Last July the heat index was 126f (That’s 52.2c. Yeh. Fucking hot.) My ac went out. And my then-current-landlady was too much of a spaz to get it fixed. So for a week, I had no ac. Don’t tell me I don’t know how you feel. I do. But you calling me every 10min is *NOT* going to make the guy that’s on call, and probably in someone else’s attic, call me back any faster to get your information. So quit it, k, thanks.

- No. I do not work on the AC/Heating units myself. I wish I did, and yes I do know that Jeff charges 125$ after hours, and about twice that after hours on weekends. Makes me glad mine hasn’t fucked up yet. But then I rent so wouldn’t be paying it anyways.

- No I do not know why your ac is making noise, or why your heater smells like burnt wires. I’d be happy to page the Oncall Tech, but you will have to stop ranting and give me your information. That is if I don’t hang up on you first.

- Yes, I am sitting in a nicely air-conditioned office. About 4 hours south of you. Where it’s about 15 degrees hotter, and if they didn’t have ac, they wouldn’t have a dispatcher to sit here and listen to the amusing shit you people come up with.

- To those that call in, and can simple tell me your ac is not working, and give me no grief about spelling your last name, or giving your street address and phone number so they can call you back, thank you.

- Those that call in and want to tell me *exactly* which gear is broken, or how many screws there are in the side of it – I don’t care, I don’t know how to fix your system, or what type it is, and I'm probably going to interrupt you to cut through all that. Thanks for understanding.

To any other operator, calling into any of these lines:

W T F?

You are *the* worst usually. You either zip through indecipherable names at lightning speed, then get shitty when we ask you to slow down, or spell some bizarre sounding name. Get the fuck over it. You do the *same* shit we do, yours is just all for one company. I’m sure you’ve had to ask someone to slow down, or spell a name before. Get pissy with me, and I’ll wait an hour, call back and talk to your supervisor. And yes, I did catch your name when I answered, and will use it when I call back.

To all of the oncall people, whether you are a technician, dr, vet, manager, or just the poor fool stuck with the pager this week.

- YOU KNOW YOU ARE ON CALL. Do NOT fucking call me back after I spend 45min trying to page you and leaving messages on your cell, and expect me to ‘hold on a sec’ while you spend 5minutes looking for a pen. Find it before you call me back, ok?

- No, I don’t know what the office told them, or you for that matter. Nor do I really care. Make my life and yours easier, take the info and call the person back. They will surely know more about what is going on than someone sitting at a computer in another city, 4 hours away.

- If you are not going to be oncall when you KNOW your office faxes us the oncall list at the start of the month, let them know they need to tell us who IS oncall for the night, so we don’t spend 2 hours leaving voicemails for you only to have you completely ignore us, then call back hours later and say ‘well I'm not on call, so and so is.’ We are not psychic, and we don’t have access to your personal schedule.

- If you are going to be oncall when the schedule says you are, ANSWER YOUR FUCKING PHONE WHEN WE CALL. Our number shows up. It’s really easy to tell it’s us too. We’re the ONLY ones calling you from an 866 number EVERY FUCKING NIGHT YOURE ONCALL. How hard is this to understand? Really? You have a doctorate in Psychology, or are certified to completely dismantle an entire HVAC system, recognizing one number shouldn’t be this tough people.

- Do not tell us we sound hot, cute, sexy, or anything similar. Do not call us honey, baby, sweetie, or anything similar (unless you are old enough to be our grandfathers, and are doing it in a paternal manner). It creeps us out, it makes us not want to call you the next time we have a call for you. Really. And if by some bizarre chance, you happen to sound hotter than Johnny Depp whispering sweet nothings in our ears, it will not matter. We are not allowed to flirt, give you our #, or accept your # if you offer. It’s not that we don’t want to, it’s that we know these lines are recorded, and if we actually get caught doing that, we can kiss our jobs goodbye. And unless you really ARE Johnny Depp, I don’t think it’d be worth it.

- Those of you that are polite, answer your phones/pagers, always have pen and paper there when we call (or an amazing memory for phone numbers and names). Thank you. And especially to those that can bear with us when the system crashes in the middle of giving you a message, or when we completely screw up a number, can laugh it off when we correct it, or when we page the wrong pager, you call back and make sure we knew to page the other oc. You guys (and girls) rock. And if you actually laugh over some of the stupid ass calls that we have to send you, you rock even harder, and if you lived anywhere near here, I’d buy you a beer on your next night off.

That’s pretty much it, and I know I may sound harsh or bitchy, but think about it. Every weekend, I mean *every* weekend, for 2 years now, I have worked. I have been here through closing on Friday afternoon, check-ins on Saturday afternoon, rush on Fridays and Mondays (the 2 worst of the week). I have heard it all. I have been screamed at, cussed out, called things I wouldn’t call my worst enemy, hung up on, asked what I'm wearing, asked if I wanna go ‘have fun’ after work (no. kthxdie). I’ve sat on the phone with women that are having contractions and patiently waited till they could speak again. I’ve been on the line with the lady who was watching her dog die in front of her because her vet wouldn’t call back (yes, I did page another vet, and no, the dog didn’t die. He was hit by a car, and almost did, but they managed to save him.) I’ve listened to rants about office staff, shifty accounting, and some truly funny ones about pts/nurses from the Drs that we answer for. I’ve had to deal with drunken oncall people, disconnected phone numbers for oncall people, cranky girlfriends/wives of oncall people (they get some serious attitude when they answer their bf/husbands cell at midnight and its another girl. I’ve even had them call back to the office from another number to check.) I’ve had to deal with the entire system crashing during rush, and am currently dealing with a system changeover by a completely incompetent group of individuals.

Think about this the next time you go to call a company after hours. Do you have a question that only someone trained at that office, or with access to information only found in that office can answer? Are you able to be understood, or are you acting like too much of a fucking idiot to speak properly? Is there a lot of noise in the background, or are you holding a screaming child in your arms? Are calling back at 830pm to return a call that was made at 9am? Is it something that could wait till the office opened in the morning?

If you answered ‘Yes’ to any of these, don’t call the after hours service. Wait until they are open, or until you are able to communicate properly.

It will save you time, me aggravation, and may prevent you from having your feelings hurt when that operator you tie into has just completely had enough, and tells you *exactly* what you can do with that AC unit that won’t get the temp below 70f on a 115f day.

~One tired, headachy, annoyed dispatcher.