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The pizza hut near a college I went to had just a beeping for their hold noise. Beep beep beep beeeep. It helped make my decision to never have pizza hut when I lived in the dorms.
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Apr 9, 2015 20:02
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When I worked for Hollywood Video a little over a decade ago, their corporate support line, ie, who the managers call when there's a problem with the computers or whatever, had a great funky upbeat hold music. One day, the assistant manager and I just called them, put them on speaker phone, and every ten minutes or so when they would pick up would hang up and just redial. ...it was a slow day.
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Apr 9, 2015 20:38
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This is what happens when you're on hold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcj2vVND-WI
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Apr 9, 2015 21:07
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Sardonik posted:There can only be one king of hold musics. At my last job, our clients would have this hold music about 75% of the time. Used to put it on speakerphone in the shared office and jam out while waiting to chat with 'em.
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Apr 9, 2015 21:12
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Len posted:The pizza hut near a college I went to had just a beeping for their hold noise. Beep beep beep beeeep. I can't remember what it was but the last place I called in had the same thing, total silence with the occasional annoying beep to let you know you were still on the line. Ugh. Customer services online where you can ask for them to just call you as soon as they're available instead of having to stay on hold are a loving godsend and everybody needs to start offering that as an option now.
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Apr 9, 2015 21:18
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The ones that interrupt telling me to go check online for a solution are the worst. There should be a button for "I've already tried online please stop telling me to go online."
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Apr 9, 2015 21:26
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I remember hearing a story, no idea if it's true or not, about a psychiatric hospital that used a radio station as on hold music. At one point the radio station was undergoing a change in formats and in between they just looped a recording of "They're Coming to Take me Away" for a couple of days.
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Apr 9, 2015 21:27
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Sardonik posted:There can only be one king of hold musics. I didn't know what this was or had ever heard it but I clicked it and ended up listening to the whole song. It's amazing.
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Apr 9, 2015 21:48
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Len posted:The ones that interrupt telling me to go check online for a solution are the worst. There should be a button for "I've already tried online please stop telling me to go online." My favorite is when my ISP tells me to check online for a solution. Guys, if I had internet I wouldn't be calling you.
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Apr 10, 2015 00:44
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Len posted:The ones that interrupt telling me to go check online for a solution are the worst. There should be a button for "I've already tried online please stop telling me to go online." The more people they can make hang up, the more money they can save on labor. Literally true, not just cynicism
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Apr 10, 2015 04:38
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Choco1980 posted:When I worked for Hollywood Video a little over a decade ago, their corporate support line, ie, who the managers call when there's a problem with the computers or whatever, had a great funky upbeat hold music. One day, the assistant manager and I just called them, put them on speaker phone, and every ten minutes or so when they would pick up would hang up and just redial. Ha, we did a similar thing when I worked in car rental. We had to ring a company called Lex Defence who outsourced the cars for the MoD and stuff. We got put on hold a LOT and always joked that the music sounded like something from a bad old porno. I wish I could find it again. On a bad corporate music theme, I've noticed that a lot of shops I go in to these days seem to be playing popular songs, but they are covers sung by people trying their best to sound like Chris Martin or Carly Rae Jepsen but not quite succeeding. For some reason I am hyper-aware of background music and it bugs the poo poo out of me when I hear it, my partner never even noticed until I pointed it out to him one day in the middle of Hobbycraft. I don't get why they do this, is it cheaper to pay people to completely redo the track than play the radio/original?
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Apr 10, 2015 05:35
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Trebek posted:I didn't know what this was or had ever heard it but I clicked it and ended up listening to the whole song. It's amazing. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/516/stuck-in-the-middle Higher fidelity version.
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Apr 10, 2015 05:46
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Rondette posted:Ha, we did a similar thing when I worked in car rental. We had to ring a company called Lex Defence who outsourced the cars for the MoD and stuff. We got put on hold a LOT and always joked that the music sounded like something from a bad old porno. I wish I could find it again. In the music world there's a such thing as a compulsory license. As in you can pay $X and record a cover version of a song and there is nothing anybody can do about it. I forget all the details but as long as you pay the right amount of money to whoever wrote a song you can record your own version of it. I'm assuming that's what is going on there. I forget all the exact numbers but it's like 9 cents per album sale so it's probably pretty low for each play on hold. Cheaper than hiring the actual musicians at any rate.
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Apr 10, 2015 08:46
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Len posted:The ones that interrupt telling me to go check online for a solution are the worst. There should be a button for "I've already tried online please stop telling me to go online." 1 - look up company division tel number on their corporate contact web page. 2 - call number, listen to automated menu 3 - listen to option 5's recorded message three times to understand a long division-specific url 4 - enter long url into browser 5 - browser redirect to 1
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Apr 10, 2015 10:58
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Pastry of the Year posted:"thank you for holding, we appreciate your patience!" and/or other verbal spam interrupting it every six god-damned seconds. Sardonik posted:There can only be one king of hold musics.
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Apr 10, 2015 11:11
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:This means that Kmart has officially taken back the title of "store with the worst atmosphere." Goddrat, Kmart, I know you're circling the loving drain but at least try to look nice during your final days True that. The horrible Kmart up the street from me finally went out of business last year. As soon as it was announced, all the neighboring Walgreens, Rite-Aid, CVS, etc put up signage saying "we welcome Kmart prescription customers!" I'd snort and mumble "yeah, both of them." ToxicSlurpee posted:In the music world there's a such thing as a compulsory license. As in you can pay $X and record a cover version of a song and there is nothing anybody can do about it. I forget all the details but as long as you pay the right amount of money to whoever wrote a song you can record your own version of it. I'm assuming that's what is going on there. I forget all the exact numbers but it's like 9 cents per album sale so it's probably pretty low for each play on hold. Cheaper than hiring the actual musicians at any rate. Yeah, when I used to manage a used CD store back in the late 90's, our edge over the other stores was that we bought anything (we might only pay you 25 cents, but we'd buy it). We occasionally got these weird single track CDs that were those faux-hits. Crappy cover "art" that looked like it was slapped together in MS Paint, with just the title of the track, no artist attribution. The disc itself was cheaper than your average CD-R of the time; if you held it to a light you could see through it. They would have something in the title that told you it was not the original legit song, like, "Walkin' on the Sun version". I imagine now that everything's streaming/downloads, they're probably even more prevalent and easy to produce. Also, thanks for the explanations of why hold music sounds so crappy! Hadn't considered bandwidths. I'm always sitting on hold thinking "oh god I have a bad cell connection" when the music keeps cutting out, only to have the live human sound just fine.
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Apr 10, 2015 11:17
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Back in the days that I very rarely used a cellphone I had a Tracfone. There is so much stigma attached to that sort of thing that I always found perplexing. I got my cell phone service for 1/3 of what everybody else was paying at the time in the long run and I didn't text at all in those days. It's one thing that's always baffled me; why pay extra just to say "I paid more for this than you, pleb I've had quite a few restaurant owners/managers ask me what sort of cell phone provider I use during initial interviews. I asked one of them why they wanted to know, and the lady said, "I've been running restaurants for ten years, and people with pre-paid cell phones tend to let their minutes run out for obnoxiously long stretches of time, and then you can't get in touch with them when you really need them to come in early. It's annoying." So there's that. I'm sure you can't actually disqualify a potential hire because of their cell phone plan, but restaurants generally aren't that great at obeying OSHA regulations/anti-discrimination regulations either way Radio Help has a new favorite as of 12:23 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 12:20
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" when you yourself are not much higher on the ladder.
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I'd be surprised if it's NOT perfectly legal to decide not to hire someone because of their cell phone carrier. It's not a protected class like race or gender. You can fire somebody for any stupid reason you want as long as it's not one of the protected-class reasons - "I don't like the color of shirt you're wearing today" or "you gave your dog a stupid name" are perfectly legal reasons to fire somebody
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Apr 10, 2015 14:23
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InediblePenguin posted:I'd be surprised if it's NOT perfectly legal to decide not to hire someone because of their cell phone carrier. It's not a protected class like race or gender. You can fire somebody for any stupid reason you want as long as it's not one of the protected-class reasons - "I don't like the color of shirt you're wearing today" or "you gave your dog a stupid name" are perfectly legal reasons to fire somebody Hell in a bunch of America you don't even need a reason to fire someone 
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Apr 10, 2015 14:47
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Len posted:Hell in a bunch of America you don't even need a reason to fire someone Right. Here in Michigan that policy is there, and everyone I know that's aware of it basically equates it as a loophole to get away with discrimination.
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Apr 10, 2015 16:46
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Len posted:Hell in a bunch of America you don't even need a reason to fire someone You see, at-will employment is mutually beneficial because you can quit any time without the employer having any recourse, which is totally not a thing you could do otherwise without first giving them free reign to fire you for no reason. 
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Apr 11, 2015 05:32
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And then when someone in a union gets to file a grievance it's "oh my god that's so unfair"
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Apr 11, 2015 07:45
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InediblePenguin posted:I'd be surprised if it's NOT perfectly legal to decide not to hire someone because of their cell phone carrier. It's not a protected class like race or gender. You can fire somebody for any stupid reason you want as long as it's not one of the protected-class reasons - "I don't like the color of shirt you're wearing today" or "you gave your dog a stupid name" are perfectly legal reasons to fire somebody Technically speaking it's still illegal to fire somebody over what they like to gently caress, what their gender and/or gender identity is, and their religion because it's federal law. In practice a lot of states are "at will employment" states and employers can just can whoever they want for absolutely no reason. While you can get around stuff with flimsy reasons generally speaking in a lot of America it's easy to fire people you just don't like. Other than that even if there are laws you can get away with stuff like setting people up to fail and then firing them when they do.
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Apr 11, 2015 08:20
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And don't forget that it's the employee's responsibility to sue and prove that the reason behind their getting fired was definitely because of (protected-class) reason - so even though it's technically illegal to fire somebody for being gay, a gay person can still, in practice, TOTES get fired for being gay as long as their manager can maintain plausible deniability! And even if it's proven to have been a wrongful termination, the person's still been out of work & paying court fees over it in the mean time! AMERICA!
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Apr 11, 2015 08:26
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Don't forget talking about forming a union, or supporting unions, or accidentally saying the word union, like mentioning the UK flag, will get you out on your rear end in seconds. But it will be for [complete bullshit reason], not organizing talk, oh no. Yes, in case you folks in other countries weren't aware that is literally how anti-union American businesses are, that laws had to be made to prevent them from firing people for trying to organize (and doing so anyways with loopholes).
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Apr 12, 2015 02:38
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ryonguy posted:Don't forget talking about forming a union, or supporting unions, or accidentally saying the word union, like mentioning the UK flag, will get you out on your rear end in seconds. But it will be for [complete bullshit reason], not organizing talk, oh no. When I first got hired at Verizon wireless one of my first days of orientation was a multiple hour long presentation about how bad unions are and why you don't need to be in one. If a company has to spend hours telling you why it's bad, you know there's a reason. Now I'm a member of IAFF and I couldn't be happier.
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Apr 12, 2015 14:38
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Walmart makes you watch a video all about how unions don't look out for employees just themselves and their wallets. It goes on to say if you ever even give your name to a union rep that person will go out and use your name for nefarious purposes. Also if the wrong person hears you use that "u" word you'll get wrote up and maybe fired. Edit: I tried to find the video on YouTube but no luck. I did find it as a download from mega.co.nz but I'm not downloading it. Len has a new favorite as of 14:50 on Apr 12, 2015 |
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Apr 12, 2015 14:44
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Is there a decent source to read up on why unions are looked on so poorly? I never really understood that aspect of US employment as it's not something I've experienced here.
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Apr 12, 2015 14:51
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scamtank posted:All the Lidl stores I've known follow the "Moldovian operating room 1991" school of interior decorating. Harsh fluorescent lights, weird and impractical (check-out) furniture, constant security presence and pus-yellow tile floor for easy blood cleanup. It's definitely deliberate, the no-nonsense approach is part of what allows for the low, low prices and they want the customer to know it. Colruyt takes it even further, all of their stores are basically gray, impersonal, no-frills warehouses. And you know what, I don't care what the interior of a supermarket looks like as long as prices are low and employees aren't treated like poo poo. ryonguy posted:Yes, in case you folks in other countries weren't aware that is literally how anti-union American businesses are, that laws had to be made to prevent them from firing people for trying to organize (and doing so anyways with loopholes). These laws exist in Western Europe as well, except I guess they're taken seriously and you're going to have a bad time trying to fire someone even remotely involved in union activities. mr. mephistopheles posted:You see, at-will employment is mutually beneficial because you can quit any time without the employer having any recourse, which is totally not a thing you could do otherwise without first giving them free reign to fire you for no reason. Actually, in countries (and presumably American states) with employment termination legislation, the employee as well as the employer have to respect a period of notice (or grant severance pay), though it's obviously shorter in the former case. You can't just quit. Phlegmish has a new favorite as of 15:12 on Apr 12, 2015 |
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Apr 12, 2015 14:55
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poptart_fairy posted:Is there a decent source to read up on why unions are looked on so poorly? I never really understood that aspect of US employment as it's not something I've experienced here. Essentially, the entire reason is "Employers don't like their employees having power".
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Apr 12, 2015 15:18
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Hijo Del Helmsley posted:Essentially, the entire reason is "Employers don't like their employees having power". Because if they have to actually pay their employees half-decently, as unions force them to do, it cuts into their profits.
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Apr 12, 2015 15:21
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Phlegmish posted:Actually, in countries (and presumably American states) with employment termination legislation, the employee as well as the employer have to respect a period of notice (or grant severance pay), though it's obviously shorter in the former case. You can't just quit. It's definitely not true in the States. It's professional to give at least 2 weeks notice, but you can walk out on the spot and your employer can't do anything. It's not something that's recommended since it burns a lot of bridges, but you can legally do it, even if your company policy says otherwise. e: On the flipside, your employer can fire you on the spot and laugh in your face when you ask for severance. In those cases, you usually have to fight to get unemployment benefits too. US employment laws are weird. hyperhazard has a new favorite as of 16:33 on Apr 12, 2015 |
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Apr 12, 2015 16:28
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mind the walrus posted:Watching subhuman and overpaid ad monkeys misappropriate Gen X songs is somehow even more amusing than when they did it to Boomer music Even a company as "hip" as Apple fucks it up. I don't think "Somebody That I Used to Know" among other sad songs should be used as hold music. I'm calling you because my machine is broken and you're just depressing me more.
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Apr 12, 2015 17:04
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poptart_fairy posted:Is there a decent source to read up on why unions are looked on so poorly? I never really understood that aspect of US employment as it's not something I've experienced here. My grandpa was some sort of operations manager for a large retail chain on the west coast for 20+ years, and he generally doesn't like unions because "for every one functional, helpful union that looks out for their members and keeps corporations from taking advantage of them, there are five corrupt ones that only exist to make easy money and gum up the works." He also brings up the point that, generally speaking, retail stores have such a slim profit margin that when a union forces a company to pay its employees something above a slave wage, they can only ever really operate in the red. I don't agree with his stance at all, and you could easily point out places like Costco as examples to the contrary, but I've heard that from a lot of similarly-minded people (read: crotchety old management-types). Then there's the old chestnut that trade unions are run by [insert your favorite organized crime ring].
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Apr 12, 2015 20:47
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hyperhazard posted:It's definitely not true in the States. It's professional to give at least 2 weeks notice, but you can walk out on the spot and your employer can't do anything. It's not something that's recommended since it burns a lot of bridges, but you can legally do it, even if your company policy says otherwise. Depends on the job and what kind of contracts are involved. Even so not giving a two weeks notice just flat out looks bad. Probably the only exception I ever saw was telemarketing where they straight up tell you during orientation that they absolutely do not care if you decide you hate the job and just quit coming. Just come get your paycheck on the right day and be on your way, no hard feelings. The one place I worked at like three different times. I could literally walk in and say "I used to work for you" and be on the phones the next day then just quit showing up when I got sick of it. When it comes to contracts in some areas of the work force (usually not bottom-rung things) they don't want you jumping ship so you'll have non-compete clauses and possible penalties if you just quit. They can't exactly force you to keep working if you don't want to but contracts can have certain "If I quit before X day I will Y" sorts of things. From what I gather non-competes are the biggest one.
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Apr 12, 2015 21:30
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There's a real feeling that unions exist to either collect dues and do nothing. Or make it impossible to fire a bad employee so all the hard workers have to carry the extra weight. Some people seem to think they do both at the same time somehow.
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Apr 12, 2015 21:36
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Labor Unions were definitely a force of good back when wage-workers were hideously exploited with terrible pay, 16-hour work days, enough breathing hazards to cut your lifespan in half, and when going on strike may have gotten you gunned-down by the company muscle. They paved the way for little concepts like fair wages, benefits, and not using 8 year old kids to do incredibly dangerous jobs. (Though those conditions still exist...just in other countries) However, today there's a general belief that over time they ultimately started abusing their power: forcing companies to pay six-figure salaries to workers who do nothing, making it hard or impossible to fire incompetent workers, and taking bribes or having mob connections.
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Apr 12, 2015 23:18
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Dr_Amazing posted:There's a real feeling that unions exist to either collect dues and do nothing. Or make it impossible to fire a bad employee so all the hard workers have to carry the extra weight. My experience with a Canadian union was a roommate working in a warehouse, and they did protect the lovely employees. They also protected him from being disciplined over a stupid reason: 40%of his sick days were Fridays and Mondays. Assuming a random distribution, that's what you'd expect.
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Apr 13, 2015 00:35
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My union, IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees), kept my former company from trying to do away with our over time pay. Worked on a touring show and we'd get a premium if we worked with less than 24 hours between loading the show out and loading it in in a new venue. The company wanted to end that, and IATSE stepped up and went all  so I got no beef with them.
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Apr 13, 2015 01:35
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Unions are kind of like the police, the vast majority are incredibly important and have the best intentions, then a small percentage go and ruin it for everyone. I worked for eight months in a CAW plant producing power generation turbines and the things I saw turned me against unions for years afterwards. Workers literally asleep at their workstations, seniority fuckery leading to lazy entitled assholes sticking around while hard workers were laid off, the union threatening legal action after an employee was dismissed for repeatedly carrying tools out to his truck during lunch (with video evidence), etc. At one point a pipefitter and welder were laid off at the same time, when they started hiring again, the welder ended up being hired as a pipe fitter, and the pipe fitter as a welder. The pipe fitter was a terrible welder and vice versa, but due to union regulations they weren't allowed to swap into eachothers positions (even though they wanted to, there was a wage disparity of maybe $0.25-0.50/hr). Due to the same union rules the company had a hell of a time getting rid of what were now essentially useless employees and spent unreasonable amounts of time and money attempting to train them into eachtothers jobs. Due to a downturn in the industry the plant was losing money and management looked to start consolidating some positions, for example worker A drove a forklift but was only in demand for 2-3 hours per day, so why not have him sweep floors or help out in other parts of the plant for the rest of his shift? Well apparently that's worth threatening to strike over! When they did strike they would force the engineering staff to walk single file through a gauntlet of abusive strikers and pepper them with food to attract seagulls, not to mention the threatening phone calls to managers families. The plant eventually closed and everyone lost their jobs, so success? Edit: Another ranty example, I worked on an oil rig offshore where a piece of my equipment broke. On any other rig on earth I'd go grab the replacement cable out of the container, hook it up, run it through some cable trays to the rig floor and have everything up and running in 2-3 hours. Since this was one of the very rare unionized rigs this was unacceptable since I'd be stealing the instrumentation techs jobs! To get an instrumentation tech required a work order, the work order required drawings and a work scope, the drawings and work scope required meetings and a budget review on shore. The work I could have done in 2-3 hours took over two months. Marketing! Niven has a new favorite as of 02:12 on Apr 13, 2015 |
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Apr 13, 2015 02:08
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