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Jeoh posted:There's a good union topic in A/Tot right now. Unionization for call centre workers is a pretty good idea though. I feel sad that my old call center crushed two unionization suits and three lawsuits against them. God, I hate them so much. I hear they've only gotten worse since I left, too. V Texas appears to be both. Hooray. Aerofallosov fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Jun 29, 2012 |
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Jun 28, 2012 01:29
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 07:32 |
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The closest thing I've ever said to that was on a call one Friday afternoon at like... 4:45PM. This lady called in and was freaking out that OH MY GOD she didn't have internet for two days! And why wasn't she getting internet?! So we did some trouble shooting (Grudgingly - she nagged at me EVERY. SINGLE. STEP). Turns out it was a no sync and she'd need a tech. They'd probably get to her on Monday (While they DO do some Saturday visits, it's rare and given the quality of your average CenturyLink tech...). A shitstorm ensued. She screams and goes off on me. She had her kids that weekend! How was she going to entertain her kids!? What would they do!? What could she do?! How could she POSSIBLY keep her kids entertained without the internet!? And boy I was a loving horrible person, what was she going to do!? So I kind of just automatically replied, "Well, you could try paying attention to them." A long silence followed. Oh god. I knew it. I was going to be fired. But at that point, it was a sort of hope, too. Firing meant freedom. She just quietly hung up after that. I still put the ticket in for a tech to be nice, but boy. I felt ... strangely neutral about it. A part of me felt guilty and a part of me felt like I really only spoke the truth. It was just horrifying how the words shot out of my mouth like some sort of sarcastic breath weapon. And yes, my supervisor chuckled slightly but did give me a warning. Aerofallosov fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Jul 3, 2012 |
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Jul 3, 2012 03:37
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It amazes me how petty people are. We had a lady freak out because she had to use the global address book to find someone in Outlook and not her local contacts. I added it by hand and she went: "oh my GOD, I have to do that for anyone else I want in there!?" Um. Yeah? Contacts list doesn't build itself. Or people who bug out because they want to click THIS and not use right click. Or the lady I had to spend an hour and a half fiddling with dlls because her XP machine was so damaged by malware her LAN icon didn't show up in her system tray and she was freaking out. Y'know, despite the machine connecting just fine. Or the lady who deleted over 8000 e-mails, emptied her deleted items folder then calls in screaming that her e-mail disappeared. Um. Okay... because the deleted items folder empties itself. She expected us to hand restore all of them in proper order. And I despise my co-worker for dumping an hour and a half long call because she spent the last 20 minutes of her shift alternately hiding outside or telling us she was leaving now. Screw you, you stupid bint. Half of us never get to call in sick because you call in constantly for stupid poo poo like 'I don't feel like coming in'. You dropped this call and now I have to deal with a pissed off old woman and her outlook. DIAF. Someday, I will have a job that isn't call center. And it will be glorious.
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Jul 13, 2012 02:39
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I am amazed at how much people will whine and complain about the smallest changes. Yes, we require yearly password changes. You will need 3 of 4: upper or lowercase letter, a number or a symbol. And yet, you would think at all of the crying about it I get, that we were asking people to solve a cipher while we bash their knees in with hammers. For gently caress's sake, this is the bare minimum and it only came about after hundreds of accounts got compromised because some dingleberries thought that Nigerian chap really was pretty awesome to give 'em some millions. Then they run a story complaining about IT security in the paper. Awesome.
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Jul 23, 2012 03:36
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Congratulations! It's always a happy day when someone gets out.
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Jul 27, 2012 02:34
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Boomer The Cannon posted:I learned today if you change one digit in one of our corporate directory lines, instead of getting to loan officers you get an offer for generic Viagra. Yeah, our DSL support line was one digit off from a sex chat line. We sometimes got confused perverts or people referred back from the sex line.
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Jan 12, 2013 06:49
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The ID thief wet dream people make me wince, but I try to turn it into a teachable moment. I explain that unless someone asks for it, you don't ever, ever need to give them out. Secondly, using stuff like your SSN for your PIN is a right terrible idea... Some catch on. Some don't. At least I try to reach out to 'em. What drives me nuts is when I ask if someone remembers their account username and they give me this story about how the last time they used it was YEARS ago, back in Nineteen dickety two and how do I expect them to remember THAT? Gosh, ehehe! ... it wasn't funny the first time and it's not funny after several hundred password resets.
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Feb 23, 2013 19:28
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It's even more fun when they demand you fix their internet and refuse to let you know any of their account information. The hilarity doubles when it turns out their internet was cut because they didn't pay for three months and somehow this is my fault because I should've told them BEFORE I started troubleshooting. Y'know, without the account information.
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Feb 27, 2013 18:18
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I feel bad for it, but at my old job where you had to 'queue' for a break on this web page and hope to grab one of the slots (and not get a call as you clicked into the spot) I grew to DESPISE smokers because they would hog all of the breaks. Yeah, I get it, you NEED your 6 ciggies but sweet Jesu Christi, I just wanted ONE measily 15 minute break. And a lot of call centers are toxic because of those arbitrary, nonsensical rules (They brought us pizza because it was busy but we couldn't eat at our desks, nor could we go on do not disturb to go GET and eat the pizza. SO we got to sit for four hours smelling pizza. Thanks, guys). There's a lot of lousy people there who can't work elsewhere (Hi, Pedobear - we call him that for many reasons. He was creepy, sugardaddying some of the young college and high school students and yeah...) or just turn into hateful bags of hate.
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Apr 4, 2013 22:23
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The same one that uses a lovely, javabased web page that you HAVE to keep open or you lose your place and heaven help you if their lovely software crashes and takes the browser with it. I swear whomever coded their software hates humanity. And it's 'technically' legal because they *offer* lunch and break. They just might not offer enough for everyone to get one.
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Apr 5, 2013 08:07
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RN029-ARIN posted:Lawl, TNI. I'm glad you got out of that shithole. The only way I got through that even for a few months was to be blazed halfway out of my mind all shift (I was WFM). I started smoking in training when they were teaching us how to use ipconfig (if you have to be taught that, you're doing what in ISP support?) and I didn't work an hour sober until I quit. At least it wasn't too bad. You went through your thing and then dispatched, and there was nothing along the lines of having to personally tackle a weird issue. drat tedious though. Yeah. They owe me backpay because of their stupid logging software. I survived a year and a half. Hilariously, one of the complaints as I left was that people were coming in blazed/drunk/hungover. A friend who still works there mentioned that they were, if not had already, going to institute random drug testing because CenturyLink requested it. Just ugh. Never. Again. And I got stuck next to Pedobear a lot of the time. That was just awful.
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Apr 7, 2013 08:38
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Considering my previous call center had several people who had been lectured about personal hygiene and happily ignored them... Well, I am going to leave it at that I am glad Bath and Body Works had a battery powered oil warmer so I could at least have some sort of pleasant, not reeking body smell. We ended up being issued headsets because swine flu broke out and no one who could even wobble in would stay home (That's how I got it- one of my co-workers was like, TEEHEE I HAVE SWINE FLU *HACKWHEEZE*).
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Apr 12, 2013 03:47
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Oh, racists. I got so many of those. One lady was like, YES! I GOT A LITTLE WHITE GIRL! when I answered the phone. I was in shock for a moment. Another guy was ranting the moment the call started "I don't want any red people, brown people, robots or whatever. I WANT A PERSON ON THE LINE!" and ugh, god help you if they went on a spiel about Indian or Asian call centers. I really had to bite my tongue on some of them.
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Apr 12, 2013 19:48
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Fil5000 posted:Workplaces that aren't horrible would rather you took a whole day (or even a couple!) sick rather than coming in to prove to everyone you're sick, spreading your disease and then going home. Although maybe I'm spoiled by the socialist utopia of the uk where paid sick leave is mandatory and the only question is how much your company chooses to pay you over the statutory minimum. Unfortunately, many of these places are horrible. And since most of them don't give you any sort of sick leave, you're losing money. Considering the wages at a lot of call center, missing a few days' worth of work can mean making rent or not.
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Apr 15, 2013 07:54
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Too Poetic posted:It amazes me the number of people who think you can just plug a modem into the power and then get online with it. And how angry they get when I inform them they need to hook up to a cable line. Yeah, I remember that. Or DSL folks who get the phone and ethernet cord mixed up. Or the lady who yelled at me for telling her her wireless router had to be plugged in to power and the modem. It's wireless, duuuuuuuh.* *Now powered by Bolivian Orphan souls.
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May 14, 2013 05:38
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Gothmog1065 posted:1 sales rep, 2 "technical support" reps, 1 supervisor to get to me: Because you haven't loaded enough Bolivian Orphan Souls into it, duh.
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May 22, 2013 09:49
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I'm working on it. Applying for grad school, hitting USAjobs, etc. It's just hard when it's what you have experience in and everyone goes, OH! You can work the phones! It also irritates me how many stealth sales and call center positions there are. "Work a data center with end users" indeed... Also, I'm going to scream if I apply for one job and get offered a friggin' call center/help desk job. No! I apply for the job that has me in the NOC like Gollum, not Sally McSmiles at front desk.
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Jun 20, 2013 19:18
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Pope Guilty posted:Call centers having illegal employment practices is so common as to be almost unremarkable, unfortunately. This is truth. :/ They skirt around it by TECHNICALLY offering breaks, technically not having people work overtime, but if you don't work overtime, if you do take breaks (Or the system is rigged so you never really get one ANYWAY) and so on. People seem so shocked by my old call center's practices. No, that's most call centers.
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Jun 22, 2013 17:54
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Pope Guilty posted:My job is with a university. It's basically completely disabused me of any ideas about the value of higher education I might have had to spend my work shifts talking to students and faculty. Oh, you've called us 20 times in the last month, including three times in a two-day period, to ask how to change column widths in Excel? Clearly you're in the right place. Yup. I worry and wonder how some of these folks got/are here. Having to read to a Literary MA is a very strange experience.
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Jul 6, 2013 21:18
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It reminds me of the time someone stuffed a sweater in the heater that somehow caught fire, set off the fire alarms and yet we still got callers. We picked them up to tell people we were evacuating. Mind you, this is with fire alarms going full blast. This little old lady with a southern accent goes: "Well, you can just BURN. I WANT my internet service NOW!" She really seemed to mean it. I rarely hear genuine virulence in someone's voice, but yikes. She wanted me to die in a fire. I apologized and told her the firemen were shuffling us out and hung up.
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Jul 13, 2013 08:28
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you ate my cat posted:
I don't know. Psychology Today had a few interesting pieces on why people break down in call centers, on why it's one of the last places it's okay to bully people (over the phone) and so on. But it's like... if I die in a fire, she's not getting support from me anyway!
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Jul 14, 2013 22:29
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Gothmog1065 posted:t That does explain the really, really, really low turnover rate in managers and supervisors at my first call center.
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Jul 14, 2013 23:10
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Kreeblah posted:For me, it was when I fantasized about driving into the median on my way to work so I didn't have to be there that day. I usually took some sick days when that happened. Yup. After I was given a couple of days off after my car was destroyed by a truck, I began to fantasize about being hit by a car for a couple of days off. It was about then I put in my two weeks' notice.
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Jul 19, 2013 18:36
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Tychtrip posted:I don't know the ins and outs of it as I've only had 3 short training sessions, but as far as I can tell it's used for general business and order management. We just use it to place orders, basically. It's also used for pay stubs, recording hours - our SAP stuff even comes with a sandbox folks can mess with that isn't connected to the others so they can mess with it.
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Jul 25, 2013 09:29
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If you call tech support and I ask you what you're trying to do when you sound confused, have something in mind. Please. "What are you trying to do/log into?" "I DON'T KNOW!" Then why are you calling me? How can I possibly help you? Why does everyone expect IT to be psychic? Hell, if I were psychic I'd buy up lotto tickets... Or the lady who freaked out at me when I asked if she remembered her ID. "I DON'T REMEMBER IT. I'M 40 YEARS OLD!" Uh, okay. Do you not realize that more and more older folks are coming back to college?
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Jul 26, 2013 08:54
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ratbert90 posted:Is this you're situation? Because 1) You weren't hired, and 2) Your bigotry is well within their bounds to not accept. I would have done the same drat thing as well. Yeah, I have to go with this. You weren't hired, and frankly, I would be incredibly loathe to hire a bigot in the first place. Dealing with callers is a pain in the rear end enough without dealing with bigoted co-workers. The best you might do is just admit it and apologize, owning up to your mistake. Odds are good though, you sabotaged yourself. And ... might wanna work on that whole bigot thing. Though, I'm a bit surprised this is your only post, FWC.
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Jul 29, 2013 09:35
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Well, I suppose putting a head on a stick would be efficient, direct employee feedback. It just might be the dreaded 0 stars rating. I wish you all the luck in getting out of there. Management and co-workers can really make or break a job and as burned out as I am, I do miss my awesome supervisor.
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Aug 13, 2013 23:18
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Loving Life Partner posted:I thought about chat team, but I have this insane fear I'd have to basically interact with YouTube commenters all day That's not much different from dealing with them on the phone. At least taking chats, I could listen to music or something while I did.
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Aug 31, 2013 05:50
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No, that sounds about par for course in many call centers. They did that at the first one I worked at. Yay HEB grocery card! ... but you have too many points and will be working overtime without overtime pay. Oh, you were more than 3 minutes in the bathroom. And so on. It feels like an abusive relationship sometimes.
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Sep 19, 2013 05:09
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Fil5000 posted:I'm pretty sure it's illegal, but with some of the stories we've had in here I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's common. It is. Unfortunately, call centers just seem to love skirting the law. A lot. 'We TECHNICALLY offer breaks, but the odds of you actually getting one ever are slim.'
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Oct 2, 2013 16:10
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:I once absolutely refused to continue troubleshooting someone's poo poo until they pulled off the road because they thought it was a great idea to try to get their VPN problem fixed while they were commuting on the highway. One of my favorites was some guy driving a tractor and asking for help with his DSL. I couldn't hear him and I was worrying about any poor bastards on that field. Or the people on laptops or phones trying to do stuff on the highway or while driving. I actually just ask them them if that due to safety concerns, would they please call back when they can pull over or something.
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Nov 6, 2013 20:52
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The first call center I worked for had one ISP's number that was one digit away from a sex line. That was ... interesting.
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Nov 7, 2013 17:18
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We had a guy who would randomly drop or transfer calls. He was given a prize card for consistent low call times. ... yeah. Most of us hated him a lot. Even though a few of us tried to tell the supervisors, they wouldn't hear it about their Golden Boy.
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Mar 8, 2014 02:09
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I hated the people smoking by the door because it invariably means an asthma attack and tons of glares when I start coughing. Hey, I'd be a lot happier without asthma, too. That, and the ventilation in the building blew, so the area near the door reeked, too. Or the one dude who would take like 8-10 breaks a day and not get chewed out because he creeped out the supervisors too much for anyone to want to deal with him. That said, I really hated how micromanaged the breaks were. 3 minutes? To the bathroom? HURRY UP AERO COME BACK OMG. They kinda stopped after I offered to take a picture of what I was doing in the bathroom because I got irritated coming back to my desk to several frantic IMs and warnings.
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Jul 18, 2014 16:36
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Mirthless posted:The closest I ever came to getting myself fired for behavior on a call with a customer was when I was working for a sweatshop Verizon call center and was dealing with an aggressively shitheaded rear end in a top hat who couldn't get his point across without screaming. I'd been doing 10-15 hours of mandatory overtime a week for about 6 months at this point, so I deliberately pushed his buttons on the call until he hung up, called him back, and deliberately pushed his buttons some more. He hung up on me. Then I called him back, and, between (unmuted) giggles, pretended not to realize he hung up on me, inquiring if he'd just entered a tunnel by mistake or perhaps he'd accidentally hit end call? I think I might have even deliberately insulted him at this point, I was pretty disillusioned with the job. After more frothing anger and a third hang up, my manager pulled me aside for a QA "on your last call". He thought I had "some tone issues", but "It was good that you called them back". He thought the call was over after the second hangup and ended the recording before I made the second callback. Man, I was sweating bullets through that QA session. The closest I got was a woman who called on a Friday at like, 4:55PM. She was screaming at us to come fix her internet. Okay, we go through troubleshooting. It's a no sync, a tech is gonna have to come out. I explain this, that they will likely come out Monday at the earliest and needed some details (address, best times, blah blah blah). She promptly freaks out, and goes on and on about OH MY GOD! What are her kids going to do all weekend!? She had her KIDS this weekend. Her CHILDREN NEED the internet! WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!? This goes on for about 15 minutes. I somehow pried out her details in the midst of it all. So then she pointedly asks me what she's going to do this weekend? What can she do about her kids?! ... It was this surreal moment like when you spill something important and watch it splatter all over in front of you. And there's not a drat thing you can do about it. But you watch intently, in horror as it all unfolds in front of you. Training to hold yourself steady, to hold your tongue and check your pride as a human being (and dignity! We are not slaves!) all go out the window in that one moment. I quietly replied, "Why not pay attention to them?" I really didn't even sound mean. It just sort of fell out. The line went DEAD SILENT. Then a click. I felt this sense of horror, dread and relief. Hey, if I got fired... I wouldn't have to do this anymore. If I didn't, well. Then I noticed the supervisor down at the end of the stations looking at me strangely. I got an IM on pidgin that he was sympathetic and tempted to say the same thing, but don't do that again.
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Dec 14, 2014 00:55
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Che Delilas posted:Buy that man a beer. That job might not be a keeper but your boss is. Haha, yeah. He was a fast food run buddy and he was awesome. He ended up getting an awesome job supervising elsewhere. SiGmA_X posted:This happened ALL THE TIME at Netflix. It was freaking amazing. Most of us would say something along the lines of "well back in my day, and surely yours, we didn't have internet as kids... So our parents did activities with us and we read and went outdoors!" or something like that. It was always pretty funny. It wasn't really intentional, but yeah. I was kind of shocked. If our TV went out or something and I wasn't already reading or off outside, I - went outside. I mean, I get living in an area where kids playing outside is a bad idea (ask me about living in LA around the time of Rodney King sometimes), but on the other hand - why not TV? Books? Arts and crafts? Family time? I donated most of the yarn I didn't sell to an afterschool thing for poor kids to have some fun (and yes, I am totally sympathetic but that's an E/N post in and of itself), and in a lot of places there's plenty of free little things like volunteering at the butterfly house. I can't imagine that much dependence on the internet being healthy, anyway. Especially not at a young age.
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Dec 14, 2014 12:45
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:I put on a lot of weight and really damaged my relationships with friends, family, and my girlfriend (now my wife) by essentially never talking to anyone (or if I did being a sad sack). I was only doing it eight months but it felt like an eternity. Yup. This is what happened to me.  I gained weight, never really talked to anyone. All I did was eat, sleep and work. Also, I was totally rooting for the aliens to destroy humanity. :|
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Jan 25, 2015 08:42
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Robin Sparkles posted:I once had a lady call me a oval office and tell me she hopes my children are born retarded. She also threatened to come and kill everyone I work with. Yeah, I had one lady wish I would die of AIDS on Christmas. Or the guy who wished the plane that hit the IRS building had landed on us instead.
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Dec 27, 2015 17:05
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 07:32 |
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The call center I used to work at tried to unionize, but they have really good lawyers and all three attempts were quashed. Yaaaaaaay Texas...
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Jul 21, 2017 23:03
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