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Loving Life Partner posted:I'm kinda frustrated lately. Apparently my "aux" time is a problem (time off phones), but I answer about 60% more calls than the rest of my team. I take on average, 95-105, and the team average is about 65. This is just depressing to me - the whole point of targets should be to drive the behaviour you want from staff, but instead you end up with managers seeing nothing but the target and divorcing it from the purpose. What sort of percentage of your time are you actually spending in aux?
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May 14, 2011 07:45
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modeski posted:Get it in writing! There's an easy way to do this without coming across as "I don't trust verbal agreements made with you in a company like this." Simply write your supervisor an email clarifying the things you talked about. Two points: a) As someone that's been on the receiving end of this sort of email, it looks exactly like a CYA measure when it arrives, but regardless of that; b) Your supervisor should ideally be documenting this stuff anyway. If they've identified a performance issue then documenting it does two things for them - first, it makes them look as though they're taking it seriously and secondly it creates a paper trail so they can prove they've been managing you. Your supervisor sounds ok from what you've said, so they shouldn't care that you're covering yourself. Hopefully they've documented the conversation in your file somewhere anyway, and they should happily give you a copy of that. All that said... yeah, get it in writing.
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May 16, 2011 21:51
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Invis posted:The reason we call people is many of them aren't aware that there are government incentives out there that can make investmenting much easier. That's why we hold the seminars. Just out of interest, how many times do you keep going after someone says "No thanks, not interested?" Because I have invariably been polite to people doing telemarketing, right up until I've told them twice that I'm not interested. I'm not sure what pressures these phone agents get put under, but if I've told them nicely twice that I have no interest in whatever they're selling and they keep going then they can gently caress off. Recently I had someone call and ask for the previous owner of the house - told them they weren't here any more and hadn't been for two years. "Oh, well perhaps I can interest YOU in..." No. Just no. Straight away I know you're going to hit me with a sales pitch now and I'm eating my sodding tea. If I get a call from someone who doesn't care who they've managed to get hold of then I'm utterly uninterested in speaking to them.
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Jun 1, 2011 22:31
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wilderthanmild posted:Passive aggressive bullshit is a big part of why I quit at the last telemarketing office I was at. It started with just a few people thinking it was funny to put in the especially rude/angry people for callbacks in 30 min to an hour just to annoy them instead of putting them in as a no to offer or adding them as a do not call. Some of the reps seemed to think this was funny and soon it seemed like a pretty big chunk of the office was doing it. It just kept getting bigger and bigger and seemed like some people were pretty much putting ALL of their files that didn't buy back in the system as callbacks. I know of late at my place the guy in charge of the dialler is having a very in depth look into when people are setting callbacks or taking wrong party connect and what the call consisted of. He's caught several people now who are clearly just fudging their figures by recording stuff incorrectly and forced it to be dealt with. If anyone reading the thread is having issues getting your line manager and the normal chain of command to care about poo poo like this, try sneaking a word with the resource and planning side of the chain - if they give a crap they'll find a way to do something about anything that's costing them productivity/utilisation.
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Jun 13, 2011 23:30
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Effexxor posted:This is amazing. What a random ethnicity. From now on, everything is the Laosians' fault. It's a fairly common ethnicity to attack in the UK (although I appreciate the original post referred to prices in dollars so this probably doesn't apply). I know people who have been chased down the street and had things thrown at them just for being a "fuckin' Paki".
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Jun 24, 2011 22:20
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Aren't people the least bit embarrassed being grown adults and requesting that their bill due the day after they get their paychecks? Ha, yeah, I had to have that conversation a few tomes with customers. No, it is not our job to manage your money. Yes, you DO have to leave the money in and keep track of your spending and not just withdraw money until your card stops letting you. Also, the system we had for dealing with missed payments wouldn't let you set a payment date for the last working day of the month (first payment had to be a specific date and if you put, say, 30/06 it would forever be on the 30th and never on the 31st). So this conversation would ensue: Me: "I've set the payment date for the first of every month..." Them: "BUT I TOLD YOU I GET PAID AT THE END OF THE MONTH" Me: "Well, yes, but the first of the month is just a day la-" Them: "I DON'T HAVE NO MONEY AT THE START OF THE MONTH, I GET PAID AT THE END" So very tiresome.
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Jun 26, 2011 07:40
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modeski posted:I share your sickness! What they mean is "low income", but obviously are too proud to say it. Bit silly to have that kind of pride at the same time insisting that it's too complicated for them to stay within their overdraft limit. I remember having to talk a guy through every direct debit on his account to get him to review his spending. He was housebound and on a couple of different benefits that would have meant he could love reasonably comfortably but had got himself half a dozen magazine subscriptions, a fully loaded satellite TV package, he smoked, etc etc etc. Essentially he was burning all his benefits on non essentials and had got into trouble as a result. Each attempt from me to get him to cancel or downsize something was met with "well that's the only pleasure I get these days!" I understand it's lovely being housebound but don't piss all your money away on entertainment and then claim you can't pay your bills because we charged you.
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Jun 26, 2011 08:33
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Null Set posted:Because most people running call centers don't have a clue how to do it well, but it's relatively easy to make money doing it. I know there's some "best time to call" software for Aspect diallers at least - no idea how well it works though. Also, we get hold of a SHITLOAD of people in debt if we call on a saturday morning. Tails off after 1pm but it's an awesome opportunity to speak to someone who really really doesn't want to talk to you!
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Jul 2, 2011 17:46
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wilderthanmild posted:The last call center I worked at had a best calling time field but it seemed like the dialer didn't actually use it since we just kept calling people by timezone and then alphabetically. In ours it seems half the STAFF think it's illegal to start dialling before 10am on a sunday. I have literally no idea where this came from, but it's become such a strong belief that no-one seems to want to challenge it. I wouldn't even mind if it was higher ups saying "Let's cool it a little on a sunday morning" but there's no policy statement or best practice or anything to reflect this. Also, I think they all have a field for best time to call but it depends on whether or not your company has bought that functionality, as well as on your dialling strategy. Thankfully in the UK we don't have to worry much about timezones, for which I am eternally grateful.
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Jul 2, 2011 22:45
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wilderthanmild posted:I feel like that's one of those things that just snowballs out of a random comment made by an angry customer being spread around by ignorant staff. On a side note, I've never worked in a call center that did calls before 10am on a Sunday so maybe that rumor is pretty widespread. The thing is, I wouldn't mind if anyone could have told me what law we'd be breaking. I had this approach with customers insisting that we couldn't use their benefit money to offset an overdraft (e.g. You're 1000 overdrawn against a 500 limit, you have 100 of benefits come in so you're still 400 over your agreed limit) who could never tell me WHY we couldn't do that. "It's illegal!" "Well what law are we breaking exactly?" "You can't take my benefits!" "Well you've taken a thousand pounds from the bank, why don't you think you should have to pay it back?" And so on. I had one customer who one managed to quote me a particular act of parliament that she claimed supported this - so I found it online, printed it off and called her back to find out which particular clause was relevant. Sadly it didn't cover anything to do with it at all and she sounded thoroughly confused at being called on it. Clearly she'd quoted it before and people had caved. In case this sounds assholish, please note that 99% of these people got their money by actually making an agreement to pay back the rest of what they owed in installments - it's just the ones that wanted to take the money and ignore the debt that left the phone disappointed.
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Jul 4, 2011 13:33
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Wootcannon posted:^Yeah apparently some councils are telling their clients this, I get it quite a lot, but I'd never get away with calling someone out on it that blatantly. I was always quite polite about it (at least in tone) and it really did confuse people. I'd still be happy to be proved wrong but as far as I can tell it's not illegal - only if we hold your money when you're within an agreed facility or in credit. And even then there's reasons we can still do it. In terms of timing, I dunno, we've always expected people to be logged in and ready to go at their start time (because they'll sure as gently caress be out the door on the dot) rather than just sitting down at their desks. On more than a few occasions I was fielding my first call while my PC actually got logged in, but as long as I was answering calls it was all good. Speaking from a forecasting/scheduling standpoint, the whole reason you get rostered to start at 9 is because there's a certain expected demand at that time - if everyone's just sitting down and getting booted up then then you're going to have abandons out the rear end.
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Jul 4, 2011 16:17
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modeski posted:Teletech used to mandate we be at our desks and logging in for a 9am start. We weren't paid for it, though, so towards the end of my time there I would show up at 8:55, turn my machine on at 9 on the dot, let the calls come in and bullshit with people until I was logged in and good to go. I told my boss "I'm paid from 9, I work from 9. If you want me to start at 8:45 you need to pay me from 8:45". By that time I was so loving jaded I honestly didn't give a gently caress if they fired me. I kinda get this with companies that stiff you any way they can, but I work for one that pays a decent entry level salary (about £18k for a phone jockey), adds another 15% on top of that to go into a pension or to piss up the wall every friday if you want, has a decent amount of holiday days, you spend about 15% of your time off the phone for various things, your breaks aren't scheduled so you can basically take up to 20 minutes a day when you feel like it, work weeks are 35 hours, etc etc. Seems churlish of people to get pissy about being logged in on time. I think it used to bother me a lot more because I live 25 miles from the place and was always on time, and it was always people round the corner that were late daily.
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Jul 4, 2011 21:49
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dustbin posted:I quit my job this week. It was unexpected, so knowing that my final call was actually my final call was stolen from me. One of many regrets. I think we'd all like to hear more about how this happened so suddenly...
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Jul 10, 2011 10:05
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Loving Life Partner posted:The thing keeping my job awesome are my neighbors. One guy is becoming a really great friend in and out of work, and my other 2 neighbors are on the same wavelength in the way we view the job and the culture, so it's just a 10 hour bullshit session all day long, it makes the job a breeze. I have made probably one of the best friends I've ever had when I was working phones, and that was probably the only thing that kept me from leaving untilI got a ton of off phone duties and eventual promotion. Is it normal in most centres that supervisors/team leaders don't sit with their team then? I've always sat bang in the middle of mine. Also, I've never had an issue with people pissing and moaning about the last call AS LONG AS THEY'VE DEFINATELY DISCONNECTED FIRST. There was a call doing the rounds a while back where the agent said "go gently caress yourself" at the end of it, thinking the customer had gone. The customer didn't hear it but complained about some other part of the call and demanded a transcript. Well, under the data protection act he's entitled, and we had to transcribe literally the whole thing including that last bit. Ouch.
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Jul 10, 2011 17:37
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Bovine Delight posted:Be careful what you say when you give out references. There is a reason that most major companies only release hire and termination dates and salary. There isn't really a reason to go above and beyond that and risk getting burned. Yeah, I think the worst my place ever goes is "Resigned pending disciplinary meeting".
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Jul 13, 2011 14:47
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Wootcannon posted:Apparently there's a "legal right" to speak to a manager, and a "legal right" to have access to your account without any form of verification of identity. The data protection act is irrelevant to this, and he knows this as he works for <bank>. It's a shame that act isn't irrelevant, as it would have been great to have phoned that wanker's employer and tell them about the huuuge loving risk they were running. Hey, I've had that guy who claims they are legally allowed to escalate the call! I took great delight in telling him there is no such thing and asking him if he actually wanted to fix the issues with his account or if we should just end the call right now. I wasn't wasting a manager's time with his nonsense, that was certain as soon as he started pulling out his law cards.
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Jul 15, 2011 06:15
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Semprini posted:"I HAVE A RIGHT TO MY INFORMATION! IT'S DATA PROTECTION!" No no, it's even better: "You have the right to that information, however you are required to put your request to the data protection registrar in writing at this address and pay the administration fee (usually around £10)." You want all your notes, that's fine, but I ain't printing them all and mailing them to you when the law specifies that you have to do it this way and we charge you an admin fee (mostly to stop people from doing this just to waste our time and resources).
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Jul 15, 2011 11:59
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ZeroDays posted:It's definitely not one of the easiest call centre rolls and I completely disagree with the $7.25 dude. Anything involving outbound calls, especially those soliciting cash (however noble the cause), will be far more draining than almost any inbound calls. It's basically cold-calling - hardly anyone self-identifies as an alumni to the extent that they're completely okay with random phone calls asking for a hand-out. Yeah, I'd actually want more money to do that than to do collections/recoveries work. At least for that most customers are expecting someone to ask for the money.
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Jul 19, 2011 16:36
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legsarerequired posted:Huh, so apparently my call center might be hiring people soon for off-phone work. The two openings are overnights, but I don't really care--I'm just sick of answering phones, and maybe this would at least be able to get me a day job at some point in anything besides customer service. Yup! Resource and planning is a good one to get into in my opinion. Things to emphasise would probably be data collation and analysis. You'll be taking call volume data and AHT and turning those into an intra-day and daily profile, then using those to determine staffing requirements. Hopefully you'll be using some workforce management software to do it but you may just be using excel. Might be worth reading up on the Erlang formulae (specifically Erlang C) just to get an idea of how it works - do not worry about learning the formulae, there's plugins for excel to do it for you if you've not got workforce management software.
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Jul 20, 2011 06:40
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Aerofallosov posted:Reminds me of the time a fire broke out at my old call center. Alarms blaring, sirens outside, the whole works. We had to tell people and bail pretty much. A couple of callers told us they gave no fucks if we burned alive, we'd better stay. Fortunately, my lady was pretty understanding - especially since I was right under an alarm. Yeah, it is sort of hilarious how some callers respond to a fire alarm. "Oh, I'm sorry, that's the fire alarm. Look, I've got your details, I'll call you back as soon as I can, hopefully this is just a drill." "Well I think this should only take you another moment..." <continues speaking until I am forced to hang up, calls back and gets the alternate site while the fire drill runs and complains about the rude man she just spoke to>
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Jul 21, 2011 08:11
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Aerofallosov posted:Ours did have black mold to the point they had some work scheduled, but they kept pushing it back. The walls were literally peeling and brown. I so should've called health inspectors. Judging from the retail thread, they won't even come and look. Apparently they don't if you're an employee reporting the use of expired product anyway.
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Jul 21, 2011 21:57
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JackRabbitStorm posted:I am so loving sick of Call Center office politics. What sort of call centre are you in? Depending on what industry you're in there could be a whole bunch of reasons.
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Aug 3, 2011 23:32
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Cthulhuite posted:My contract only says that I am contracted to work 40 hours a week, Monday to Saturday. They do pay for overtime, but only single time rates during the week. Contractually, there's nothing in there saying that overtime in mandatory, but the supervisors there have always made sure it's implied that everyone HAS to work that extra hour per day, and two hours on a Monday. Are you absolutely sure? I know our place doles out contracts that have your contracted hours up at the top where you'll see it but further down is a section that says that you will work "whatever reasonable overtime is required" (which of course opens up the whole thing of what constitutes "reasonable").
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Aug 5, 2011 06:30
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JackRabbitStorm posted:Any one have any problems with having bosses/co workers on your facebook? Meh, only time I ever gave someone grief over Facebook comments was when they were complaining about being pulled up for being late. And I only did it because it was the first thing they did after have a discussion with their manager about being late (as opposed to, I dunno, actually starting their shift) and there was a "no mobile phones at your desk" policy. People on my team that were wishing their life away by bemoaning how much of their shift they have left I just told to stop whining. You've probably done the right thing in removing people who might give you poo poo for your updates. I think it's even common for employers to just google your name these days and see what you get up to if you've interviewed well.
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Aug 7, 2011 22:27
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JackRabbitStorm posted:Yeah, I have "jokingly" been talked to in the past about some of my photos I have on my facebook. A lot of companies do have clauses in the contract about behaviour outside of work, especially stuff that might bring the company into disrepute. I seem to remember that woman that shoved a cat in the bin got sacked for it, though that's an extreme case. When I was managing people I made a point of never mentioning facebook or adding people as friends from work. If they added ME, then fine, but in my head that meant they knew they were adding a manager and that they would be aware of that when posting stuff. That weirdo that legsarerequired said was trying to add all the people on her team is either one of those "I'M EVERYBODY'S FRIEND!!!!" managers, or is planning on using it to spy - either way one to steer clear of.
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Aug 8, 2011 09:43
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Loving Life Partner posted:I love when poo poo customers threaten to take their "business" elsewhere. Yeah, always a fun conversation in the land of collections as well. "You guys suck! Just close my account!" "Certainly sir. How will you be paying the outstanding £2000?" "What?" Some people genuinely think they just say "CLOSE MY ACCOUNT" and the debt magically disappears.
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Aug 9, 2011 21:22
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rolleyes posted:So here's a question, call centre goons. I have on occasion had to phone up and be angry with the company (most notably Vodafone UK who outright tried to defraud me) but when I do that I always try to make that distinction - i.e. "the company" this or "vodafone" that, rather than "you". I do this myself, and I'm fairly certain it doesn't really work. Especially when I start with "Now I know this isn't you that's done this..." and then go into a massive rant. I dunno man, I guess most people will just let it roll off them if they've been in call centre work for any length of time. As long as you don't very clearly direct something at them then they'll probably just assume you mean the business.
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Aug 10, 2011 13:49
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:We had our new shifts for a year announced recently. Right now it takes me like 90 minutes to drive to work and I am there 11 hours. Now I am supposed to make the same trip, except it's 9-8 so I will be in rush hour every day, starting next month. There is no loving way. Maybe just speak nicely to your schedulers? It is a massive ballache for them to schedule to meet both the expected demand AND the millions of individual preferences they have to deal with (even worse if the business imposes restrictions like no more than a couple of late shifts a week on even the fully flexible members of staff). You will almost certainly have more luck with "Any chance I could start later/early because..." than you will with "There is no loving way".
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Aug 14, 2011 18:45
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Well, I know that. He wasn't here this weekend. That sounds way better than the place I forecast for. The head of the scheduling team once told me that the fixed working patterns we have are like the episode of the Simpsons where Mr Burns finds out he has every illness in the world. Each pattern on it's own looks terrible, but stick them all together and it JUST ABOUT works, but it's in a really precarious balance. Excellently, the people on flexible shifts at the moment actualy end up having to do fewer lates than the fixed people because of how the calls are arriving at the moment. Naturally this means that the people who have fixed patterns (which they refuse to make even the smallest of occasional changes to when the centre really, really needs it) are pissing and moaning that they're doing more than "their share" of the late shifts. I must remember this is how things work next time I fix my mortgage rate and the base rate drops a point.
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Aug 14, 2011 19:28
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:You know what else is really rich, is the guys who stonewall and rant and waste tons of time, then complain that you're wasting their minutes. If they're so precious, how do you have so much time to bitch about them being wasted? "YOU CHARGE ME FOR EVERYTHING! WHERE DO I SEND THE BILL FOR MY TIME THAT I'M WASTING ON THESE CALLS?" Well, Mr Dipshit, if you didn't repeatedly phone up like clockwork every single time you got charged for something, we probably wouldn't need as many people on the phones, which would probably mean that we wouldn't have to keep raising the charges as often as we do. Yeah, how 'bout that! This culture of complaining that the world appears to have all adopted results in more refunds/freebies being handed out, more customer service staff on the phone, which means increased operating costs and then we pass that on to all our lovely customers! Please keep phoning us up, Mr Fucknuckle, you're keeping me in a job!
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Aug 14, 2011 21:30
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Loving Life Partner posted:Even better is when their due date is the 10th or something, and that's a Friday, and the money doesn't hit until the following Wednesday and they had spent it and somehow we're to blame. This is hilarious from the bank side. "You took that payment out too late, all the money was gone!" "Well firstly, we just respond to the request from the direct debit recipient, we don't SEND anything, they come and take it. Secondly, if you knew the thing hadn't been taken, why did you withdraw the money?" I lost track of the number of times I had to explain to someone that "use ATMs/debit card transactions until cannot do any more" was really not the best way of managing their money, especially not with direct debits set up on the account. I swear, there should never have been a requirement for people to be paid wages or benefits via a bank account. Some people do WAY better with cash.
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Aug 14, 2011 22:18
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Loving Life Partner posted:Our guidelines tell us that when taking a card payment and running it as a debit, we have to advise that "funds can be withdrawn immediately", which leads me to believe that there was enough complaint from people paying and trying to float funds or something and having it disappear instantly that we had to put in this disclaimer. Can't speak for US banking, UK is somewhat different by the sounds of it. When a debit card transaction goes through over here, the funds get "earmarked" for it. So you might have £300 in your account, spend £100, and if you go look at your account it will say you have £300 but only £200 available to withdraw. Usually the card transaction gets reconciled the following day, but some retailers seem to hang onto the transaction for a while - if it's not been formally debited from the account within a couple of days, the earmarked funds get released again, taking you back up to your £300. I think over here retailers have something absurd like six months to actually take the money from an account, which is loving ludicrous and can legitimately screw you up. I mean sure, if it's within the same month it's annoying but you can't really complain, but I had a meal I bought in january get taken from my credit card in something like May. Because I actually keep accounts, it wasn't too big a deal as I was still half expecting it to come out; all completely legit, and I don't mind paying for what I've eaten, but you can be sure I wrote the restaurant a stroppy letter and haven't been back since.
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Aug 14, 2011 22:56
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Nocheez posted:It's not an unfair question, really. I wouldn't hand $5 over to a corporation just to do it, so why would I willingly waste my time to give information that they are going to make money from? What's my incentive to do the survey? I think "What's in it for me?" is a better question than the enormously smug and self satisfied "How much are you going to pay me?  " that I think is what people are referring to in here. There's a certain superciliousness that goes along with the question that makes you want to smash things.
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Aug 15, 2011 16:30
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Robzor McFabulous posted:I try to be as polite as possible when I'm cold-called, because I know it's often a really crappy job (mainly thanks to this thread) but it's hard to keep that attitude going when it goes like the call I had earlier... Sounds like someone's getting poo poo for either his right party connects, handling time or sales rate. Whichever it is, that's a lovely way of trying to fix it and unless he works for a really dodgy company he'll get poo poo from his manager for it if anyone listens to a call like that.
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Aug 26, 2011 13:50
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ZeroDays posted:I can't remember where it was I heard this, but it was a telesales agent who would consistantly exceed their targets, and I mean total spike above everyone else exceed, and no-one could figure out how he did it. Until it was discovered he was the master of efficiency, in-so-much as he'd hang up the call and be on the next one if he got so much as a whiff that someone wasn't interested. Of course, when he was discovered, heads rolled, as this practice is verboten in any (reputable) telesales environment. Don't worry, if he gets caught doing that he'll also get shafted. If he's repeatedly calling and just marking it as a wrong party connect, someone'll figure it out eventually. We've started tracking how many times we call certain customers (or how many times they call us) to try and get rid of wasted effort - chances are if you gave that customer sixteen chances to pay us back then the seventeenth one isn't going to work either.
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Aug 26, 2011 23:17
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Hi, can I speak to so-and-so please.
So-and-so doesn't actually li -
...ve here...anymore
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Semprini posted:It's much higher if you don't tell them in advance it's that long. I got phoned once not long after I graduated to do a survey about how much the Uni had supported me etc etc. Thought it would just be a quickie, but took nearly half an hour. Strathlcyde: to be killed by ventuing north of Berwick upon Tweed.
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Aug 28, 2011 13:37
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Benzoyl Peroxide posted:My supervisor today was treating us like total retards. All of us are experienced interviewers who understand the system, quotas, and can read the script. She is a perfect example of the pitfalls of having supervisors who are flexible to the point of never being there. She's in so infrequently she knows none of us, despite the fact my group today had all worked there for at least 6 months. More of a nuisance than a help. So what did she, you know, DO?
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Aug 28, 2011 19:57
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Benzoyl Peroxide posted:Constantly hovering over people's shoulders. Taking control of keyboards to check answers because she wasn't listening properly in the first place. She asked my group to her desk for 5 minutes before shift to tell us we had to push for 18-24 because we didn't have enough of them, "For goodness sake, push on every call!". It's a scripted age check so you have to ask it anyway so that was completely redundant, not to mention the fact it was our 5 minutes prior to the shift she wasted, and then nagged us to get logged in before 10:00. We had a quota on for 18 - 34 at one point and I did a survey with a 31 year old. At the end supe rushed over and grabbed the keyboard to go back to the beginning and check the age as she "couldn't tell from her voice how old the lady was" - I asked the resps age and she was in quota so I did a survey... so what on Earth. Nah, doesn't sound petty, she does indeed sound like a micromanager. Did you say she's not around a lot? I know part time managers often seem to feel the need to be seen to be doing things when they're around. The ones that are in all the time (if they're any good) eventually learn that you spend a few months getting your team heading in the right direction and then just occasionally steer them a bit. Also, this sounds a bit like you've got supervisors in on particular days rather than this being your own line manager, is that right? That's always a pain in the arse.
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Aug 28, 2011 23:15
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modeski posted:Call centres really do expose you to the sheer depths of ignorance that exist in people out there. I encountered one person who professed an inability to read, so quite why he needed an internet connection is beyond me. Oh christ, the sheer number of people in the world that don't understand basic maths is terrifying. So many collections calls I've dealt with have revolved around finding a date that me and the customer both agree on the account balance and then going through every loving transaction until we get to the present day, making sure the customer understands that if they had a hundred pounds and they spent forty, they now only have sixty, so their eighty pound direct debit to Moron Monthly couldn't possibly have gone through. And I've said it in this thread before, but the stupidest thing I came across regularly was people that didn't understand that the end of one month and the start of the next are literally one day different to each other. I know you were expecting your direct debit on the 31st, it came out on the 1st. That is LATER. No, it's not earlier if it's the first of the following sodding MONTH. Argh.
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Aug 30, 2011 22:38
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Blue_monday posted:^^If I was in that position in management I'd make everyone do rotating shifts, or start making it so that work assigned gets tighter tracking. Ha ha ha rotating shifts ha ha ha ha ha. Maybe it's just our HR department that are awkward, but at my place if someone asks for what is termed "flexible working" (read: a fixed schedule) then a) HR tell us to approve it because we should be a big enough business to support it and b) once they've been in it for three months we have gently caress all chance of digging them out of it (HR term it as 'established custom and practice' and won't let us touch it with a ten foot pole). We're in the absurd situation now that we're bringing genuinely flexible staff back from late shifts to early ones because of a change in demand, and now the people on fixed patterns are complaining that flexible people do less lates than them. Christ, you ostensibly wanted that pattern to fit in better with your life, how is it important what someone else is doing? I just know one of them is going to go to HR and we'll end up putting them all on fewer lates permanently, leaving us shafted when the evening call volumes go back up again. Even the "flexible" staff only have to do a maximum of 8 late shifts a month and two weekend days in that same timeframe. Oh, and we can't put more than two lates in a week. Or follow a late with an early. Or have them work both a Saturday and Sunday in the same week. Tl;dr: forecasting/planning support guy whines about HR and entitled staff.
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Aug 31, 2011 07:28
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