Grimm's Place

Howdy guys… and gals. It’s been a long time since I have written anything.  There has been a lot that has been going on since my last post. At work, I got demoted and moved from the early 5 am shift, which is a normal 5 day/8 hour shift,  to the overnight shift, that is 4 day/ 10 hour shift.  That has changed everything for me in the since of my schedule and when I can run my errands.  Most of my day is spent sleeping, which means that all my free time, before work and my days off, consist of running errands or more sleeping.

My Wife and I have also been planning a vacation trip to Washington state again.  So any spare time we have is going to planning that and getting supplies that we would need.  Now here is the kicker, my wife had planned us going to a nice restaurant.  Sooo, that means that I had to get a “good outfit”.  I now am an owner and a suit, that includes a button up shirt, tie, slacks, and a blazer.  Doesn’t sound like much but my wife, out of 5 years of being married, has never seen my in a suit.  For that fact, my family hasn’t seen my in a suit in like forever, I can’t even remember when.  I think it was 6 years ago when I was at my Ex’s and best friends wedding.  However, that was a tux.  Does that count?  I’m really hoping that I can tear away some time to get back to drawing.  Part of my problem is that I built a new computer as well and haven’t installed the application to draw either.  That, and new games too.  Games tend to be my escape so that I can have some me time.  That’s the problem with working at a call center, you are talking all day long at work, and then at home, bless her heart, wants to talk too so I never really get any quite me time.  I get some me time but not as much as I would like.  That is also part of the reason why we’re taking a vacation to Washington.  We’re also planning on moving there in the next couple of years.

Ok… So I just got off the phone with a customer.  Yes, I’m updating the site at work.  This Lady was a box of rocks.  All I can say about her is wow.  Her issue is that she couldn’t get logged into her account for like two weeks.  I sent her the log-in information with a link to the log-in page.  Spent about 25 mins trying to get her logged in.  I even changed her password to something simple and she still couldn’t get logged in.  I had the customer type the information into notepad to make sure she was spelling it correctly and copying and pasting it into the log-in fields.  I even sent her the information that I used to log into the account with.  She still couldn’t log into the account.  Now, I asked her if she clicked on the link in the email to get to the control panel log-in page.  The lady told me that she just used the page that she already had up.  I was sure that she didn’t have the right website where she was trying to get logged in at that point.  I had the customer click on the link in the email to get to the right log-in screen and the lady entered the information and magically, the customer got in.  Someone like that is ridiculous.

I don’t understand at how people can’t understand something that you tell them, even though you told them the simplest way you can.  I’ll give you an example that I know with my hosting.  MX Records, I’m sure that with those two words, most of you are going “Huh?”.  Well, when you own a domain name, such as grimmsplace.com, the MX Records basically are the road signs that tell your email were to go.  So it’s like you can have your website display on yahoo servers, and by changing the MX Records, your email can go to google.  I hope you guys understand that instead of making myself sound like a jerk… lol.  Well, I’m done for the night now.  I promise I’ll try with the site. At least update the Rants more.  Post ya later.

I work for a call center so I have to talk to a lot of people everyday I go to work.  I get calls from all kinds of people, old, young, Americans, or International people.  I don’t see how people can think that they are more important than others.  Why is it that if something of theirs breaks, they call into us and want it fixed.  They want it fixed now.  We have a ticket system for issues that us on the phone can’t fix.  It goes to our upper level technicians and we quote the time of 24 – 48 hours to get it resolved.  I am flabbergasted at how people have such a sense of entitlement.  So it hasn’t been working for 2 hours, chill the fuck out.  Other people have had a ticket in for a day or more.  They have more priority then getting their issue fixed because why?  They called in before the others did.  Whats worse are the people that complain that they’ve had the issue ongoing for 3 days, and they decided to call in now.  I have some news for you guys, when things break, CALL IN.  Don’t just sit on your ass for 3 days.  What are you expecting, for us to pick your issue out of our 2 million customers or so and say “Yep, this customer is having an issue.  Glad we spotted it.”  NOOOOOOOOOOO.  We are their babysitters, it even says so in the Terms of Service.  If we had the man power to monitor everyone’s account, the price tag for our customers would be HUGE.  Sometimes I wish I can just tell those people, “You get more fly’s with honey than you do vinegar.”  Except for, I think that the saying would go over most of their heads and not understand what I’m trying to get across.

Now, for instance, I had a contact today from a customer that I’ll use as  a reference.  He has an e-commerce website using osCommerce shopping cart.  For some reason that has yet to be determined, his site has been hacked (so he says).  We have a process that we follow for when someone calls in and says that they were hacked.  We have to make sure that we send up a ticket to our upper level technicians.  They will scan the account for anything that looks like malicious content or “Back Doors” and remove it off the account.  The rest of what they do has not been handed down to the phone agents and I can understand.  This guy kept calling in, flipping out that someone has all his customers credit card information, they changed his information in osCommerce, and Hacker is in it right now.  The first time I talked to him, you heard right, first time, he was freaking that his account got hacked.  I advised Philip that our technicians were sent the ticket and they’ll do everything they’re suppose to do with hacked accounts. Philip also was telling me throughout the call that he is going to contact the FBI about someone hacking into his account (most people try to use scare tactics, no one goes through with it).  I told him that there isn’t anything else we can do for him except to tell him to change his passwords and he was on his way.  The second time I talked to Philip, he was livid that someone changed his information.  Now he’s saying that someone stole all of his customers information.  I advised the him again about the ticket and that they are in a different building when he requested to talk to them (which is true).

So, again he says he’s going to contact the FBI about this and wanted to know my name, so, nonchalantly, I give him my name like it’s no biggy.  Philip is freaking that someone did this to him and that our servers are unsecured and our people need to fix this now.  I politely tell him that our upper level techs will do what they need to do on the ticket and get everything worked out.  Philip on the other hand doesn’t get any comfort by that and demands to know what can I do about this.  I just tell him that he can change all his passwords on his account and emails along with his site password that he feels is still compromised, just like I did the first time I talked to Philip.  Well guess what, good ol’ Phil doesn’t know how to do it and wants me to show him how.  Really?  You can see on the screen where it says “Change Password”.  I guess his fright has made him blind.  So I take him to his control panel and show him the lovely little icon that says “Change Password”, then through his emails to change those passwords because if they got into his site, obviously they hacked his emails too, all of them.  Now it comes to his site.  Paranoid Phil here doesn’t know how to log into the back end of his site.  Wait a minute, didn’t he say earlier that someone changed his information and stole his customers information?  How could he know that and not know how to log into his Site?  Whatever, I’m not going to stress over this.  Philip complains about this possibility that someone can get into his information.  I tell him that I can understand his frustration but before I can continue, I mockingly says frustration and the line disconnects.  I’m think I’m doing with him but he ends up calling back but luckily for me, Philip gets the guy next to me.  Even my neighbor tells him nothing for us to do and also makes the comment to contact his congressman about it.

We understand importance of things but everything has to be done a certain way.  No one is better than anyone else.  People need to understand that if we all just help each other and are polite to each other, that things are going to turn out a lot better.  There would be less conflicts and more resolutions.  Fox News even tried to blame Mr. Rogers for putting the thought into kids that they have a sense of entitlement even though they did nothing to help.  I’m not sure about you guys but I watched Mr. Rogers and I know that if I want something, I have to get off my ass and work for it.  Nothing is given out for free.

For those of you who want to see where Fox News is basically calling Mr. R an evil man, click here.