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Where's your WOW?
Feb. 19th, 2003 11:00 amthere is a quote. if i weren't so damn lazy i'd look up it's source on the internet. i'm sure there will be ninety pages with different variations, attributing it to different people, so to save everyone time, i'll mis-attribute it right now, to ... let's say, General Tso, of "General Tso's Chicken" fame.
Last night, at work, i tried to determine the procedure one must follow to be "paid" for jury duty, as my employee handbook promises. It's a "perk" that takes effect immediately, according to the same handbook. Since my supervisor has been MIA since the flakes started to fly (odd, since i live in Manayunk, 35 miles away and over the Betsy Ross bridge, and she lives in Cherry Hill, not five minutes away,) I had to ask another supervisor ( alady wearing a blaze orange cowboy hat with the words "deputy wow" printed on it, and sporting a roll of carnival tickets which are handed out to those with the best morale, to exchange for what? i'm not certain, as i have the morale of Eeyore.) anyhow, i asked the Deputy about the whole "jury duty" procedure. She said that since i worked an evening shift, they would begin paying me. They would start at 2:30 when my shift would normally begin and end whenever jury duty ended, (probably 5 o'clock) then i would be expected to return to work and complete the remainder of my shift. So really, i would only be "paid" by my employer for two and a half hours of eight hours of jury duty, and i would be expected to complete the majority of an eight hour phone shift after spending a day awaiting dismissal in various underground subchambers of city hall, and if i'm lucky, hours of mindless testimony in a dank courtroom. As this sounded not only unfair, but collosally unfair, both to my duty as a juror, and to my duty to do my job well, i asked another supervisor, and she said "Yeah, that's what they'd LIKE you to do, but technically you are excused from your entire shift when you have jury duty." So i've found that i can be excused, but still no clue on how pay for that will work.
as if i'm not irate enough about the job, the lady in the cubicle next to me spent close to an hour wrapping up customer contacts off the clock. you see, in customer service, the customer sometimes will want things that require that you step away from the phone. stepping away from the phone is a cardinal sin in a call center. especially this one. i get the feeling that two things matter above all else. 1) that you present an incredibly saccarine attitude at all times. this is the aforementioned "WOW." at commerce, WOW is a religion. it's written on everything, the desk mirrors they issue so you can smile before taking your call ("Smiles can be heard!" the stationary says, along with "how can i WOW you today?!") it's pretty orwellian in it's scope and intensity. i get a real feel for Kafka in this place. 2) that you always, always, always, be available to take the next call. So "stepping away is frowned upon." and it isn't like the customer wants you to deliver the moon to them....these are generally reasonable things, lately what they often want are copies of old checks so they can submit them in court, or copies of old statements for tax purposes. this takes maybe five minutes to print and put into an envelope. as part of their overall veneer of respectability, commerce says that "of course" we are to fufill these requests. large requests are charged to the customer if they take lots of labor to complete. small requests are expected to be done in a mythical "between call" state. this state doesn't exist. composing a three line email "between calls" at commerce took me about an hour last night. so for small requests i punch the "not ready" button and dash off to complete the task before taking another call. since i am only allowed to be in the "not ready" state for 9% of my workday, this has to be quick. I'm sure i've gone over my 9% a few times, but if i am questioned, i've actually saved the customer's requests to offer support for my "away" time. this worked at microsoft, where the "not ready" policy was equally as draconian.
This lady next to me had saved all her tasks up, and then logged out and punched out, and spent an hour wrapping up. Still working for commerce customers, handling paperwork with the commerce letterhead, and stuffing statements into commerce envelopes. i asked her why, and she said that she had been warned by her supervisor about going over her "not ready " time in the past, so she used to log out of the phone at the end of her shift, to avoid going over her "not ready" time, and then complete these tasks and then punch out, logging maybe fifteen to forty five minutes of overtime a shift. (you see at commerce, every second of your shift is on the phone, only the 9% is permitted away from the phone. you must come in, find a place to sit (no assigned desks, not even shared desks, ) boot your pc up and start the required tools, one takes a good five minutes to load... and log into your phone and punch in no more than two minutes early, even though boot up takes twenty minutes. furthermore, you can not be even a minute late, or you get an "occurrance." five occurrances, and you are fired. by the way, if you are two minutes late, this is two "occurrances," So five minutes late will get you fired, or at least a paper warning.) So where was i? Oh yeah. My deskmate's off the clock wrap up. The payroll department accepted my deskmate's "log out wrap up punch out" plan for a while, but then began quiety pushing her last punch of the day back to the time she logged out of the phone. They didn't tell her that the wrap up was unacceptable, they just stopped paying her for it. Essentially encouraging her to work off the clock. I asked her how other people wrapped up these tasks. She said that the ones that didn't care told the customer that these things couldn't be accomplished, and took the hit for "lying to the customer" and "not providing WOW service" when their supervisor or the Quality Control department monitored their calls, but she says that the reps eager to advance complete thier tasks off the clock. "But keep quiet about it" she says, "this is the way to become salaried."
what's the common denominator here? both of these practices are incredibly exploiting, if not out and out illegal, but the employer has no culpability, because they are creating a situation where the employee willingly, and against stated "policy," violates labor rules on their own because of subtle coersion by the company. So the real situation here is, they spout some pseudo policy that is not a policy at you, then if you buy it, or you knuckle under, they exploit you, if you don't they will excuse you but they will "frown" upon it.
once again a single thought burrows into my forehead. "i need to get another job here, folks."
on the way home, a huge billboard for the pennsylvania lottery stared out at me. "Daily payoff $300,000" it said. even though i know that the chances of winning the lottery are non existant, i almost buy a ticket at the gas station on the way home. i have to think three times about it. the billboard has an incredible draw. what is a dollar for a dream that involves something other than how can i get my empoyer to treat me like a human being and not some kind of nazi productivity experiment? $300,000 would look pretty nice in my savings account, with that lump sitting there, i could put the "Ow" into "WOW." I might stay on just to see how the company handled my aggressive attempts at Unionization.
the lottery is a tax on people with poor math skills. -General Tso
Last night, at work, i tried to determine the procedure one must follow to be "paid" for jury duty, as my employee handbook promises. It's a "perk" that takes effect immediately, according to the same handbook. Since my supervisor has been MIA since the flakes started to fly (odd, since i live in Manayunk, 35 miles away and over the Betsy Ross bridge, and she lives in Cherry Hill, not five minutes away,) I had to ask another supervisor ( alady wearing a blaze orange cowboy hat with the words "deputy wow" printed on it, and sporting a roll of carnival tickets which are handed out to those with the best morale, to exchange for what? i'm not certain, as i have the morale of Eeyore.) anyhow, i asked the Deputy about the whole "jury duty" procedure. She said that since i worked an evening shift, they would begin paying me. They would start at 2:30 when my shift would normally begin and end whenever jury duty ended, (probably 5 o'clock) then i would be expected to return to work and complete the remainder of my shift. So really, i would only be "paid" by my employer for two and a half hours of eight hours of jury duty, and i would be expected to complete the majority of an eight hour phone shift after spending a day awaiting dismissal in various underground subchambers of city hall, and if i'm lucky, hours of mindless testimony in a dank courtroom. As this sounded not only unfair, but collosally unfair, both to my duty as a juror, and to my duty to do my job well, i asked another supervisor, and she said "Yeah, that's what they'd LIKE you to do, but technically you are excused from your entire shift when you have jury duty." So i've found that i can be excused, but still no clue on how pay for that will work.
as if i'm not irate enough about the job, the lady in the cubicle next to me spent close to an hour wrapping up customer contacts off the clock. you see, in customer service, the customer sometimes will want things that require that you step away from the phone. stepping away from the phone is a cardinal sin in a call center. especially this one. i get the feeling that two things matter above all else. 1) that you present an incredibly saccarine attitude at all times. this is the aforementioned "WOW." at commerce, WOW is a religion. it's written on everything, the desk mirrors they issue so you can smile before taking your call ("Smiles can be heard!" the stationary says, along with "how can i WOW you today?!") it's pretty orwellian in it's scope and intensity. i get a real feel for Kafka in this place. 2) that you always, always, always, be available to take the next call. So "stepping away is frowned upon." and it isn't like the customer wants you to deliver the moon to them....these are generally reasonable things, lately what they often want are copies of old checks so they can submit them in court, or copies of old statements for tax purposes. this takes maybe five minutes to print and put into an envelope. as part of their overall veneer of respectability, commerce says that "of course" we are to fufill these requests. large requests are charged to the customer if they take lots of labor to complete. small requests are expected to be done in a mythical "between call" state. this state doesn't exist. composing a three line email "between calls" at commerce took me about an hour last night. so for small requests i punch the "not ready" button and dash off to complete the task before taking another call. since i am only allowed to be in the "not ready" state for 9% of my workday, this has to be quick. I'm sure i've gone over my 9% a few times, but if i am questioned, i've actually saved the customer's requests to offer support for my "away" time. this worked at microsoft, where the "not ready" policy was equally as draconian.
This lady next to me had saved all her tasks up, and then logged out and punched out, and spent an hour wrapping up. Still working for commerce customers, handling paperwork with the commerce letterhead, and stuffing statements into commerce envelopes. i asked her why, and she said that she had been warned by her supervisor about going over her "not ready " time in the past, so she used to log out of the phone at the end of her shift, to avoid going over her "not ready" time, and then complete these tasks and then punch out, logging maybe fifteen to forty five minutes of overtime a shift. (you see at commerce, every second of your shift is on the phone, only the 9% is permitted away from the phone. you must come in, find a place to sit (no assigned desks, not even shared desks, ) boot your pc up and start the required tools, one takes a good five minutes to load... and log into your phone and punch in no more than two minutes early, even though boot up takes twenty minutes. furthermore, you can not be even a minute late, or you get an "occurrance." five occurrances, and you are fired. by the way, if you are two minutes late, this is two "occurrances," So five minutes late will get you fired, or at least a paper warning.) So where was i? Oh yeah. My deskmate's off the clock wrap up. The payroll department accepted my deskmate's "log out wrap up punch out" plan for a while, but then began quiety pushing her last punch of the day back to the time she logged out of the phone. They didn't tell her that the wrap up was unacceptable, they just stopped paying her for it. Essentially encouraging her to work off the clock. I asked her how other people wrapped up these tasks. She said that the ones that didn't care told the customer that these things couldn't be accomplished, and took the hit for "lying to the customer" and "not providing WOW service" when their supervisor or the Quality Control department monitored their calls, but she says that the reps eager to advance complete thier tasks off the clock. "But keep quiet about it" she says, "this is the way to become salaried."
what's the common denominator here? both of these practices are incredibly exploiting, if not out and out illegal, but the employer has no culpability, because they are creating a situation where the employee willingly, and against stated "policy," violates labor rules on their own because of subtle coersion by the company. So the real situation here is, they spout some pseudo policy that is not a policy at you, then if you buy it, or you knuckle under, they exploit you, if you don't they will excuse you but they will "frown" upon it.
once again a single thought burrows into my forehead. "i need to get another job here, folks."
on the way home, a huge billboard for the pennsylvania lottery stared out at me. "Daily payoff $300,000" it said. even though i know that the chances of winning the lottery are non existant, i almost buy a ticket at the gas station on the way home. i have to think three times about it. the billboard has an incredible draw. what is a dollar for a dream that involves something other than how can i get my empoyer to treat me like a human being and not some kind of nazi productivity experiment? $300,000 would look pretty nice in my savings account, with that lump sitting there, i could put the "Ow" into "WOW." I might stay on just to see how the company handled my aggressive attempts at Unionization.
