Chicken Scratch Calligraphy

1. A few nights ago I had a dream. And in this dream, my house was being raided by SHIELD. There was some sort of circumstances around it, I think my parents were some sort of activists or something, but whatever. I'm home alone and I walk upstairs and I notice SHIELD agents setting up barricades at the end of our lawn. So I walked outside all casual-like and started making fun of Mystique (shut up, she was a SHIELD agent in House of M) for failing so epicly in the setting up of her portion of the barricade. Seriously, you could have driven a truck through the gap she left.

Then Carol Danvers flew in, and I was just all "Ms. Danvers, all this really isn't necessary." Then the crazy bitch starts waving a search warrant in my face and I'm just all "Whatever, search if you want, we've got nothing to hide."

Then I slink off into the basement to delete the porn off my computer.

I think Maria Hill showed up at some point too, although it could have been Daisy Johnson, I really don't know. And see, this is how I know I can't control my dreams: because if I could, at this point it would have degenerated into a three-way SHIELD ladies lesbian sex party, and that didn't happen.


2. After work today, we had a 'goodbye to WageWorks' party. WageWorks was the contract I used to be on. We were awesome, we were kicking its ass all over the place, and because of some bullshit clause in the contract we lost it and our business went to these fuckwits in North Carolina who seriously do not know their heads from their asses. Oh well, that's WageWorks' loss. Although I got transferred out right after the announcement, almost a month ago, the contract closed down for good this Wednesday. So tonight, WageWorks employees past and present went to the bar and had a party. Being the only sober person in a room full of people who are getting progressively drunker and drunker is a very amusing experience.


3. God, taking 120+ calls a day is not at all fun. Especially when they're almost all complete assholes.

What the hell, Wal-Mart. What the hell.

I mean, I was expecting a lot of escalations today. Everyone was, it's the last day of the plan year for most accounts, and the last day to use the card for pretty much all of them. But I was expecting the calls to go something like this:

Customer: YA'LL HAVE MY MONEY YOU GOTTA UN-SUSPEND MY CARD SO I CAN SPEND IT BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR, EVEN THOUGH I HAVEN'T BEEN SENDING IN THE RECEIPTS THAT YOU'VE BEEN ASKING FOR FOR MONTHS!
Me: Lawl, no.

Instead, they've been going like this:

Customer: WAL-MART VOIDED MY TRANSACTION AND NOW THEY CAN'T PUT IT THROUGH, WHY ISN'T MY CARD WORKING?
Me: WTF, you're screwed.

Y'see, when they void a card transaction after they put it through, the funds for that transaction are still in a hold for a few days before returning to the card. Normally that's not an issue, but right now is the very last day for these people to use their money. They either have to use the card, or pay out of their own pocket, and some of these people are trying to use it for something like eight hundred dollars.

I've pretty much never had a call about this before, but just today there's been a fucking EPIDEMIC of Wal-Mart employees fucking up card transactions, voiding them, and the funds being stuck in a hold while the clock ticks on the end of the plan year. Which means they call us, and then ask to speak to a supervisor, which means they're speaking to me.

If there's any Wal-Mart managers out in the audience tonight: TEACH YOUR EMPLOYEES HOW TO PUT THROUGH A FUCKING CARD TRANSACTION. Jeezus.

Argh. Today has been just terrible thus far, and does not look to be improving.

First bad: the phone system was fucked up this morning. If you've ever worked a call centre, then you know that your workday lives and dies by the health of the phone system. If the phone system's good, all well and good. But if it's fucked up, even for a few hours? The remainder of your day is shot straight to hell.

So I had a good hour with no calls at all. And then the phone system started limping along, and suddenly there's 100+ customers waiting on the line for us. Ever since then, it's been non-stop queues, ranging in size from 70 to a hundred and thirty people. For reference, the largest queue you'll usually see is thirty people, tops. Argh.

Second bad: This month there was a 5-day delay in mailing out MBTA passes, which means an enormous spike in calls. Argh.

Third bad: I think I may be developing a sore throat. Fuck.

Holy shit was work awful today. It was just so busy the whole day. We had a queue starting from two PM going all the way out to five minutes before the day ended at 8 PM. That means, breaks notwithstanding, 6 straight hours of calls. What the fuck, it's JUNE, there's no deadlines or any shit like that. I know it's a Monday, but still. What the fuck.

On top of that, the stupid assholes in charge of our break schedules reverted mine back to its horribly shitty point of origin. Meaning that I get in at noon, have my first break at 1:30, have my lunch at 3:00, have my last break at 4:45, and then have THREE HOURS SOLID, at the busiest time of the night, before I get to go home. It was a shitty break schedule then, and it's just as bad now. I can understand why they would actually out a break schedule into effect, as last thursday twelve people took lunch at the same time, but why am I stuck going back to this? I wish I could find whatever fuckwad put this together so I could make him die in a fire.

The good news is that we finally know when and where the call center is moving to a new location, and it's like ten minutes from my house! Come August 6th, my gas costs are going to get bloody quartered.