I'm not telling you what to do but...

I'm letting you know it's not working. I was on Floor Support again today, for the newbies and I had to sit w/ a rep for over an hour on 1 account b/c she didn't understand the bill, how the account was set up or how to use any of the systems. What the hell do they teach them in class?!? And I had to help her w/ calculations too, so her math skills were pretty shaky. And she's middle aged too. Which means she has a great work ethic and tries really hard but sometimes isn't the quickest to grasp things. So after going over the bill and making sure she understands it and basically preparing her for the callback that she needed to make, her supervisor comes by and basically tells her to get back to taking calls. So I'm try to summarize everything for her, and make sure she's okay and go to help another rep.

A while later I see her again, and she tells me that her other supervisor pulled her aside to ask why she was off the phones for so long and to have her sign a form b/c she released a call before she was supposed to. And b/c of her work ethic, she's really upset about the form b/c she thought it was disciplinary and that her TL was accusing her of doing really bad, and she's all frustrated b/c she's getting grief for her call time and after call work being long. So as someone who's been a supervisor for a couple months and coached reps to self-confidance, it was really killing me not to coach her to ignore those things b/c she's new and that they really don't matter that much. I'm not in a position where I can state those things anymore, especially to a rep that's not on my team, and I don't want to contradict whatever their supervisor's telling them. So after I tell her that I'll talk to her supervisor, I go over and tell them what we were doing and why it was taking so long. So the supervisor like "uh huh, okay." Then when I told her that the agent thought the form was disciplinary (I knew what form was likely handed to her), the supervisor's goes "but I told her 5 times that it wasn't." So I'm like "well you might wanna tell her again, b/c she feels differently." S'funny how I can sit w/ a rep for an hour and know them better than their supervisor. Mind you, I bet their supervisor only met w/ them for maybe 1/2 hr in the 4 days since she's hit the floor, but it's still kinda funny.

I did feel a bit better today b/c we had a team meeting and then a meeting w/ our supervisor's manager. Which meant we could vent all we wanted. One of the biggest issues is that some supervisors won't take escalations and we either have to babysit them during one or they'll just cave and give the customer whatever they want. Which is sooo wrong. So I throw my hand up and s'funny how I would phrase my question w/ a context first on why I'm asking it, and then offer the solution in the form of a question. So I said, "since we're having problems w/ supervisors taking escalations, why don't we have them go back to spending a few hours on the phones taking regular calls like before?" Boy, the amount of agreement in the room from the team was hilarious. And it was funny that for our team meeting I was introduced as being new to the team, but I'd actually been on the Floor Support team before. And since I already knew all the people on the Floor Support team (sometimes helps being there for 4 yrs and in so many diff positions) I gave a cheery hello whereas the other new person gave this weak wave. And none of the new people asked any questions in the big complaint meeting. *sigh* I guess I'm actually pretty happy being back on Floor Support and doing something b/c I'm actually pretty bubbly lately. And also the rep I sat w/ said that she was actually able to understand everything b/c I explained it so well that I should be a trainer, which of course led me to explaining that I was a supervisor but would never want to be a trainer b/c I'd be telling everyone to shut up and listen, but I'm better at one-on-one. Which I am. I've coached agents for an hour to make sure that they understand systems and policies, and boy do I nail them if they mess up on the same thing. But it rarely happens.

So I guess technically it might be construed that I was overstepping my bounds as Floor Support and tell a supervisor that their coaching is making the rep think of quitting, but then again I was thinking of retaining reps and reps will tell us stuff that they'll hold back from their supervisors. And I did bite my tongue on saying how I would've handled their coaching session so the rep wouldn't be so frustrated. *sigh* so funny and sad at the same time.

On a followup to the UPS fiasco, they finally delivered the pkg to my Dad's house. So I can finally get my books and my chibi Iruka patch. I'm gonna put him on my Sanzo bag. Maybe I should start looking for patches for all the other chars that Seki Toshihiko has played? That'd be cool. Then it'd be my Seki-dono bag, instead of just my Sanzo-dono bag.