Oi, my guts!

Yeah, so the other week...or was it this week? *goes to check schedule* ah, yes it was last Monday, I called in sick b/c I was super-tired and didn't feel really good. Told my supervisor it was gastro-intestinal problem b/c I left like going back to sitting on the crapper after I used it an hour before. But no explosive diarrhea. However the next 2 weeks were my guts killing me. Felt like I had spikes in my guts and chest. Sometimes I thought I was having a heart attack b/c it would be this intense sharp pain. Have to catch my breath a couple times, it hurt so much. And of course my muscles were all sore from being tense from the pain, and it was migraine city. So yeah, I felt worse than when I called in absent, but I still went to work b/c I need the extra money. Sadly, the top-up pay for Floor Support works out to be an extra $20 if all my hours were Floor Support. Anyways, it's faded a bit now, I still have to make sure that my stomach doesn't take the full weight of my blankets. Although I threw up in to the back of my throat yesterday when I was coughing. And today, I puked the stuff in my esophagus. Although my stomach felt like it wanted to go to. Still went to work. It still hurts a plenty but no sharp stabbing pains. I don't think it's PMS.

Work was...2 escalations. Both from newbie reps, and boy did the customers' notice. The guy wasn't too bad from what I could tell, seemed to be a case of the customer not knowing what to do and frustrated that the rep couldn't expl it in an easy way for her to understand. The other one was a total f*ck up. Rep didn't give me the right account, and actually screwed up someone else's account, so I had re-figure everything out for the original customer and the person w/ the messed up account. It's a good thing both of them were pretty nice. I think they could sense I was the poor schlob who has to clean up after incompetent reps. And it probably help that I was apologizing/grovelling to the guy w/ the messed up account. *sigh* Yeah, that agent will definitely be getting some feedback. Although a part of it could be the supervisors' massive insistence on maintaining stats and not quality. Reps have accounts piled on top of each other, and half the time, they don't know about which is the account that belongs to the cust on the line.

Have to return my hockey bag for the smaller one. We had a fire alarm the other day (didn't know it was just a test b/c they put the notice up on the day they did the test, so I didn't know until I went to the elevator) and it was so hard trying to drag out the bag and stuff things into it. And I didn't even want to use it b/c it was such a hassle! I know b/c soon after I got the bag, I practiced stuffing it. And that practice run caused me to tip over when I tried to sling it on my back, knock tons of things around, and was really insanely heavy to lug. Forget about trying to carry it down the stairs. Yeah, so unless I had the adrenaline rush, I wasn't willing to lug that thing. It's so bad. And of course that's when you start thinking that there's just a little bit too much stuff that I want to save.

I'm still debating on a external hard drive or laptop. My CD-burner is on fritz so I can't save anything before I install WinXP. And I just have enough RAM to get it, well once JR gets me his spare parts. I got irritated b/c he wasn't able to get it for me when he said he would, even though it's a semi-favour b/c I'm paying him for his old CD burner and RAM. Yeah, I'm pretty bitchy and thoughtless at times. Bought a DVD burner but I can't install it yet b/c I need WinXP. Argh!!!!

Quiz: How Misanthropic Are You?

You Are 72% Misanthropic

Here's the truth: Most people suck. You are just lucky enough to know it. You're not ready to go live alone in a cave - but you're getting there.

How Misanthropic Are You?

And the hilarious part is that I'm in customer service. Actually I took this one twice. This is my first result:

You Are 82% Misanthropic

You are misanthropic to the point of being scary. In your view, people are a disease. You may want to lighten up a little - before you become a super villain!

How Misanthropic Are You?

And yup, if aliens came by (and didn't kill me already), I'd be joining them in purging the Earth of humans. As long as their plan was a lot better. Yeah, I'm a tweener. B/c as much as I don't enjoy being w/ humans very much, I do appreciate the products of human culture. So it'd probably be most humans I'd purge. Somehow the gamemakers, artists, Japanese seiyuus would be left untouched. ^_^

Quiz: Are You a Dumb American?

You Are a Smart American

You know a lot about US history, and you're opinions are probably well informed. Congratulations on bucking stereotypes. Now go show some foreigners how smart Americans can be.

Are You a Dumb American?

Bwahahahaha!!!!! And I'm not American either! Which of course means that people from other nations know more about the USA than the inhabitants themselves. But we all knew that. If the Americans didn't believe so much in their propaganda of Manifest Destiny, they probably wouldn't be the superpower they are today. Mind you w/ Bush's mistakes, maybe they'll finally realize that they're really not that special at all.

Honesty is no policy

Just listening to Definitely Not the Opera on CBC Radio right now, and today's topic was Lying, Faking it, Bamboozling, and all that implications, benefits and techniques. First topic was lying in the workplace and how recruiters are now expecting resumes to be padded so they'll automatically downgrade your resume. Which of course sucks for those of us who aren't that good at lying. I'm a fairly good writer, though not as well as when I was in university, but when I stare at my resume...it's hard enough to keep the sarcasm out when I'm describing my previous/current employment. Trying to pump it up is tantamount to torture. Of course w/ the recent changes @ my workplace, and state of the job market, it's time to start fluffing up the resumes.

Then there was the topic of fake working in the workplace. And I've seen most of those techniques a lot where I am. And it's true that a lot of those who get promoted or are OM favourites aren't the most competent. But they can get away w/ it b/c they know how to schmooze. For those of us who are too embittered to fake caring about the crappy job; or even if we did care, aren't skilled enough at faking to emulate the cheese, get passed over. And if we point out the other's inadequencies we get labelled. So it really sucks. Case in point, one of the supervisors complained about the lack of floor support and wanted me to forestall my break. When my break was already an hour past. So I flatout told him "well that's when the supervisors are supposed to fill in." And he just gave me an incredulous look, when I was actually quoting policy. But a lot of the supervisors don't help their agents w/ questions or escalations. One of the agents who was just helping w/ questions had a list of customers who had escalated, and I guess she expected us to call them back even though we were all busy. All of those customers should have gone to the supervisors, even if it did skip Tier I(floor support) and went to Tier II(supervisor). When I was a supervisor and there was no Floor Support, I just took the escalation b/c 1) allowed your agent to go back to taking other calls and hence generating revenue 2) kept the customer from waitng longer and hence pissing them off 3) demonstrated to rep that you wanted to help them and hence improving relationship 4) was usually just repeating what the agent told them and let you do your paperwork 5) fulfilled contractual obligation to have "phone time". And I'll tell that to any supervisor. And they might not like it, b/c I save my candy-coating for the customers. But you know, I've been told by my supervisor that I'm really direct and to the point, but never that I'm wrong.

Anyways on Thursday, finally got to tour the new worksite. We'll all be over there by mid-May. And the place totally blows. It's a 30+ min bus ride from my place. There is only 1 clothing store in their dumpy little strip mall. And the clothing store is very low-end. There is no bookstore, a used bookstore, but that doesn't count. Only 2 major chain stores. I told my friend that it's the place where stores go to die. It's a horrid little wretched place, and prone to vandalism when it's dark. About an hour after the tour ended, I was in a complete daze b/c it was so abysmal. I'll have nowhere to go on my breaks. They have X-Men vs. Street Fighter in their lunchroom but it's $1 to play. An 8 year old game! They only have 2 refrigerators, 2 microwaves. For 700 employees. That's ridiculous. And their washrooms are quite far away from where our project is so if we actually go there during our breaks like we're supposed to, we'll lose 5 min from our 15 min break. Yeah, so it's definitely time to ...inflate the resume. But I'd taken 40 hrs of vacation earlier in the year, and I haven't earned back the deficit yet, so I don't want clawback when I quit. Yeargh.

On a more happy note, I got my Luva-sama and Marcel-san CDs. I still haven't gotten my Pokemon DS Lite accessories even though they were sent earlier. Anyways, Luva-sama is sooooooooo kawaii. Marcel-san just makes you want to hug and pet him. I was stifling my squeals b/c I didn't want to miss anything. It was very short CD b/c there was only a character song, a monologue, and then a chapter in a continuing story. I don't have the first 2 CDs (featuring different characters) so I'm not sure why Marcel, Zephel and Randy were in Luva's room and how they broke one of his cups. But it was sooooo funny. Yup, that's Japanese seiyuus for ya, even if you only recognize 1 out of 20 words, you can still figure out what's going on and/or just enjoy their performance.

Fireworks are an awesome distraction

Finally bought my hockey bag yesterday. Decided to just spend the extra money and go for the most cost effective one w/ wheels. It's huge and comes all the way up my lower ribs when I stand it up on it's wheels. It was a real hassle trying to carry it home b/c w/ the hard bottom, it kept banging against my legs, and I knocked a bunch of stuff over b/c it was so big.

Anyways I had a dream that involved that bag. Seems that our company decided to take most of us on a trip to UK (which would never happen but this is a dream after all) So I have my bag packed up, and was travelling in B's really old van w/ some of my co-workers and her son DW. It was drizzling, so we stopped by a restaurant and were just eating and B asked her son "So where's that rainbow that you're going to make?" And DW replies "Oh, it's going to show up." I look out the window and there's a rainbow! But it wasn't quite your usual half-circle rainbow that was kinda faint. Part of it was very clear and parts were faint, and I could see it being created like the airshow stunts. And it was about 240 degrees of a circle. So we were all going "wow" and B mentioned that DW had always been able to do that since he was little. So it's getting darker and we're still at the restaurant when fireworks start going on in the same direction the rainbow was. No one knew what it was for, but when they were still ongoing for a couple of minutes, we all started streaming out to watch. And they were nice fireworks; lots of big flowers, streamers, rockets. Then it seems that there were some red flashes from above the clouds and booms. The fireworks were still going but something hit me on my head. I don't know what it was, but it seemed very unusual, and I was standing outside trying to figure it out. The fireworks are dying out and everyone's talking about them, and suddenly a flare shoots up. Everyone else is wondering what the flare's for or maybe it's just a firework that isn't exploding properly. I go "Holy crap!", run into the restaurant and tell my friends to leave b/c it's an invasion. So we all pile into her van (I somehow had carried my bag into the restaurant and then also grabbed it w/ me to the van) and take off. Indeterminate time passes and now we're pulling up into a village and there's a small tea place.We're talking about how the lady was making fun of our accents b/c we can't match their British accents, and B goes into a horrible Southern accent, whereas I'm wondering if anyone noticed my mixed-up Brit accent picked up from years of watching British comedies and listening to BBC. Anyways we go into a small room, and suddenly realize there's a guy sitting there, and he's cooking something in a pot. We excuse ourselves and B asks how her son is. The man says he's feeling better, opens the pot and there's some plants brewing away. He grabs a handful of the reddish liquid and smears it on his arms. I ask him what it is, and he says "anil leaves." B asks why he isn't drinking it, and he says "you don't drink this stuff." So B takes a bit and puts it on her tongue and spits it back out, trying to scrape the rest off her tongue, and her tongue has this foamy layer on it. Then the proprietress of the tea shop attached to the building comes in and warns us to be careful b/c people are looking for us. The fellow starts saying that it was a hard battle trying to get us out, and I start going into a movie flashback of when we were travelling thru a marshy forest and then were attacked by some force, targetting DW. Then these 2 pine-like creatures come out and chase them off. And one of those pine creatures is the fellow sitting w/ us but got injured. And that's when I woke up.

Now anil does exist, and it's used to make indigo dye, according to Wikipedia. However I was able to find an article by US govt that its leaves are also used as poultices for treatment of hemorrhages, skin parasites and boils. There's also this article by the Oxford journal detailing that it is effective against certain skin diseases caused by dermatophytes. DW also believes that he has some kind of psychic powers, mostly influenced by his current gf Erin. B doesn't believe him at all. And of course we wouldn't be travelling in B's van (which I don't think she owns one) to UK b/c we'd have to ship it across the Atlantic. But fireworks to attract civilians out in the open and keep them distracted, using it as a cover for troop movement? That's plausible.

Why Nemesis killed Star Trek

So I was wiki-ing Romulans @ work, and it was okay up until I got to the part about Shinzon and Nemesis. There's just so much about that movie that makes no logical sense. It's fine and dandy that the Romulans decided to stop the replace Picard ops, but to not eliminate all the evidence(Shinzon) is just sloppy. Certainly that'd prove that the people in charge deserved to die, and the Praetor was unfit for the position, but was the writer's actually aiming for that? Anybody would know that you kill the clone, keep a sample for a rainy day, and shred/frag all documentation. Stupid stupid stupid.

Then there's the part about Shinzon getting his viceroy to help him mentally rape Troi. Which is stupid b/c Troi should have really good mental shields since she works w/ people who are suicidal, extremely angry, emotionally unstable and everything in between. Secondly if the viceroy can establish a strong enough mental link that a trained empath (who grew up in a society of telepaths) can't break easily, over 100s of kilometres, to someone that he'd have most only touched and didn't know at all...then why the hell isn't he doing more w/ his telepathic abilities?!! It's just moronic writing to get in that scene. Oh, and she could use the telepathic link to find him. Yeah okay, well for a guy w/ vast mental abilites, he also had sh!tty shields.

Yeah, I did actually manage to sit thru the movie when it came out on TV. It was not great, not even including the aforementioned problems. Just seemed to overcomplicate things for no good reason.

Hate Enterprise too b/c of how they f*cked up the Vulcans, but that's another post. Gonna read "The Moon and Sandals" by Fumi Yoshinaga. Yoshinaga-san is such an awesome mangaka. Some people may not like her style b/c it's much slower, has a plot and develops the character, and doesn't have loads of sex. The art is much simpler w/ fewer background details. But her characters are really delightful to look at w/ lots of personality. I think it's more a mature yaoi which you have to be in the mood for, b/c it does take a lot of time to develop. It's manga to savour. Not that I don't also have tons of PWP yaoi too. I like the comedy yaoi. That's always good.

Quiz: What Japanese Smiley Are You?

You Are "Wow"!

What Japanese Smiley Are You?

Oh, that's so cute! Japanese smilies are really cute. I only know a few like ^_^ and >< .And that's pretty much about it. Probably b/c I don't do much chatting or txt msging.

Quiz: What Kind of Cookie Are You?

You Are an Oatmeal Raisin Cookie

On the surface, you're a little plain - but you have many subtle dimensions to your personality. Sometimes you're down to earth and crunchy. Other times, you're sweet and a little gooey.

What Kind of Cookie Are You?

Yup, that's pretty much me. Oatmeal Raisin are pretty good. Although I like peanut butter best. Chocolate dough w/ white chocolate chips and almonds are nice too. The best to be dunked in milk is almond cookies. 2 of those is enough to fill you up. I'm not a big cookie eater. Actually since I've consciously decided to eliminate that stuff from my diet (save when I'm at some public thing and that's all they serve), I've never really craved them. I guess I just savour them now.

Starting to live hand-to-mouth

Argh, I so totally have to cut back on expenses for this month. Since D went to visit H for 2 months, I said I'd foot the entire rent for a month, so that plus my credit card bill means I probably won't be making any money this month. Ugh, and looking over my bill, seems I spent about $100 on sushi alone. Mind you it was my b-day during that time...but still. Looks like it'll just be discounted sushi from now on. Which I still end up spending about $15 each time I pick some up, but I spread it over 2 days. The worst about day-old sushi is the hard rice....No really, the wasabi takes care of the bacteria. Well not really, but I haven't become horribly sick yet. And I've even had 2 day old salmon nigiri.

And then there's my manga/comic book bill...looks like $150, which is the average. As expected when I collect about 50+ manga titles, and about 5 comic books. *sigh* I suppose I really shouldn't just pick up any manga that sounds unique, has nice art and wins awards. Had to move lots of manga around to make more space. And this is why I'm so afraid of a fire. And my skin is frequently dry b/c humidity kills books too.

Chatted w/ T today. Well, T did most of the talking and I did the nodding. Geez, I really don't have much to say which doesn't revolve around which book I read, DVD I saw, show I watched. I feel so...empty. Shopping therapy is also making me feel guilty. B/c of the aforementiioned financial situation.

Again, I wonder what they learn in training and how many are taught to use their brains. I'm the type who tends to educate people instead of giving them the answer, so I like to explain the situation, provide info and see if they can come to the correct solution. Well 7 minutes of trying to get him to figure out what equipment price he should give to the customer was pretty excruciating. It went from treating him as an adult, to pointing out that the prices are colour-coded for certain discounts, and repeatedly reminding him the customer only qualifies for a certain discount. Ugh, and the last few days I've been feeling bleah, so I was really looking forward to just sitting in front of the computer and IMing advice to the agents. But instead my supervisor pulls me to walk the floor. And the stupid trainer cancelled the class so I missed 2 hrs of snooze time.

I feel so...bleah. Gripping to routine in a chaotic world, pretending to be the reed in a hurricane. Just as Jamie and Adam proved that it'd be impossible for a reed to pierce a palm tree, I feel like I'm going to splinter if I get pulled from my roots.

Too many princesses

Ugh, got stuck w/ being Support for the transition class again. They're the people who just finished Training and are about to hit the floor. And again, the trainer takes off, leaving me w/ 9 people who don't even know how to change SIM cards. So I'm stuck bouncing from person to person trying to figure out what the customer's really asking, figuring out what the agent wants, fighting the urge to take the mouse over and do everything for them, and getting a bunch of looks b/c I can't keep track of what they'd asked me about 5 min earlier. So I'm still waiting for a trainer to show up, and I have people asking me why they're not getting calls so I have to check if they even logged into their phones properly, explaining to them how to read a bill, showing them how to use resources that they should've been drilled thoroughly on in training, and I have this girl ask me how to take payment and she's not even in the right system. So I tell her what system she needs to take it thru, and she says to me "well I want someone else to help me." So I look around and go "Well you know what, I'm the only support here right now" And she goes "well I don't like how you just give me short answers and make me feel stupid". So I tell her "Look, I know you've missed a day but I've got 8 other people that I'm trying to help so I can't get to you right away or guide you through everything." So she tries to argue w/ me again, and I just go "Look, you want to know how to make a payment? Well I'm trying to help you right now." So finally she shuts up and actually follows my directions. But geez, they don't do a lot of teaching in training do they? There was another agent who was about to leave just b/c he wasn't doing as well in the real calls as he was in mock-calls and b/c he kept putting the customer, the customer hung up.

And I don't know what the hell they're teaching them in class. They would seriously tell the customer that they're going to put the customer on hold for 20 sec. Who the hell cares about 20 seconds?! And being told that every 20 seconds would be really frigging irritating. Their trainer is supposed to be really good, but I dunno. I wonder if they did any Y-connecting on the floor b/c they sure don't seem to know anything.

Didn't have to take any escalations today at least. Although I did a rerate b/c I didn't feel like getting into a contest where I'm saying the customer must've been lying about telling the rep about something b/c based on the detail of the notes written by the agent, the agent would've given him the correct pricing and notated it. I wish we had a clause that if the customer's caught lying, we can take everything away. That'd be so nice b/c they lie to us so many times.

I'm hungry. I think I'll go eat even though I had a double patty hamburger about...5 hrs ago. Well that explains it.

Ooooh, snippy little princess

So I was taking off on my break, and was dashing past JR's desk when he calls out to me "Fine, don't say Hi!". So of course I turn back and go "Why would I stop to say Hi?". So JR's says "Because you're nice." To which I replied "Geez, who's spreading that rumour?" And one of JR's reps who was sitting next to him goes "Well it sure wasn't me." Then JR and I just looked at him and went back to teasing/flirting w/ each other.

But I think that rep doensn't like me b/c I don't give him special treatment. D said he was attractive, although I just give him an average. He's the bf of an Operations Manager, and a lot of TLs/trainers are very friendly towards him, and his attitude is that he expects that from everyone. It's not that he's bad at his job but I don't like that he thinks he can get away w/ talking to me like as if he was my friend. It all comes to those levels of politeness. And if he can't understand that JR can get away w/ teasing me b/c we used to go out, and that I get to bug him b/c I'm his senior...well too bad bucko. Go cry to your bf.

Anyways, took an escalation. Customer was lying about not recieving bills and then when I pointed out that how could she make payments albeit 5 months after the acct was cancelled for nonpay if she didn't get any bill, she made some story that she didn't get bills after she made some payments. Yeah sure. I really hate people who don't pay their bills. For months, and then whine and bitch about it. Guess what? I'm a consumer and I scrimp and save to make sure that my bills are paid and I have enough for a rainy day/year. If you can't read your bill and are too damn lazy to give us a call or email about it, it's your own damn fault. Even when we were open 24/7 we'd still get some dope who'd try to make that excuse. I'm so sick of people who don't take any responsibility and expect us to bail them out just b/c they're "valued customers". Are we supposed to value their stupidity or something?

Anyways, just playing Pokemon here. Sandstorm sounded so cool, so I replaced Bind w/ it on Onix. Turns out to suck pretty bad.