» Call Centres

Call centre story number 1 :
Many years ago I worked in the Dublin-based call centre for a well known provider of online services, internet, and free CDs. I was part of a technical support team composed of mostly early 20s nerds and geeks. Naturally, one of the favourite passtimes of most of the team members was frequenting the chat rooms and trying to score some one-on-one chats with the ever willing American ladies.

Out of boredom or mischief one day, I decided to see how easy it would be to wind someone up...
I created an alternate profile - 'Paula23765', gave her the appropriate details - 23, blonde, Californian, likes rollerblading and tanning, and then signed in to the chat room that most of the guys were currently infesting. Sure enough, within moments I had about ten invitations for private chats. I selected a likely victim at random (well, okay - it was Paul, the guy whose desk was opposite mine, just over the partition). Some chat ensued, which started off relatively tame, but didn't stay that way for long.. Desperate to impress, despite the obvious absence of a clue, he claimed among other things to have participated in the odd orgy (but "didn't like the taste of other guys cum" - dunno where that came from), and so on. All the while saying things like "I've got a live one here guys" to nearby team members. At one point he leaned over the partition and asked me how to spell 'cunnilingus' - it was hard not to laugh.

Anyway, all good things must come to an end.. round about the time that Paula suggested that she could stay with him during an upcoming trip to Ireland (at which point he admitted to still living with his parents), he went off for his scheduled 15 minute break vowing to return. Of course, I told another team member what had been going on. He begged for an email copy of the chat log, which I duly provided. By the time Paul got back from his break, the entire team had read through a few salient points of the chat, and the cat was well out of the bag. He took it very well, all things considered.

Within another hour, someone else on the team had forwarded the email to the mailing list for the entire call centre. The following day when I walked into the canteen and saw members of the customer service team passing sheets of paper around the table and laughing out loud, I knew without asking what it was. Nothing "official" came of it, thankfully, but I left the place shortly afterwards anyway...

Then around a year later, my brother forwarded an email to me.. it was the very same chat log. Printed out, it ran to 12 pages... about 8 of them were email headers - it had been everywhere, and back.

As for the length? When pressed, he admitted to less than 12" of throbbing meat. :-/
(Thu 3rd Sep 2009, 22:48, More)

» Call Centres

Call centre story number 2 :
One of the problems with freephone numbers is that there's an awful lot of people who'll decide to call it, stay on hold for 20 minutes, and then bother some poor techie rather than actually think at all. Conversations like;

Techie : Which version of Windows are you using?
Customer : Five
Techie : Uh... five? Are you sure?
Customer : Yes, you know - the blue one
::penny drops::
Techie : Would that be WordPerfect, by any chance?
Customer : Yes, and I want to connect to the internet.

There was also a nice, but confused, old man who had received a Free Trial CD in the post. He didn't even have a computer, but had bought a washing machine about a week previously and wanted to know if it was anything to do with that. Was quite determined to return the CD too, despite assurances that we had loads, thanks, and he could probably just throw it away...
(Thu 3rd Sep 2009, 22:53, More)

» Have you ever seen a dead body?

Almost
On the way to work about 3 years ago, I saw a woman on a bicycle get run over by a site lorry (you know - the big ones that carry dirt around between building sites). Lorry was turning left at a junction, woman cycled up the side in his blind spot, and got squashed.

I saw the whole thing - both sets of back wheels went right over her, and I fully expected her to be dead. She wasn't, though - just a bit mangled.

As one of the first on the scene (I called for the ambulance that took her away), I had to hang around stopping other well-meaning bystanders from trying to move her around too much, and had to wait for the police, etc.

Later when I gave a formal statement I was told that she was expected to make an eventual recovery. Good to hear, but my memory of the accident is still pretty vivid.

The End
(Thu 28th Feb 2008, 10:11, More)

» Spoooky Coincidence

Class!
I travelled internationally a lot in a previous job. Brazil one week, Japan the next, that kind of thing.

One weekend after a spell of work in Mexico, I was staying over in San Diego for a night prior to jetting off to San Jose. Self and a new-found (American) friend arrived into town a bit late and decided to go out for a drink or two...

At the door of about the second bar we tried, there were two guys leaving as we went to enter. They stopped, looked at me, and one of them addressed me by name. I recognised them too - one of them had been in the same year as me in Primary School.

What was most spoooky was that we hadn't even known each other that well previously, hadn't seen each other since we were about 10, but recognised each other including names straight away, despite being 5200 miles away from home (give or take). American friend was well impressed.

He had big gollywog style curly hair and more freckles than any 10 normal people, so maybe that helped. I'm pretty normal looking though.
(Fri 9th Feb 2007, 16:17, More)

» Breakin' The Law

The Fast and the Fortunate
Most of my run-ins have been for speeding, back in my younger days (don't get caught so often now I have a motorbike). Here's one of my favourites:

Returning home from a site visit in a customer's factory down the country. Proceeding at a healthy 90-odd mph up the motorway, I notice an Alpha Romeo (which I didn't know was a cop car) start to tail me pretty close. I sped up a bit, as you do. Before long we reach the end of the motorway where it turns into a dual-carriageway with an inexplicable 40mph speed limit. It's at this point that the sirens & lights go on, and I'm pulled over to be told that they have me on video doing 120mph in a 40 zone. Oops!!

So I got in touch with a friend of a friend who's in the police, and who tells me that this could be difficult to get off because the traffic squad are always being approached by other police on behalf of friends. Some time later, I learn that he had got in contact with them and told them that I was helping him with a fairly sensitive drug investigation, and could they let it slide. Never heard anything back about it. Phew!
(Fri 9th Jan 2004, 9:54, More)