Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Oh, the fun just never ends

My weekend was nice. It was just a low-key weekend, which I think I needed. I slept until 10:30 both Saturday and Sunday mornings - I guess I needed the rest!

And now I'm back at work. Which, as we all know, makes me so happy I could just throw up.

I started out my day with a complaint. I got a complaint on an account that's not even mine, that's one I took a call about from the 800 line (since we're all required to help out with phone duty). THAT'S why I hate phone time. I have enough work to do and get complaints about without adding in the whole "one call, one response" thing that has us taking on whatever work comes out of calls from the 800 number, too. So that was a dandy day-brightener right out of the box.

We're having a team meeting this afternoon regarding the fifth special project we've got going (I think that's right, we've got five special projects). It wasn't supposed to have much of an impact, but it's been revamped and will now have more of an impact on us than was previously anticipated. So the meeting is to discuss what we'll each need to do for this. Yay. This is in addition to the four other special projects, the investment reviews that have to go out and be followed up with phone calls (this could be full-time by itself), and the daily workload that you never can get caught up on. Goody!

And I called to check today - I didn't get the child support position in Fort Worth. For whatever reason, it wasn't meant to work out.

My devotional yesterday was about God answering prayer in unexpected ways. It talked about times where we prayed for one thing and didn't get what we expected, but looking back, we did get exactly what we needed. How this job can be anything I *need* is beyond me, so I can't even see the answering of prayers in unexpected ways. All I see is the answer to my prayers being "no" or at least "not yet", for reasons I can't fathom. I'm glad God knows the reasons for all of this, because I sure don't. And it's hard to keep the faith when you can't see rhyme or reason in it somewhere.

I'm meeting with the financial advisor tonight. Hopefully it will go well.

I've applied online for an assistant city attorney position in Arlington and another writing position with Baylor. There are also two assistant U.S. attorney positions I want to apply for, one in Dallas and one in Fort Worth. I keep on flinging that spaghetti, waiting for the piece that's going to stick.

3 comments:

Squishypig said...

I don't understand how there seems to be so many complaints. How easy do they make it for the customer to say something? After the end of the call, do they hear, "If you were dissatisfied with your experience (even just a little) press 1."

~M~ said...

I'm right there with you in the spagetti flinging. I've applied online, sent resumes, etc., and have not heard anything back from anyone. Hopefully our times will come soon, before we lose our sanity.

Lisa @ The Plain-Spoken Pen said...

As far as the complaints, if a customer calls to check on something and it wasn't done within service standards, *even if* the customer isn't upset or isn't actually bitching about what's happened, the people who answer the phones are required to make it a complaint on the assigned officer. Their performance is rated based in part on the number of complaints they take/make/whatever you want to call it. Now doesn't that just scream "teamwork and trusting" to you? If a complaint really isn't valid, you can ask your manager to take it up for you and try to have it removed, but that may or may not work.

And if the customer takes the phone survey at the end of the call and rates the service a certain way, it's this big alert deal and everyone involved falls all over themselves to address it. Even when it's a known chronic caller who's just never happy without something to be unhappy about, or someone who knows the system well enough to know that rating the call a certain way will get an almost immediate response.