reply
· · to read
Passengers, Check Your T-Shirt Before Boarding (nytimes.com)
ALONG with lighters, penknives and other forbidden objects on airplanes, you can now add something entirely new: T-shirts with objectionable messages. On Tuesday, Lorrie Heasley was forced to leave Southwest Airlines Flight 219, departing Reno, Nev., because she was wearing a T-shirt that featured pictures of President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and an expletive phrase playing on the title of the popular movie, ''Meet the Fockers.''

This is just too much.
Why is it that everywhere seems to be reverting to a high school mentality?
I remember being told not to wear offensive t-shirts in school, as well as during the orientation at work.
Those places are fine.
But on airplanes too?
Come on!
Personally, I don’t agree with the t-shirt mentioned in this article, but whether or not the t-shirt, (or others similar to it) are worn shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
It’s not like anyone’s forcing anyone else to look at the thing.
I can already see where this has the potential of going.
It’s going to have the fundamentalists, (along with a bunch of other people) up in arms, and this time, I happen to agree with them.
All it will take is for someone to get offended by a shirt that says something like “If you don’t like the heat, stay out of hell”, and the t-shirt wearer will be kicked off the plane faster than you can say Halleluyah.
This ranks up there with the story about Muslim employees in British public offices getting offended by Whinnie the Pooh and Piglet toys.
People, get over yourselves!
I suppose, though, that the argument could be made that the airlines want to make sure that the planes maintain some sort of sudo business atmosphere, and that would be fine if the only people, or the majority thereof, traveled solely on business.
I might have to pass this one on to some of the people I know who make business trips frequently to get another perspective.
But for now, the whole thing sounds pretty ridiculous.

note
· · to read

I looked at my paycheck yesterday morning, and got a nice little surprise.
They’ve raised my pay almost twenty cents. And this is before the evaluation coming up this month. Yay me, and thanks a lot, John. He’s really done a lot for me, including going to bat when other people wouldn’t. I hope today isn’t as busy as yesterday, and I really hope my schedule isn’t as screwed up.

Taken from customerservant.com

note
· · to read

Not that this system is any good on any other day, but today it’s just been absolutely ridiculous.
I’ve had to restart the thing more than once, because of everything from “serious application container issue” messages to the search button not working.
I’d like to know whose semester-end project this was, and how drunk they were when the got it done.
I’ll be glad to get off work.
I’m getting tired of this place.
O … wait … I’ve been tired of it for a while.
On a better note, the site’s got a new look, and I’ll be adding some things when I get home.
I hope to be able to post some things that aren’t work related, yet are original soon, all in the hope of making the content of this site of higher caliber.
There will always be room for the enteraining things that go on at work, but I want to expand things a little.
I have a headache right now.
And I don’t have any drugs with me either.
We’ve been in cue all day as usual.
All of this is really stressful on a person.

Taken from customerservant.com

note
· · to read

While reading one of the blogs listed on my blogroll, I found out about something called a carnival. Basically, a carnival is an effort by a group of bloggers to cull articles and posts from various blogs fitting specific criteria set out by the host of the carnival, and then having links to the submissions culled together in one article. It’s a way to generate publicity with a group effort. I don’t know how well this works with LiveJournal, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t. You can submit posts to a number of carnivals by going to and clicking on the carnival submit form at the top. Have fun.

Taken from customerservant.com

note
· · to read

A lot’s happened in my worklife since the last time I posted about it last Tuesday.
First of all, all the access we had (to the share drive where all my work documents are stored, as well as any memos sent by management in order to be able to be read by myself through Jaws along with my mail, and this blog), has been completely blocked, yet to be restored.
But the biggest event by far has been the disaccessibilization of our database.
Not that it was the most accessible thing in the world, (as you’ll find out by browsing the archives of this blog), but it worked well enough to allow me to do my job.
Now it doesn’t work at all.
This has been going on since Friday.
So after everybody in upper management (and that includes upper management outside the local center as well as the upper management from the client) gushed profusely about how it was a horrible oversight, and how it would never happen again, I had a “meeting” about it yesterday afternoon, at which nothing got accomplished, unless you count my unceremoniously being added to the “pilot team” for the hellish database.
An IP address was supposed to be sent down the pipeline that would give myself and the other agent in the client’s office up in Pennsylvania access to the old version of the interface, but that IP yielded nothing.
The end result of all this?
I spent the last two days (Friday and Monday) at work sitting on my ass, doing absolutely nothing, and I’ll be doing that today too, as the answer I got yesterday before leaving was “Just come in tomorrow and we’ll think of something.”
Guys, that’s really brilliant.
But it’s not the most brilliant thing to happen yesterday.
During our little meeting, I asked if there was any way for feedback to be sent directly to the development team. (Why the hell does every group of people have to be a team?) I got to talk to someone from Development at that meeting, who says he’s going to download a forty-minute demo of Jaws and test it out on the interface.
Never mind he’s probably not used the damned software, and has no idea of how it works or how to use it.
The answer: “You talk to your supervisor, who will talk to his supervisor, who will talk to the person above them, who will talk to the client’s representative, who will meet with the supervisor weveral levels above the other guy in PA, and it’ll go down that chain after we all form an “action plan”, and then we’ll go to Development.”
In short, the same system we’ve been using which produced this huge mess in the first place.
Corporate America is indeed lovely, isn’t it?
Actually, let me rephrase.
Instead of “Corporate America” read the Call Center Industry.
And on top of all that, I broke my cane.
Well, at this point it’s in one piece until I can replace it, but it’s really bent, and it can’t be folded because the elastic in the middle is broken.
I’ll have to wait until the next paycheck to start saving to replace it.
This one went to bills, and the next one will primarily go to my rent.
I’m hoping they’ll fix the access at work so I can post during the day today, so that doing nothing takes up less time than it did yesterday.
If not, I’ll post later today.

Taken from customerservant.com

note
· · to read

I spent yesterday at work, doing nothing.
I had to “be specific” about the Jaws cursor at least three times, at one point taking the time to write an email explaining how Jaws acts like a camera, and the cursor is like a lense.
If the lense can’t focus, then it can’t take a proper picture.
Unfortunately, that message was met with “I still don’t understand.”
And this message was intended for people who claimed they understood how Jaws works, and knew all about how to use it.
Right.
By the time the message got through the chain, it was changed to something about tab order.
By yesterday afternoon, I was being told that the guy in PA I trained to do this stuff in the first place was up, running and taking calls, and that we would have a meeting today so he could tell me how it all worked.
I talked to him last night.
He’s in the same boat I am, and in complete agreement with me that the damned thing needs to be fixed, and that nobody’s listening to a damn thing we’re saying.
We’re still having our meeting today, although it’ll probably just be a rehash of last night’s conversation.
The operations manager is having a meeting with the director of corporate HR this afternoon.
We’ll see how that pans out.

Taken from customerservant.com

note
· · to read

Due to the lack of ‘net access at work, (which isn’t supposed to be cleared up for about two weeks), I’m going to be posting the items I wrote while at work this week during the day.
I’ll also be posting items from this summer that I’ve never gotten around to adding to the improved Customerservant.com.
For those reading this via L-J, you should be able to look back through the archives, if the posts don’t get added to your friends pages with the old dates.

Taken from customerservant.com

note
· · to read

The following is a paraphrase of a TKS correction form (for those who don’t know, we have to submit TKS correction forms whenever our TKS log-in and phone log-in do not match) submitted by one of my co-workers.
I was standing there when it was delivered and explained.
Co-worker: “I’m sorry I clocked in late, but I ate breakfast at Burger King this morning and it tore me up.”
Note To Self: Having to go to the bathroom due to an impending warp core breach is not a valid reason for being late, nor will you get paid for the time you spend in said bathroom.
Nobody told you to eat at Burger King.
That having been said, I’m sure your collon appreciated you after that.

Taken from customerservant.com

note
· · to read

It’s been a while since I’ve posted.
I haven’t done much over the last week except work, and that’s been a total disaster.
It was OK the first part of the week, (excluding all the system problems, and rude callers and administrative crap that’s the usual fair), and I even had a funny call, from some guy who wanted to know if he could donate his medications to someone else because he was no longer taking them and didn’t tell us before we sent him the order.
Of course, I told him he couldn’t.
Absolutely nothing’s happened on the accessibility front, which tells me everybody who’s been promoted according to the level of their incompetence feels that they’ve fixed the problem.
Not good.
On top of all the system lock-ups, Jaws crashes, and screens that aren’t accessible to begin with, yet another problem has surfaced.
Since Thursday morning, it now takes my system literally twenty minutes to start.
There’s a start-up script (actually a series of them) that runs every time we log on to our systems.
One of them in particular has started taking a very long time to run.
I’ve reported it several times, with no result, except that I’ve been suspected of extreme work avoidance, (at least three hours worth for Thursday alone), and generally brushed off, as if everybody’s annoyed because there’s yet another problem developing around the blind person.
Here lately I feel like all I manage to do is cause problems, mixed in with the little bit (compared to everyone else) of money I manage to bring in for the company and the client.
All I seem to be doing is adding to everybody’s problems, and since I don’t have any solutions that are immediate and don’t require any work, it’s somehow my fault.
And there’s no end in site.
We’re due for another upgrade of the database interface in a couple of days, and by January, I’m expected to utilize certain features that come with the new upgrade that aren’t available in the old version of the interface.
It doesn’t matter whether or not any of this has to be as difficult as it is.
The simple fact is that it’s being made difficult, therefore it is.
I’m finding it really hard to keep a sense of humor throughout all this.
All of this is way past the point of ridiculous, and the worst part about it all is that there’s nothing I can do about it.
They say they’re supposed to have the surf control crap fixed sometime this week, so hopefully I’ll be able to post and check my email from work again.
I also hope to post more frequently.

Taken from customerservant.com