that phrase was written down on a piece a paper and has been sitting on my desk at work waiting for me to either write about it or add it to my notebook filled with comments and thought seeds that I expect to eventually write about or discuss in some kind of self induced therapy *wry grin* (Damn you William Faulkner! *shakes fist at the sky*)

It was one of those times when I was sitting here and I heard one of my agents say that over the phone and I was suddenly struck with the sheer absurdity of the comment and I just had to save it for posterity.

When I try to think about the statement without knowing any of the context of the situation (or for that matter even knowing the context of the situation) it sounds really bad. Mental translation: "I can't help you and I can't hang up on you so I will just force you to listen to some horrible hold music until you go away"

This even though it was said in a fairly nice way is essentially what the agent meant at the time. Now as Devil's advocate and as because after hearing that even if I hadn't have been a supervisor I would have been "WTF?" and sought out an explanation. It was a situation that really was summed up as a merchant that we could not even begin to assist for various reasons but who kept ending up back in our call queue as the round robin of bouncing calls between departments and different companies with the merchant never being connected to someone who could actually address their issue. Which is something that happens on a fairly regular basis for my group, we tend to be the dumping ground and many a time its a situation that we have absolutely no clue what to do or even access to necessary systems or controls. This particular merchant had been spending a couple hours wandering around (via phone) for several hours and was getting tired of being transferred, which I don't blame them for but there was absolutely zero that we could do for their situation and had even less clue of where to appropriately direct them.

There was a significant period of time when I was still on the phones that I considered my job to be as much a responsibility of playing traffic cop as well as being the jack of all trades mr. fixit. Some of the extreme examples that would happen on a regular basis have finally been filtered away from our phone system but there are still occasional reflections of those times. I remember a specific example type that always used to get under my skin because it forced us to be the providers of horrible customer experiences. A number of years ago during a slightly different incarnation of my corporate experience there was a situation set up whereby when a certain company with their own help desk closed for the day that their calls would get transferred to our help desk for support (albeit somewhat limited but support nonetheless) since we were a 24/7/365 operation and this other organization preferred to keep "banker" hours in order to be more financially thrifty and since we were already open for our clients... (That part actually made sense and wasn't the issue)

Now where the problem arose is the fact that there was a hard cut off that at approximately six in the evening all calls that were dialing into that companies tech support line would be instantly routed to our help desk (and anyone who has ever worked phone support and knows how easy it is to get calls where people are simply calling the wrong department of the company they are looking for will begin to see some of the potential issues that develop). So we have this switch put in place, now let me give you a few more pieces of context... First only the customer base that has been converted to the programming that we are even able to begin supporting have been added to our database (any uneasy thoughts yet?) and even of those most of our normal troubleshooting tools are next to useless except where our basic understanding of the terminals is appropriate.

So basically you have a situation where when my caller ID lights up with a certain phone number that lets me know its being routed from this other company that there may be only a ten percent chance that I will even be able to pull up any account information in my database (remember that ALL calls are being without any kind of real filter in place to make sure that we should even be receiving them) and of those I can actually provide real troubleshooting and resolution to hopefully ten percent of those (the most common example was "I'm getting XYZ error message when trying to do Such-and-soforth transaction, to which my only response ends up being telling the person on the phone that they will have to call back in the morning and speak to a real representative of Generic Company Name since I don't have access to being able to see whats going on with their host and reprogramming the terminal is only going to make their situation worse... even more painful is I have enough knowledge to know that waiting until the morning to get any real assistance for their particular error means the possibility of losing serious money into the electronic aether)

When I sought to voice my concerns over this situation I received variations on two themes as responses... Either "Just help them as bet you can" (to which I always refrained from throttling the individuals and asking for my magic wand that they forgot to issue me) or "Don't worry, every call that G.C.N. sends us they get charged for" (which at the time mollified me for a bit until later when I stumbled across the knowledge that G.C.N. received their charges based on the calls being logged in our database not on the phone system... Does anyone remember me mentioning that only ten percent of these phone calls were in our database to be pulled up? Can anyone hazard to guess how they expect to charge for calls we had no way of being able to log? I gave up long time ago.)

Now since I especially was focused on generally improving the customer experience of the person on my phone but was unable to properly explain the situation to my superiors (though in retrospect I believe they understood but either were just as unable to find a resolution as I was or no longer cared) that the only seemingly successful coping mechanism was to develop an insulating layer of apathy regarding the situation. Unfortunately I have to admit that I find myself becoming more and more like that very same attitude at work nowadays.

- - -

Even the most stubborn or the most patient of us will eventually get tired of banging our heads against the walls... For a timestamp note for anyone who is interested, the separation in time from what I wrote above is created by my writing an email asking about another situation where calls have been routed to our phones without sufficient groundwork or even warning for that matter. Part of me wants to know who keeps making these seemingly unilateral decisions without communication but another part of me is just so used to it by now. *sigh*

This blog started from two influences (well three technically). Primarily some not especially subtle nudging from Tolkien Doll *evilgrin*, which is extra amusing since I was thinking about the fact that I haven't written in awhile (though its been so wonderful to wrap myself in those novels I was reading... I haven't quite done that in awhile... Though now I have a new computer game addiction also to contend with) and I was having the mental debate with myself about that. Especially since lately I seem to do more blogwork while at work *wry grin* which in itself could be a bad sign.

But I was driving to work trying to decide what kind of seed I would write from and I was thinking about some sage advice I received back on Midsouthcon weekend while I was doing my (lately) typical con based labyrinth walk (where I wander semi randomly and see what kind of interesting people and situations I run across without letting myself growing roots in any one spot [usually *evilgrin*]) and during a very intensive philosophical and spiritual discussion this young lady suggested that I try approaching a day where I assume that everyone else is enlightened and I the only one who isn't. It is a very powerful thought and I can feel the shape of the key that it would form, but the idea of applying just such a dynamic to my typical day at the workplace fills me nameable dread. (and no that last wasn't a mistype)

It was with this somewhere in the back of my mind that I found myself when an individual who has a definite influence on my life wandered by my cubicle earlier today and stated "You are having a slowdown issue."

My unenlightened response was a smart ass answer that I managed to repress.

Lately the only lessons that are obvious to my eyes seem to be either that the man who has at times had the patience of Buddha needs to develop even more the same or I'm developing a callous on my forehead.

Should I be meditating on Sisyphus?