The Hellhole

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Alan's report on the voice-mail phenomenon, not regarding his present job but a previous one, as a systems analyst in tech support for a company which specialized in orthodontic imaging software.

Crabby Old Lady: This is the orthodontist's office! You need to call us back immediately! *slam*

No name, no phone number, no mention of the problem - and it was easy to narrow down since they only supported 900+ clients, all of them (surprise!) orthodontists.

And her extreme, the self-important doctor: "No one has called me back yet! I left a message an hour ago!"

My irritated husband: "Yeah, you know WHY no one has called you back?!? Because we're still listening to your voice mail! Seriously - who does this??? What were you thinking, leaving us a FORTY-FIVE minute voice mail? Several techs are sitting around in awe because none of us knew our system was CAPABLE of handling a forty-five minute voice mail! And you know what else? It was a complete and total waste of everyone's time, including yours, because all those details you left half an hour ago when you started your voice mail? We're gonna have to ask you all those things again, while we're in the system with a ticket open! Who are you anyway, Doctor Tolstoy?!?"

5 Comments:

  • It hasn't gotten any better. But I never check the voicemails because somebody else usually is assigned to do it. Of course, that leads to calls being queued for us by other groups where they didn't bother to WRITE DOWN any of the freakin' details left in the message. I swear to gods above and below, there are some people working here I'd like to shoot for not doing their goddamn job EVERY DAY. This will be no great surprise to Alan, I am sure.

    cheers,
    Phil

    By Blogger Phil C., at 10:49 PM  

  • "Doctor Tolstoy" - Heh, that wacky Alan!

    My boss has done a superb job of running interference to keep people from calling us developers directly so that we can actually do our jobs. Now the only voicemail I get is from an automated system telling me the warranty on my car might expire soon. My 12 year old Saturn with almost 200,000 miles on it. It calls me at least once a week. Whatever.

    -Sandy

    By Blogger Topcat, at 8:06 AM  

  • I totally love the expired car warranty calls!

    Frightened: "Oh, no - my warranty is expiring??? On THE ROLLS?!?"

    Irritated: "On the DB9?!? I JUST bought that!"

    Puzzled: "Which one? What older one? The Stutz Bearcat? I don't think it ever had a warranty..."

    By Blogger Helly, at 8:37 AM  

  • Oh, it got better this week. The 'expired warranty' automated phone call actually got me when I was at my desk. Like an IDIOT I pressed 2 for 'don't call me again'.
    Did they call me again? BUT OF COURSE! And I received 2 other spam phone calls the following day! One for yet another expired warranty and another for my child's health care coverage (which is apparently about to expire as well).

    This is why we ditched our personal land line.

    -Sandy

    By Blogger Topcat, at 8:24 PM  

  • We have discussed ditching the land line but the burglar/fire alarm is wired through it. It would still make noise if there was a problem but it couldn't call 911. The system is so old, it doesn't have wireless capability and we don't want to replace it because we don't plan to stay here. Then again, the house has only been on the market for 20 months...

    My word captcha is "cogism". Doesn't that sound like it would be a real word, along the lines of "cogitate" and "cognition"?

    By Blogger Helly, at 10:04 AM  

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