Miscellaneous Stuff

It's not that I haven't been working .. except when I was in South Beach for a little while at the beginning of this month. It's just that I have been Tweeting (though I swore I NEVER would) blogging on my other blog and playing Call of Duty 4 and partying pretty much every weekend.

Anyway, here's a couple of random things that really cracked me up this past week.

I was talking to a lady who works for a contractor. She is probably in her early 70's. After the 3rd ticket and asking the same questions on each one, she says "poopfart" when I asked her for an intersecting street and she realized she didn't have one. I had to stifle a laugh.


Thursday, I went into the breakroom to get some coffee. The BIG boss was in there too. I went to the coffee maker and the main coffee pot was gone. I looked and the burner was turned off and the coffee pot was rinsed out and turned upside down to dry.

I said "I can't believe this, instead of making a new pot of coffee, someone rinsed out the coffee pot"

The Big Boss looks up at me, grins and said, "I did that".

OMG talk about embarrassing. I know I turned 8 shades of red.


I recovered quickly, laughed and said, "And it will be the best tasting pot of coffee because it was clean! I am so sorry" Luckily, he has a great sense of humor and likes me. I'm just glad I didn''t say "some idiot or some dumbass"

He said, "That's OK, don't worry about it."

I replied, "Well I am not goning to be hungry for lunch now, my foot pretty much filled me up!"


The rest of the day, when he walked by my desk, he asked me if he could get me some coffee.


New Soggy-Doggy

Did I do WHAT?

As some of you know my husband has been temporarily without work. He got a job YAY!.

On Friday, about noon, he texts me at work to tell me he has to be in Miami that night, by 10 or 11 THAT night. It is about a 5 hour drive.

Anyway, I asked my boss for the rest of the day off so I can help get him packed and and stuff. She understood and let me go home.


On Monday morning she comes in and says "Did you get your man off?" I about died. As soon as the words left her mouth, she had a horrified "OMG that is grounds for a sexual harassment suit" look on her face. I just smiled a dirty little smile and said "Yes I did"

Yes.. people really ARE this dumb.

There is a woman that I work with who is really dumber than a box of doorknobs. We have had lunch catered in for the last 2 days. Today is sandwiches. This same woman walked into the breakroom yesterday at lunch time. We had spaghetti and meatballs , alfredo sauce and noodles and veggies. No lie.. she said.. "Oh is this the sandwiches we are having for lunch?" I looked at her, looked at the food on the table and said, "No Fiona, that's spaghetti and meatballs." She said "Ohhhhh" and walked out of the room. Later, she comes back in and looks at the alfredo sauce and asked the caterer "What kind of soup is this" The caterer gives her a weird look and said.. "uhhhhhhhh that's alfredo sauce" "Oh.. whats it for?" I had to leave the room at that point ... I would have been fired for laughing and calling her a dumbass

*name changed to protect the door knobs

Happy 3 day weekend!

I am off today YAY. Heres a few tidbits from yesterday.


A company calls me and I notice his area code listed is different than the city his office is. So I asked him for the area code and phone number for the main office in that city. He gives me one.

I moved on to ask him some other contact information.

"Do you have a cell phone number?"

"It's the number I just gave you"

"I thought that was the main office number for your company"

"Well, it's a temporary number that was given to me"

"Is it the office number or your cell phone number"

"It's the office number."

"Do you have a cell phone number"

"No"


Sigh.





I move on to other questions.

What type of work is your company doing?"

"The company we are doing the work for is doing shoulder work."

"And is your company is doing shoulder work as well?

"No we are installing the construction signs for them"

I am still speaking English right? I mean you all understand me.

Moving along...

"How long do you expect the digging to take?" (Ex. a month a year a day etc..)


"As soon as possible"

Really? You are this dumb?

I repeat..
"How long is the digging going to take?"

"What do you mean?"

"You are digging is that correct?"

"Yes"

"OK how long is the digging going to take? An hour, a day, a week, a year?"

"Oh.. Just a day."

Next question.

Is there a physical address to where you will be digging?

"Yes."

"And the address is..."

"Smith Rd"


And what is the address please?"

"It's on Smith Rd."

"I understand the address is on Smith Rd... I need the address for the property that you'll be digging."


"There is no address...."

grrrrrrrrrrrrr


The rest of the call was OK.. a few more things he was dumb about.. but you get the picture.


Later, his sister called.

All of the other questions she answered with no problem.

She gave me the address

"I asked for the intersecting street (you know the one at the corner closest to the property"


After insisting there wasn't one, because the road stretches the entire length of the county and there aren't any streets that come off of it anywhere, I made her look up the address on line. She gives me a name of a street and I ask her,

"Is that within 1/4 mile from the address?"

"I don't know; nobodys ever asked me if the cross street was within 1/4 mile before and I have been calling there for 5 years."

Really??

I told her, while laughing "I've aked it everyday of my life for the last 9 1/2 years, we ALWAYS ask if the cross street is within 1/4 mile when you give us an address"

She looked it up again and said, "Well its a corner property"


HUMPH!.. I thought there were no other streets off of this road anywhere in the county


Later a guy called and screamed at me because someone was cutting down trees in his yard. When I explained he had the wrong number, he said,

Well you people hired them to trim the trees"

"No sir" I explained who we are AGAIN.

He said well FPL hires the tree trimmers. I gave him the number for FPL. Then he tells me., "Well I was told to call the county"


So why in the hell are you calling me?

He told me "If I was back home I'd kill the sons of bitches for cutting my trees on my property."

I told him to have a nice day and I hung up.





I am so glad I am off today. HAPPY AND SAFE TOMORROW EVERYBODY!

Thank you for calling the psychiatric hotline.. oh wait...

Friday, right before lunch a call came into me. I said my intro and then the voice on the other end just started speaking in tongues. I was getting ready to ask him if he would like a Spanish rep, (although I was not quite sure if that was his language) when he started speaking perfect English:

"There are people out here digging on my lawn all the way up to my house. They are not supposed to be here. They are not the same sewer trucks that were her yesterday. These are the same trucks that were reported stolen to the county. This is a conspiracy, I have written Washington DC about this and I am suing the county"


I got the attention of my teamleader who sits right in front of me. She logged in to my phone to listen. I broke in to his ramblings, trying to contain my laughter. "I'm sorry sir, you have the wrong number." I explained to him who were are and what we do. I then asked him if he took his meds this morning how I could help him.
He yelled, "I already told you how you can help me, you need to call in somebody rich to come get me. This is a conspiracy". I replied, "Sir if you feel like your life is in danger, you need to hang up with me and call 911"

"I told you this was a conspiracy, the cops are in on it too, that's why I can't call them. I explained again that there was nothing I could do to help him. He mumbled something in tongues and hung up the phone.

While I was at lunch, he called back. He got a male representative who reminds me of "The Stapler Guy" from Office Space So "Milton" answers the phone, and the same guy just starts spewing weights of the trucks and numbers. Milton explained again who we are and what we do. The guy said, "Yes I know who you are I OWN this company." Then he hung up. Next, he calls back and gets the girl that sits right next to Milton. She, too explains that he has the wrong number. When he starts cussing her out, she said "Sir, you do not have to be so inappropriate" My team leader IM'd her and told her to transfer the call to her.
When she did, he starts cussing, my TL out as well. She copied down down his number before he hung up and had our tech guy block his number.

It is quite obvious the guy was mentally ill. I don't think THAT in of itself is funny. I am not making light of mental illness. But the conversation was too hilarious not to share.

This IS a backhoe company, right?

I was on the phone yesterday with a male customer. In the background of his office, there are people talking. I continue with the ho-hum of my call when I hear from a female "jeans.....Ménage à trois" I gasp, then laugh. He says, "You heard her?" I said "Oh yes loud and clear! But I thought you ran a backhoe company." He laughs and tells her that I heard her. She gets all embarrassed and apologized. I told him to tell her, there was no need to apologize, I thought it was pretty funny. It turns out they were talking about a Calvin Klein commercial. I said "Well that explains the only 2 words I heard then."

Being a CSR is like being given a box of chocolates, the crazies come out from the woodwork.

Or something like that

Stupid is as stupid does

In addition to people calling us before they dig, they have the option to enter the same info on line. Approx 65% of all dig requests comes through our Internet Ticket Entry Program. This is a system an excavator can use instead of calling us to enter their requests to have utility lines marked before they dig. We train our users and give them support on how to use the system. If they have any problems or questions, they can call us, we will walk them through the ticket. There is also a manual available on-line they can use if we are not available

As you all know computer programs work on the garbage in/garbage out principle. It only does what you tell it to do. The excavator is required to put an address, or if no address a detailed description of the area he needs marked. If not entered properly, the correct utilities may never receive notification that they need to mark the area, therefore, they don't know they have to mark, don't mark and BOOM a gas line or phone, power whatever is damaged.

We review all of the tickets that are done for quality. One day last year, there was a ticket that everyone was talking about. The guy gives no address, just a road name. It is a MAJOR road that runs for MILES throughout that county. He tells the locators to mark the entire property. Great huh?? So now the locators have to figure out which of the thousands of properties on this major road needs to be marked.. Ok fine.. we call the excavator, get the correct info, cancel the wrong ticket, issue a new one.


BUT that is not all that is on the ticket. In remarks (the area reserved for special driving instructions or gate codes, bad dog.. etc) He writes the following. I will type it EXACTLY as he had it so you can see what an idiot this guy really is (sorry Firefox spellcheck) Anything in italics, are my thoughts or explanations:


"What idiot chose this peice of crap locate solfware. Oh I know it's not the program it is the moron trying to use it. (at least he is smart enough to figure THAT out) Well I have treid for 30 min to get a located at a adress(that he didn't put on the request) that I had no problem getting a permit for but this P.O.S (piece of shit) can not find it. Again thats to the moron who chose this wouderful program. I would love to meet the idiot that decided 2 use useless POS IRTH internet" (the name of the program) It was probably your brother


So, after everyone in the office gets a big laugh over it, the boss brings it to my supervisors attention because our team trains the ITE users and gives help and support when needed. She told my super that someone with a sense of humor should call him and explain how to use the system properly. She knows my humor, so of course she chose me. I was hoping against hope that he would also have a sense of humor about it. Alas, he did not. I had to listen to him bitch about the system, how stupid it was blah blah blah. When I explained to him what he should have done, he said, "How in the hell was I supposed to know that, I should just be able to put the info in, and it should find it." I asked him where he put the information. When he told me where he entered it, I discovered that he did not enter it correctly at all. I told him THAT is why you were having the trouble, he said, "could you just cancel the ticket and do a new one?"

I did, and three major utilities were not notified when he did the ticket. Which could have led to his electrocution, gas leak/fire/explosion and/or cutting off communication for thousands of people had we not caught the ticket before he started to dig. But, people like this are what give me job security.



And a HUGE laugh.