Working My Fingers To The Bone

Work has been great. A lot better than working at the factory I had been working in. I get to sit in the air conditioning, typing on the computer all day. No more steel toed shoes, earplugs, or safety glasses. I actually have long fingernails now. I don't remember ever having such nice looking fingernails. I actuall went out and bought a bottle of fingernail polish. A real classy red. I'm not exactly very experienced painting my nails, and they ended up looking kind of sloppy, but they were sure red.

I knew working at the phone company would provide lots of blogging material, and I was right. There is one thing that is a pet peeve of mine already. I hate it when people call from the bathroom. The last thing I want to hear while I'm working is a toilet flushing. Is getting that phone number really so important you can't wait until you leave the restroom?

Also, it would really be nice if people would roll up their car window before calling 411. It may not seem that loud to you, but it makes it really hard for the operator to hear what you're saying. If you don't mind repeating yourself three or four times, and then getting the wrong number anyway, go ahead and leave the window down. Just don't say I didn't warn you.

Today I had a really mean customer. She wanted a number for an Alzheimer group in California. She said some general area, and then said Los Angeles. Two listings came up, one in Los Angeles but the first one was in some other nearby city. I read off the first one, and the lady immediately started whining about wanting one in Los Angeles. I explained to her there were two and the second one was in Los Angeles. Then she started bitching at me for reading off the first one instead of skipping straight to the one in Los Angeles. I don't know anything about California. She said some general area, and then Los Angeles, so for all I knew the first one might be the one she wanted. She kept whining and bitching about it, asking me if I was stupid. I wasn't going to listen to her attitude, so I just hit a button while she was in mid bitch and sent her a number for the Los Angeles listing. It wasn't until I was already hitting the send button that I realized I was sending her the Los Angeles Alzheimers group that was for Spanish speaking people. Then I felt better. Deal with that you crabby old lady.

Some people I want to do that kind of thing to on purpose. People can be real mean to the operators. I need a city to look for a listing in, and I don't know how to spell every city in every state in the United States. If you don't know how to spell the city don't act like I'm a retard because I don't know it either. I also don't know how to spell these restaurants with Mexican names. Is it Los or Las, La or Le, Il or El? And for God's sake, I'm not Mexican. I don't speak Spanish. People call in looking for a Mexican restaurant with a long, complicated name, and blurt it out real fast so I can't even tell how many syllables are in the name, much less how many words there are in the name. Then if I ask them to repeat it they rattle it off the same way. Then, when I have to ask them how to spell it, they blurt out all the letters so I still can't tell what the words are. Then I have to break it down and ask them 'Could you repeat how to spell the first word? And how is the second word spelled?' I wish these people would just pick up a phone book.

Another pet peeve of mine is people who call up and want a listing that I can't find, and then they say they've called 50 times and always gotten the number before. I want to ask them why they didn't write down the number oh, say, the other 50 times they got the number. If it's a place you've had to call 50 times already maybe you should have it on your speed dial or something. Leave us poor operators alone.