(no subject)

Fucking hell, I hate my job. Apparently, Lord o' Leeds Gas has decreed that all advocates (that's House of Gas speak for Helper Monkeys) will do a minimum of three hours 'phone time every day. That's three hours taking meter readings, producing bills and taking card payments. That's three hours of the House's supposedly best and brightest doing a job someone who's been there a month could do, instead of supporting said newcomers and all the other Phone Monkieys with complicated or confusing enquiries that we, the Helper Monkeys, have been specifically fucking trained for.

Of course, we're still supposed to do all our Helper Monkey cases at the same time, not to mention also being Quality Assessing Monkeys, Debt Reduction Champion Monkeys and Call Our Dillholiest Unsatisfied Customers Back Monkeys. And while I may have changed the titles, I'm not joking about having to do another three jobs besides being Helper Monkeys who only get five hours a day to actually help.

Then to add insult to injury, the Resources Monkeys have decided that,e ven when it gets quiet and all the Phone Monkeys get taken of the 'phones, Helper Monkeys will not. That's right, the Phone Monkeys, who have no other work to do, get to come off and look at AutoTrader for hours at a time, but the Helper Monkeys, the ones with the massive backlog of enquiries, can sit there and explain direct debits to our customers. Because that is an effective use of resources.

And what, when challenged on this, is the Resources Monkeys response? "It's a call centre. It's about bums on seats. Everyone has to take calls." Now there's a bit of logic that could only come from a team that spend all day with pivot charts and spreadsheets and no time out in the call centre, taking calls and actually dealing with the reality of life in customer service.

And when we take it further, what do we get? Apparently, we need to manage our time more effectively. Yes, this comes straight from the Lord o' Leeds Gas, our esteemed site manager, who "wants to know what the Helper Monkeys do all day." But rather than sit with a Helper Monkey for a day, or come to one of the Helper Monkey review meetings, or, and I may be talking crazy talk here, actually ask us, he delivers this little insult by proxy via the Helper Monkey Manager. Because the only thing more fun than being given a job to do and then not being given the time to do it, is being criticised for how you use that non-existant time and then insulted and having it implied that you're lazy by someone who's too much of a coward to say it to your face.

But our woes do not end there. Swine flu, holidays and the common goof-off have taken it's toll on our noble Helper Monkey ranks. As everyone struggles under the ever-increasing workload, Lead Helper Monkey decrees that we should put all new cases into a communal pot and allocate them out as he sees fit. Of course, nobody actually knows how to set that up, and despite what Lord o' Leeds Gas may think from his lofty vantage point with his head up his ass, we really don't have time to dick around figuring it out, so it's not going to happen.

Instead, Lead Helper Monkey asks that, at the end of each day, we send an email letting him know how many new cases we've had in that we haven't had time to raise processes for. To his credit, and a rare event in the House of Gas, this is quite a good idea - a Helper Monkey may have only five open processes on a Monday morning, but that doesn't mean twenty queries haven't come in over the weekend and are sitting in his inbox by the end of his shift.

Of course, the first day this gets implemented, everybody forgets to send this information to him. Lead Helper Monkey sends a perfectly polite email out the next day asking for this information. Helper Monkey Manager, or as she will henceforth be known in my mind, Cuntrag, sends out an incredibly abusive and excessively punctuated email wanting to know why we haven't done this??????!!!! how do you expect to work together if you can't even do this????!!!!???!! and why isn't the work being shared out?????!!!!!

Let me answer your question, Cuntrag. I didn't send out the email at the end of the day because a) I was taking calls for the last two hours, b) I am so swamped that I was endevouring, in the three second gaps between calls, to try and work some of my overdue cases, and c) OH MY GOD FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING IGNORANT BITCH! Learn some manners, learn proper respect for the exclaimation mark, and go throw yourself off a bridge.

As an extra-special treat, tonight I got the distinct pleasure of being screamed at for over an hour by an irate social worker over something I had absolutely no power to fix, and for an added bonus, the department whose fuck-up it was and who could have actually fixed it refused to take any responsibility for it. The outside contractor we needed, who would have taken ther instruction from a Reconnections Monkey, would give no aid to me, and the social worker is making the totally fair point that, having disconnected the electricity meter of a mentally ill double-amputee and then refusing to book a replacement job until a week later, the House of Gas would get reported to our Ombudsman, various charities and the media. At that point, I would have said we pretty much had it coming, but it still wouldn't get this guy reconnected.

So I email King Gas. And I copy in Lord o' Leeds Gas and of course my own Manager Monkey. The customer is going to email him anyway, and I figure an email from lowly me is better than opening his newspaper tomorrow to see the legend HOUSE OF GAS HATES DISABLED PEOPLE splashed across the front page.

Ten minutes later, my Manager Monkey is getting a lecture on chain of command from the Lord o' Leeds Gas. Apparently, after Manager Monkey was unable to resolve it, I should have directed the customer to write in to our complaints department. No doubt they would have responded in their usual 28 day time frame, by which time effigies of the Court of Gas are being burned in the streets and I get to spend even more of my day on the 'phones dealing with the backlash of public opinion. Because yes, some people will wait in a queue for forty minutes in order to tell you that they think the company you work for is despicable. Obviously these are the people that have never suffered the indignities of working for a company that occaisonally makes choices you don't agree with, probably becauser they are dole-bludging scum.

Fortunately, Manager Monkey is Scouse, and while I don't want to resort to cultural stereotyping, I don't think I'm out of line in saying that Scousers traditionally have a fair amount of common sense, and extremely limited bullshit tolerence. She points out that, yes, it has been escalated to her, and yes, we have spoken to the third party contractor (let's call them Ponstream) and yes, we essentially got a raspberry blown in our faces.

Of course, Lord o' Leeds Gas isn;t going to do anything so common as sort it out himself; no, instead he grudgingly tells Manager Monkey that she can use King Gas's name to force a response out of Ponstream. Then he tells her to "discuss appropriate escalation routes" with me, so that I never bother him with such petty concerns as customer service ever again.

No, Lord o' Leeds Gas. I think what you meant to say was, "Thank you, Froodle, for sparing the House of Gas a very public and unlubricated assfucking on GMTV. I am so glad you decided to show some fucking initiative. Maybe we had better put in a clearly defined escalation route for dealing with meter operators as well as within our own departments, since at the moment it seems these meter operators have free reign to ignore our customers and deliver bad service with impunity, leaving our unfortunate Phone Monkeys to face the wrath, while at the same time having absolutely no power to ask a meter operator to do anything."

I hate being a Helper Monkey. I worked so hard to get here, and in the end, all I have done is manage to fuck myself in the ass. And that is impressive for three reasons: one, I'm female so I don't have the equiptment to assfuck myself in the normal course of events, two, even a giy would have to be unusually limber and/or exceptionally well-hung to carry out an effective self-assfucking, and three, the House of Gas is also currently endevouring to fuck me in all three holes, so things are pretty crowded up there as it is.

(no subject)

Fucking hell, I hate my job. Apparently, Lord o' Leeds Gas has decreed that all advocates (that's House of Gas speak for Helper Monkeys) will do a minimum of three hours 'phone time every day. That's three hours taking meter readings, producing bills and taking card payments. That's three hours of the House's supposedly best and brightest doing a job someone who's been there a month could do, instead of supporting said newcomers and all the other Phone Monkieys with complicated or confusing enquiries that we, the Helper Monkeys, have been specifically fucking trained for.

Of course, we're still supposed to do all our Helper Monkey cases at the same time, not to mention also being Quality Assessing Monkeys, Debt Reduction Champion Monkeys and Call Our Dillholiest Unsatisfied Customers Back Monkeys. And while I may have changed the titles, I'm not joking about having to do another three jobs besides being Helper Monkeys who only get five hours a day to actually help.

Then to add insult to injury, the Resources Monkeys have decided that,e ven when it gets quiet and all the Phone Monkeys get taken of the 'phones, Helper Monkeys will not. That's right, the Phone Monkeys, who have no other work to do, get to come off and look at AutoTrader for hours at a time, but the Helper Monkeys, the ones with the massive backlog of enquiries, can sit there and explain direct debits to our customers. Because that is an effective use of resources.

And what, when challenged on this, is the Resources Monkeys response? "It's a call centre. It's about bums on seats. Everyone has to take calls." Now there's a bit of logic that could only come from a team that spend all day with pivot charts and spreadsheets and no time out in the call centre, taking calls and actually dealing with the reality of life in customer service.

And when we take it further, what do we get? Apparently, we need to manage our time more effectively. Yes, this comes straight from the Lord o' Leeds Gas, our esteemed site manager, who "wants to know what the Helper Monkeys do all day." But rather than sit with a Helper Monkey for a day, or come to one of the Helper Monkey review meetings, or, and I may be talking crazy talk here, actually ask us, he delivers this little insult by proxy via the Helper Monkey Manager. Because the only thing more fun than being given a job to do and then not being given the time to do it, is being criticised for how you use that non-existant time and then insulted and having it implied that you're lazy by someone who's too much of a coward to say it to your face.

But our woes do not end there. Swine flu, holidays and the common goof-off have taken it's toll on our noble Helper Monkey ranks. As everyone struggles under the ever-increasing workload, Lead Helper Monkey decrees that we should put all new cases into a communal pot and allocate them out as he sees fit. Of course, nobody actually knows how to set that up, and despite what Lord o' Leeds Gas may think from his lofty vantage point with his head up his ass, we really don't have time to dick around figuring it out, so it's not going to happen.

Instead, Lead Helper Monkey asks that, at the end of each day, we send an email letting him know how many new cases we've had in that we haven't had time to raise processes for. To his credit, and a rare event in the House of Gas, this is quite a good idea - a Helper Monkey may have only five open processes on a Monday morning, but that doesn't mean twenty queries haven't come in over the weekend and are sitting in his inbox by the end of his shift.

Of course, the first day this gets implemented, everybody forgets to send this information to him. Lead Helper Monkey sends a perfectly polite email out the next day asking for this information. Helper Monkey Manager, or as she will henceforth be known in my mind, Cuntrag, sends out an incredibly abusive and excessively punctuated email wanting to know why we haven't done this??????!!!! how do you expect to work together if you can't even do this????!!!!???!! and why isn't the work being shared out?????!!!!!

Let me answer your question, Cuntrag. I didn't send out the email at the end of the day because a) I was taking calls for the last two hours, b) I am so swamped that I was endevouring, in the three second gaps between calls, to try and work some of my overdue cases, and c) OH MY GOD FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING IGNORANT BITCH! Learn some manners, learn proper respect for the exclaimation mark, and go throw yourself off a bridge.

As an extra-special treat, tonight I got the distinct pleasure of being screamed at for over an hour by an irate social worker over something I had absolutely no power to fix, and for an added bonus, the department whose fuck-up it was and who could have actually fixed it refused to take any responsibility for it. The outside contractor we needed, who would have taken ther instruction from a Reconnections Monkey, would give no aid to me, and the social worker is making the totally fair point that, having disconnected the electricity meter of a mentally ill double-amputee and then refusing to book a replacement job until a week later, the House of Gas would get reported to our Ombudsman, various charities and the media. At that point, I would have said we pretty much had it coming, but it still wouldn't get this guy reconnected.

So I email King Gas. And I copy in Lord o' Leeds Gas and of course my own Manager Monkey. The customer is going to email him anyway, and I figure an email from lowly me is better than opening his newspaper tomorrow to see the legend HOUSE OF GAS HATES DISABLED PEOPLE splashed across the front page.

Ten minutes later, my Manager Monkey is getting a lecture on chain of command from the Lord o' Leeds Gas. Apparently, after Manager Monkey was unable to resolve it, I should have directed the customer to write in to our complaints department. No doubt they would have responded in their usual 28 day time frame, by which time effigies of the Court of Gas are being burned in the streets and I get to spend even more of my day on the 'phones dealing with the backlash of public opinion. Because yes, some people will wait in a queue for forty minutes in order to tell you that they think the company you work for is despicable. Obviously these are the people that have never suffered the indignities of working for a company that occaisonally makes choices you don't agree with, probably becauser they are dole-bludging scum.

Fortunately, Manager Monkey is Scouse, and while I don't want to resort to cultural stereotyping, I don't think I'm out of line in saying that Scousers traditionally have a fair amount of common sense, and extremely limited bullshit tolerence. She points out that, yes, it has been escalated to her, and yes, we have spoken to the third party contractor (let's call them Ponstream) and yes, we essentially got a raspberry blown in our faces.

Of course, Lord o' Leeds Gas isn;t going to do anything so common as sort it out himself; no, instead he grudgingly tells Manager Monkey that she can use King Gas's name to force a response out of Ponstream. Then he tells her to "discuss appropriate escalation routes" with me, so that I never bother him with such petty concerns as customer service ever again.

No, Lord o' Leeds Gas. I think what you meant to say was, "Thank you, Froodle, for sparing the House of Gas a very public and unlubricated assfucking on GMTV. I am so glad you decided to show some fucking initiative. Maybe we had better put in a clearly defined escalation route for dealing with meter operators as well as within our own departments, since at the moment it seems these meter operators have free reign to ignore our customers and deliver bad service with impunity, leaving our unfortunate Phone Monkeys to face the wrath, while at the same time having absolutely no power to ask a meter operator to do anything."

I hate being a Helper Monkey. I worked so hard to get here, and in the end, all I have done is manage to fuck myself in the ass. And that is impressive for three reasons: one, I'm female so I don't have the equiptment to assfuck myself in the normal course of events, two, even a giy would have to be unusually limber and/or exceptionally well-hung to carry out an effective self-assfucking, and three, the House of Gas is also currently endevouring to fuck me in all three holes, so things are pretty crowded up there as it is.