"Honey, please..."
She might as well have said, "Hi, yes, this is the Voice of Doom."
Those freaking, fracking plates! You try it! You try navigating through arguably the WORST series of windows and options to find what belongs to each series of dinnerware. And good luck to you. Every single window takes approximately 10,000 years to open, and then when you try to scroll, it won't. So you try again. And then finally it scrolls...all the way to the bottom where you didn't want to be. To make it all the better, The internet is throwing up Pinterest tabs for no reason and then freezing the internet altogether. My boss tells me he thinks it's a personal problem. The look I give him is worthy of death. He doesn't care. He says, "I'm a philosopher. I never thought I'd be a boss, Lori..." and we both laugh. Do either of things have anything to do with the other? Hell no. But that's kind of the point of this rant - er - post.
If I felt more energetic at this point, I would attempt to describe this woman's mode of talking. "already-stressed", for one thing. "HurryUpHurryUpHurryUp" for another, and for a third, "NONONONO, listen to me, listen-to-me, here's what I mean," when I already know what she means.
Altogether I spent 2 or 3 hours on the phone with this woman because she wanted not only a personal shopper - which I am - but someone to hold her hand - which I do not want to do! I lost so many sales today because I hadn't had this situation before and I didn't know how to limit this situation.
I am trying to juggle things, and get her off the phone, and keep myself from banging my head on the wall...and finally it's time for lunch. I stand up. Boss-o-my-panicked-heart is nearby and asks me, "Are you okay?" I try for professionalism and I say, "The computer is throwing up Pinterest tabs again..." and blesshimblesshimblesshim he says, "That's the computer. How are YOU doing?" By the way, and a propos of nothing whatsoever, have you ever ordered a $1,700 watch? Well, I did it three times between yesterday and today, only it was for the same guy each time, because the Fraud Department kept thowing up all over his order and going, "No! He can't spend this money at our store!" What? I thought I'd lose the guy and his order. This was his first time ordering something online, and he was getting nervous. So I allayed his fear through the email until I could get to taking care of him on the phone - that is, once I got Plate Girl off the phone. A part-time co-worker was throwing me looks now and again as we both trudged through the afternoon, and we'd laugh at the frustration of it all. We also had the last laugh of the day.
She told me her best story of the day.
"Some woman called asking about raincoats - how much they are and all. She's from Cincinnati and she needed a new raincoat because it's raining here a lot. I told her, 'About $125 to $140 or so," and the woman was incredulous: 'How much? ... But it rains here every day!' " We looked at one another, my colleague and I, like What? I said, " 'But it rains here every day' ???" She looked at me, amusement all over her face, and agreement, and that look on her face of "uh HUH". I said to her, "I mean...what?" (Go ahead, take a minute. Try to make that argument make sense...) I said, "How does that even make sense? What is wrong with people? What if we could really answer these people!" And my friend looked at me as she stood up and slung her bag over her departing shoulder, demonstrating what she would have liked to say: "Honey, please."
©2019 Lori Kirstein
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWorking in Sales at a Call Center for one of the biggest stores in the country should come with hazard pay. Archives
December 2019
Categories |