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Jun. 24th, 2008 10:40 pmAnother late shift today, on a swap with Mellissa, so I get tomorrow off. Starting work was pure farce, as the phone in my booth had no black box (needed for linking your headset to the phone). I got a black box from Dan, who warned me that he wasn't sure the battery was any good. Sure enough, when I hit the call button to check for dialling tone, there was silence. Assuming the box battery was duff, I went back to Dan's desk, but Dan was disappearing out of the door to the coding block. Paul was able to lay his hands on a black box, but I fared no better with that one and returned it to Dan's desk.
I alerted Lesley, one of the duty supervisors, who came over and went through a routine of keying things in on the phone which is meant to reset headsets. So then she said to me 'Try it now' - and of course I no longer had a black box. The one I'd dumped on Dan's desk was still there so I gave it a try - still silence. Lesley advised me to try putting a traditional receiver and lifting it - a trick that does sometimes work - but whatever we tried we couldn't get a cheep out of that phone.
I was now close to ten minutes late starting. I went back to the front desk, where Lesley and I told Val that the phone in my booth was faulty. She ummed, as if thinking what to do next, when I asked if there was somewhere else I could sit "as this is coming off my break time". Val and Lesley rushed to tell me the time delay wouldn't be debited against my breaks, but I decided I'd better count it anyway. Lesley found me a free seat right over by the door.
I then proceeded to get two refusals in the first hour, including one woman who was very fond of slamming the phone down rapidly - she did it once before I'd even said who we were, then again when I called her back and explained who we were and what the survey was about.
After that, though, it was busy and incident-free. One lady towards the end managed to pad out the survey for her and her husband to 50 minutes, and kept bursting out laughing at questions about her husband (like whether he'd done any courses or training lately) till in the end she had me corpsing. Thank goodness I wasn't being monitored.
I alerted Lesley, one of the duty supervisors, who came over and went through a routine of keying things in on the phone which is meant to reset headsets. So then she said to me 'Try it now' - and of course I no longer had a black box. The one I'd dumped on Dan's desk was still there so I gave it a try - still silence. Lesley advised me to try putting a traditional receiver and lifting it - a trick that does sometimes work - but whatever we tried we couldn't get a cheep out of that phone.
I was now close to ten minutes late starting. I went back to the front desk, where Lesley and I told Val that the phone in my booth was faulty. She ummed, as if thinking what to do next, when I asked if there was somewhere else I could sit "as this is coming off my break time". Val and Lesley rushed to tell me the time delay wouldn't be debited against my breaks, but I decided I'd better count it anyway. Lesley found me a free seat right over by the door.
I then proceeded to get two refusals in the first hour, including one woman who was very fond of slamming the phone down rapidly - she did it once before I'd even said who we were, then again when I called her back and explained who we were and what the survey was about.
After that, though, it was busy and incident-free. One lady towards the end managed to pad out the survey for her and her husband to 50 minutes, and kept bursting out laughing at questions about her husband (like whether he'd done any courses or training lately) till in the end she had me corpsing. Thank goodness I wasn't being monitored.
