Married Leos

I have NO PATIENCE today for morons who cannot follow directions.

A little background to start you off.  I work at a fairly large software company in the technical support department. On any given day we take anywhere from 1300 - 2500 calls per day from people in the auto industry. 

Today we had our beginning of the year kickoff meeting which for us in the trenches is basically an hour off the phones, a welcome break.  The only thing really important to us is how big our bonuses are going to be.  We all listened to the executive talk about revenue, growth, profits, losses, etc hoping that someone would have lots of questions to try and stretch the meeting out as long as possible.

At the end of the meeting they said that they were at an outside sales conference with our customers talking about what we could do to improve business and so forth ( usual exec stuff ) when one person asked if they ever talk to the technical support staff to get their feedback on what the customers are saying and would like. DING ! DING ! DING !  What ask us pee-ons in the trenches what we think?  You know the people who are the FACE of the company, the ones that support the procuct you seem to throw together at times.  The ones that customers say are some of the best of any of our competitors.  The ones that REALLY control how your company fares.  If we do a bad job, you lose custmers. If we continue to do the top notch job we do, you get a good reputation and get customer referals and increased revenue.

Maybe they should start listening to us, we are not all mindless idiots, some of us do have ideas that are worth listening to.  Its pretty sad that someone on the OUTSIDE had to tell them that they should listen to their support staff.

I was leaving for lunch and our Admin Assistant was on her knees by the door and I though of saying ” Hey while you are down there… “. But I thought better of it since I need this job.

I have decided that it might be time to look for a new job closer to home.  Getting up at 3:30am to get home by 4:30pm is just a bit too much.  And with the shitty weather we have been having its been more like getting home at 5:30pm.  So it might be time to get the resume on Monster, Dice, etc…

If anyone is looking for someone who can do a little bit of everything on the computer, I am available if the price is right.

Later this evening we are supposed to get hit with a big winter storm, so, once again tomorrow I, as will others at my job, will have to decide what is more important their job or their safety.  This answer should be an easy one, your safety of course, but not at my job.  There are probably more companies like the one I work at that have the same rules.  We get points for unscheduled time off, 7 points and you are terminated. We even get percentage points if we are as little as 2 minutes late.  There are ways to get points rolled off by having perfect attendance for certain periods of time, but they come off slower than they accumulate.

We are in a call center environment and staffing is critical to meet our numbers so, I understand why these rules are in place, but I do not have to agree with them.  The majority of people do not and would not abuse their time off but for the few that would, these rules are in place.  Myself and some others including some managers think it should all be up to a managers disgression  on a case by case basis on whether points are allotted.  Things like weather, traffic accidents are not excuses unless it affects many people in the area you are at, then they will consider not issuing points.

In the 5 years I have been here we have only had I think 2 people fired for performance issues and around 20 for attendance issues.  You have to really be a screw up to get fired so its a pretty stable job, just don’t be late or call of sick.

Luckily there were 10 hours available left open tomorrow for  approved time off when I got here so hopefully my request for time off tomorrow will be approved.  And if the weather is not as bad as they thought, then I will just come in and work.