Unprofessional Boss (Long but Worth It)

[echan.livejournal.com]

I started work almost two months ago at a call center that's a part of a multi-location corporation. The company does tech support for a variety of clients, primarily companies that don't admit to anyone that they outsource their technical support. I felt really good about this job going in because I have more education and experience than most of the people there, and the environment is very laid back and relaxed. I can wear whatever I want to work, there's a lot of dicking around and badmouthing the customers, and nobody cares what else you do as long as your calls get done, so people play computer games, drink alcohol, play console games, play chess, etc.

The actual call center I work in used to be independant, but was taken over by a larger company about three years ago. The guy who founded the place, RJ, has stayed on, in pretty much the same capacity -- head manager of the call center. He's rather hands-on, but until this incident I hadn't interacted with him directly at all. I have seen his broadcast emails, which tend to have things like THIS???, bad spacing and capitalization, and a general disregard for professional style -- to summarize, he uses IM-speak, minus the bad spelling and abbreviations. Not exactly faith-inspiring, but hey, he's the boss, who am I to judge.

One of our clients, B, decided their customers' hold times were too long, so had us implement a system where after waiting ten minutes the call goes to voicemail and we call them back. The information from the voicemail messages was initially put on a page on our inhouse Wiki; this worked, but was cludgy and inconvenient -- it was essentially a hand-updated text file. After a couple weeks, RJ alerted us to a new plan -- the calls were to be logged in the call database but classified "callback"; an automated script would pull the reference numbers every 20 minutes and post them to a webpage. During the day (7am to 11pm (in theory, 7am to 8:45pm usually)) customer service listens to the voicemail messages; the rest of the time a random tech does. Since I work 9pm-7am, Saturday-Tuesday nights, the nights I work I'm usually the one that does them.

This past Saturday I came into work and checked the voicemail at 10:30pm. To my extreme irritation, there were 78 messages (about 20 times the average), from as far back as 3:30pm. Immediately ditching my usual plan of taking notes in Notepad, I pull out OpenOffice and make a huge spreadsheet. I end up with about 50 rows of callbacks (the rest were hangups or people calling multiple times). I'd heard there had been some problems with the automated script, so I just added one callback to the database, and waited to see if the number showed up on the webpage. I wait an hour, the webpage hasn't updated, so I emailed RJ, telling him I had 50 callbacks and the script wasn't working, what should I do? End of my shift comes, webpage still hasn't updated, and no reply to the email. I ask a supervisor, who says there's nothing I can do, so I do nothing. 14 hours later, I come back into work and there's still no response from RJ. I ask a (different) supervisor what to do, and he says just to email the spreadsheet to RJ.

Nearly 8 hours later, I have the following IM conversation with RJ:
RJ (04:44:39): Ths open office file you sent ... is this the list from Saturday??
Me (04:45:13): Yes, it's from when I checked the voicemails during my shift Saturday night through Sunday morning.
RJ (04:45:43): Did you give the list to anyone before you left on Sunday morning??
Me (04:46:24): No. I emailed you, and you didn't reply, and I asked James what to do, and he said just wait until I came in Sunday night.
Me (04:47:13): When I came in, I asked Matt M. if I should try adding them to [the call database] again (every time I add 1 as a test, it never shows up on the report page, even 6 hours later), and he said not to, just to email the file to you.
RJ (04:48:33): bad call... at this point we need to look up each person on your list in [the call database] to see if they have been helped..If not. send an email to level3 and we'll call them this morning..
Me (04:49:31): I'm sorry if you think I made a bad call, but please note, I was careful not to make any decision on my own; at each step I asked a Level3 for guidance.
RJ (04:49:34): BTW.. I looked on you rPC to try to find the spreadsheet ... u didn't have open office installed... so I gave up... where was the file
Me (04:49:42): I do have OpenOffice installed.
RJ (04:49:58): my mistake...
Me (04:50:00): It was on the desktop, the file; there's an openoffice shortcut in the quicklaunch.
RJ (04:50:13): ARRGGHHH
RJ (04:50:54): I shud have looked further... we could have taken care of these folks yesterday ... it was pretty slow...
Me (04:51:16): I have 2 hours left of my shift, I can spend that time looking all the people up in [the call database].
RJ (04:51:54): Cool
RJ (04:52:33): BTW.. whenever something breaks ( like the callback feeder), pls call my cell and I can fix it remotely xxx xxx xxxx
Me (04:52:54): ok, I'll be sure to do that in the future.
RJ (04:53:26): thanx


*blink* Um, what?! Unprofessional much?

I'm still not sure what opinion I have of him. He's obviously made himself and the company very successful, but everything about him screams "I need some management courses, stat!"

Comments

[echan.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, but in my mind, the laid back situation is a problem if crap like this is allowed to happen - a routine issue turned into an important issue turned into a oh fuck serious issue, before it was even looked at, let alone dealt with.

[echan.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I don't think I know what I would rather he act like. My point was just, his skillset has some gaping holes, and "taking care of what needs to be done in a timely and professional manner" is the biggest.

[katyism.livejournal.com]

Seriously gaping hole. I resent the fact that I have to ask a higher-up anytime there's a decision that needs to be made about my work tasks, but at least they're available, and a higher higher-up is available by cell phone, at all hours, and contact info for them is distributed properly.

[zig-mover.livejournal.com]

I was going to write "my boss is the same, but spells far worse".. but I just remembered I don't work there anymore.

But, been there!

[canthlian.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I share your pain. At my classes, before I left from burnout, I have actually been responsible for people with those personalities, and even less actual knowledge. So when they screwed up, it was my job to fix it.

[trayce.livejournal.com]

If I had emailed my boss instead of phoning his cell in such a situation I'dve had my ass handed to me on a platter, FWIW (and have done in the past).

Also - alcohol and console games on shifts!? What universe is this in?!!!! :0

[echan.livejournal.com]

Well, the Level3s are all my direct bosses. Above them are a number of people with real authority, the topmost being RJ, which makes RJ at least my boss's boss, if not higher.