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May. 16th, 2006 03:37 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
the-paco.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
techrecoveryWe have dispatches. When there's something wrong and the best phone monkey technology falls short, we send out a tech to see what's wrong. These techs are highly specialized (read: They don't know what a mouse is) but in many places on the east coast, they're heavily unionized. For those of you who have no experience with unions (about %90 of the American workforce now), that means that if they see a thing unplugged, and it's not in their job description to troubleshoot that item, they'll leave it unplugged. Now this would be a reasonably acceptable system if the unionized workers also did not shirk their own duties, lie, cheat, steal, or otherwise thumb their nose at the company in ways that pretty much trivialize and undermine the entire fucking IDEA behind unions or fighting for workers rights, and perhaps if they weren't such lazy corner-cutting jackasses, we wouldn't be in the pickle with everyone BEGGING for businesses to be put back in the position we spent most of the 1800s up to the 1930s fighting to depose them from.
But personal responsibility for the workers of the world is not my job, and if these lazy drunken druggie bastards want to help bring about the horrific industrial-revolution era powerful industries that trade and use their employees like highly suspect and easily replaced parts ("They wouldn't call it Human Resources if they weren't meant to be strip mined") which led to most of the shit problems we had to face during the REST of the 20th century, then by all means they are welcome to and my only hope is that I get to be the Have that puts a bullet in their fat, ignorant, useless Have-Not heads, and once I'm sure they're all dead THEN I'll join the new workers revolution and we'll see Karl Marx' bones hit an RPM usually reserved for sports car engines.
But until the darkness descends upon us and we are engulfed in Orwellian nightmares, my job is to help OUR techs, our poorly educated, entry level, corner cutting, ignorant pieces of shit techs that help epitomize everything I hate, yet occasionally still show me a few things I love, about humanity.
Today that entails educating them one at a time with Access Hours.
There are very simple rules for access hours:
We have to have access hours to dispatch. It must be placed in two places.
These access hours have to include a date that is a weekday.
These access hours have to be from 8am until 5pm.
Note that the access hours are not some time BETWEEN 8 and 5. Note also that we say it has to be a WEEKDAY. Note also that we have to have it displayed in two places in our escalation system.
So.
Why is it every day. Every single day. When we've not hired anyone new, when the rule has never changed, when the training class is supposedly hammering it in like a railroad spike, do I constantly field calls where I'm telling my techs "NO. We have to have access hours FROM 8 to 5. Not 8 to 3. Not 12 to 6:30. Not Saturday, not sunday, and no, they don't call when they're on the way." It's very simple, techs. Grow a fucking pair, get back on the phone, and tell the mean ol' customer NO. Don't whine to me. Speak not of your fucking calltime. Dare not ask me to take your call. That's not my fucking job, it's YOUR job, the one you were hired for. And yes, while I go above and beyond to wipe your ass, that does not mean I'll take the shit from you and hand deliver it to the bowl because you can't be bothered to learn how to use the tools of the trade.
It's because they're spineless. Spineless, lazy, ignorant, worthless little shitstains who can't stand up to some customer saying "it's not fair."
Well you know what, it's NOT fair. It's there because the UNIONS demand it, and then don't fulfill it. No, it's not fair at all, and if our customers had an ounce of sense, they would LAUGH at that requirement and cancel en masse! But they don't, because the customer is stupid, too. And they've forgotten the wonderful tenat of capitalism that for everything one person is willing to do for $10, there's some guy down the street who might do it better for $8. So they don't shop around, and they don't say "I'm not taking this crap", and they don't put us out of business. So they get this, and if it were too much to put up with, they'd leave, but they don't, so we'll keep doing it.
But don't think that because YOU, dear idiot tech, have a spine fashioned from rolled up newspapers that I and those above you are as well. You're between us and the customer as a BUFFER, not a whine filter. The customer tells you what they want, we tell you how it is, and you help those two meet. Now shut up, get out there, and buff.
Damned whiny lazy idiots. Up AND down the ladder.
But personal responsibility for the workers of the world is not my job, and if these lazy drunken druggie bastards want to help bring about the horrific industrial-revolution era powerful industries that trade and use their employees like highly suspect and easily replaced parts ("They wouldn't call it Human Resources if they weren't meant to be strip mined") which led to most of the shit problems we had to face during the REST of the 20th century, then by all means they are welcome to and my only hope is that I get to be the Have that puts a bullet in their fat, ignorant, useless Have-Not heads, and once I'm sure they're all dead THEN I'll join the new workers revolution and we'll see Karl Marx' bones hit an RPM usually reserved for sports car engines.
But until the darkness descends upon us and we are engulfed in Orwellian nightmares, my job is to help OUR techs, our poorly educated, entry level, corner cutting, ignorant pieces of shit techs that help epitomize everything I hate, yet occasionally still show me a few things I love, about humanity.
Today that entails educating them one at a time with Access Hours.
There are very simple rules for access hours:
We have to have access hours to dispatch. It must be placed in two places.
These access hours have to include a date that is a weekday.
These access hours have to be from 8am until 5pm.
Note that the access hours are not some time BETWEEN 8 and 5. Note also that we say it has to be a WEEKDAY. Note also that we have to have it displayed in two places in our escalation system.
So.
Why is it every day. Every single day. When we've not hired anyone new, when the rule has never changed, when the training class is supposedly hammering it in like a railroad spike, do I constantly field calls where I'm telling my techs "NO. We have to have access hours FROM 8 to 5. Not 8 to 3. Not 12 to 6:30. Not Saturday, not sunday, and no, they don't call when they're on the way." It's very simple, techs. Grow a fucking pair, get back on the phone, and tell the mean ol' customer NO. Don't whine to me. Speak not of your fucking calltime. Dare not ask me to take your call. That's not my fucking job, it's YOUR job, the one you were hired for. And yes, while I go above and beyond to wipe your ass, that does not mean I'll take the shit from you and hand deliver it to the bowl because you can't be bothered to learn how to use the tools of the trade.
It's because they're spineless. Spineless, lazy, ignorant, worthless little shitstains who can't stand up to some customer saying "it's not fair."
Well you know what, it's NOT fair. It's there because the UNIONS demand it, and then don't fulfill it. No, it's not fair at all, and if our customers had an ounce of sense, they would LAUGH at that requirement and cancel en masse! But they don't, because the customer is stupid, too. And they've forgotten the wonderful tenat of capitalism that for everything one person is willing to do for $10, there's some guy down the street who might do it better for $8. So they don't shop around, and they don't say "I'm not taking this crap", and they don't put us out of business. So they get this, and if it were too much to put up with, they'd leave, but they don't, so we'll keep doing it.
But don't think that because YOU, dear idiot tech, have a spine fashioned from rolled up newspapers that I and those above you are as well. You're between us and the customer as a BUFFER, not a whine filter. The customer tells you what they want, we tell you how it is, and you help those two meet. Now shut up, get out there, and buff.
Damned whiny lazy idiots. Up AND down the ladder.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 09:38 pm (UTC)*thinks puzzledly for a bit & rereads entry*
oh! right! THAT union. Crazy Weirdos of America.
*nods sagely*
no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 10:02 pm (UTC)Then again, I come from a Ma Bell family, and all the union guys I know are hard core old skool telecom ninjas.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 11:22 pm (UTC)Since that time however, my husband has had run-ins with folks from that union who deliberately destroyed 96 straight hours of wire running (12 and a half twisted pair plenum rated b - solely for data transmission) because it wasn't run by a union crew. In a non-union environment. under a non-union contract. in a time when said union did NOT run such cables. SIMPLY because they used the same ducts as the union guys used.
Other such stories can be told over many beers of how the pride & work ethic has apparently degraded over time.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-17 03:41 pm (UTC)Most of the union telco guys I've run across were ok as well, if only because they worked for the same company I was working for at the time.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-17 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 11:24 pm (UTC)The new guys occasionally feel the customers pain when the 'Net is down.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-17 01:30 pm (UTC)The Union movement did their job, and we in the US have some of the best working conditions in the world now (Western Europe not withstanding.)
After the unions outlived their usefulness, they began destroying everything for the blue collar economy.
It's an absolute travesty what unions have become and they should be dismantled.
I deal with unions in this job (government job) and the attitude seems to hold the line between simply lazy and permanently lethargic. People expect raises on account of seniority rather then performance, which the rest of the world is terrified of gaining seniority (don't believe me, watch the next megacorp's layoffs and note the percentage of people over 55.)
Don't know where I'm going with this. But I feel your pain.