Feb. 23, 2004
Class officially started three hours ago, but our instructor has not yet arrived. This is not uncommon. By now many of my classmates have begun to bring cards, magazines and DVDs to pass the time. "The Matrix" is playing on someone's laptop and has attracted a small crowd in the back of the room. The fact that we're being paid largely to sit around and entertain ourselves has been the source of lots of jokes and smiles, but in the back of our minds we can't help but be concerned.
Ken is standing in the aisle, tethered to his cube by the spiraled umbilical of his headset, holding an unlit cigarette, and yelling. Ken is always yelling, and that's why we love him. Lots of us jot down Ken's more memorable tirades and compare notes on our breaks. Now, standing near my cube, screaming in the urgent and gravelly tones of a mid-40s chain smoker trapped in a non-smoking building, Ken tells a customer, "Quit whining and go get a damn screwdriver. I don't have time for this bullshit."
None of us is sure how he gets away with it, especially considering that Ken saves his real anger for dealing with management. His conversations with the higher-ups all end with Ken screaming, "This is bullshit! Total bullshit!" and hanging up.
We all understand why Ken is angry. We've been tech-support representatives for six weeks and already a third of our training class has left. A new crop of techs hit the floor last week, and two of them are already gone. It might be tempting to believe that the customers are driving the techs away, that they just can't take the stress of dealing with endless complaints and callers driven to near madness by interminable holds. But the callers just want answers. Ken, and those of us who are left, are angry because for the most part we don't have them.
When we pick up the phone we're lying. We don't really work for the company we say we work for. Because of the expense of housing and running a technical support operation, many computer manufacturers choose to outsource the work. We work for one such outsourcer, though you'd never know it just to talk to us. To the customer on the other end of the line the distinction, while important, is invisible.
Outsourcers are paid by the computer manufacturer based on the number of calls they handle. The more calls we take, the more the outsourcer is paid. So naturally everything that happens in this vast carpeted warehouse of cubicles is done with an eye toward speed. Our managers stress something called "average call time," which is simply the average amount of time a tech spends on each call. They want us to be under 12 minutes. Our phones monitor our ability to reach this magic number as well as the total number of calls we take, the number of times we ask for help, how much time we take between calls, even the amount of time we spend in the restroom. In short, your phone is always watching you.
Twelve minutes can sometimes be difficult even if you know what you're doing. It is impossible if you don't have a clue. The stress of always being on the clock without really knowing how to do your job has already claimed a third of my classmates, and from the looks of the bulging veins in Ken's head and neck, it's threatening to claim still more. But no matter, when those spots open up they'll be quickly filled by members of the next training class. They, like us, will have answered an ad for an entry-level computer support position. If, like myself, they have little or no computer experience, they'll be told not to worry. As long as they can pass the typing test and drug screening they'll be assured they'll get everything else they need in training.
Our two-week "intensive training" course was helmed by a 19-year-old named Chad. Chad had great difficulty making it to class within three hours of the stated meeting time. Even when he rolled in by 11, holding a cup of coffee and wearing sunglasses, he looked as if merely being upright was unfairly challenging his abilities. Despite being comically late he usually started class by collapsing into a chair and telling us to take some "e-mail time."
When Chad saw fit to interrupt the endless series of card games and movies it was with detailed lessons on how to use our phones and log our calls. We learned that these things were key. If we remembered nothing else, as long as we could answer the phones and provide records that we'd done so, the company would be paid every time we thanked someone for calling technical support. When present and able to speak, Chad drilled us endlessly on these two skills. The most incompetent among us could have written a manual on how to answer calls and log them properly. As for how to actually troubleshoot and fix computers, we were largely on our own. Beyond a cursory overview of the computers we were in charge of healing, the closest thing to a troubleshooting tool we were taught was The Mantra. When class ended, which varied wildly depending on Chad's interest and mental status, we were all encouraged to say The Mantra out loud. We repeated it over and over, the words seating themselves deep in the folds of our brains until the breakup of class began to feel more and more like the end of a cult meeting.
The Mantra is simply, "We don't support that." On the face of it, it's completely logical. We're here to help with problems related to your computer hardware, but we don't pretend to know anything about your digital camera, or how to get the most out of Adobe Photoshop. Without The Mantra we'd waste precious time trying to answer questions beyond the scope of our expertise. Never mind that the scope of our expertise was largely limited to reciting The Mantra and logging calls. The important thing was that we understood our mission was to answer questions that fell within the limited margins outlined in the computer's warranty. Beyond that we didn't have to do anything.
i never made you read it.
). I know you can only have 10 people on it which is why you shouldent do it like that at all! Also i dont like the whole rateing thing anyway. We are all members of RZ and i treat everyone with equal respect (that only really applys to most normal members).
and should've never made it. Was trying to make a wrestlemania type event so there will be a winner or something. Maybe mental should've never taken out the fighting zone, lol.
