I woke up resenting my job. Simply put, I hated it. This job has made me retched. Simply put, when you put yourself in a position where your patience is tested every 10 minutes, you start to realize what kind of person you really are deep down inside.
And I was horrible. I've spent so much time muting customers, call them douchebags and every other name in the book, and punching my cubicle and monitor, and giving my monitor the finger, that you would think that I had Tourette's.
I wanted to quit, but know I can't. I can't afford not to have this job right now. So I stay, and be the retched person I am.
Or maybe not?
Today, I come in, expecting another day of the normal idiots and me complaining behind their backs. What I got instead was not expected.
And it started with the worst call I have ever got.
Verizon has just adopted a new policy where e-mail address passwords cannot be abc123 or 123abc. Otherwise, the customer's e-mail is shut down. This is to protect them from spammers using their e-mail to send out spam and viruses. Some guy didn't see it this way, as I got a call from him saying he received an e-mail about e-mail abuse.
I kindly ask him to change his password from abc123 because it was a security risk. He, in turn tells me, "It's is own d*** security risk, so why the f*** should we care?"
I finally convinced him to at least create a sub-account with a new password, and he obliges me. Once we get that set up, and he starts using that e-mail address, he then starts prodding about why the original account was a security risk. I explain the whole security alert, and he then becomes irate that he would be accused of spamming because spammers could easily hack his account and send e-mail address, just because his name was on the account. And then he starts yelling over it again, and telling me how he thinks it should be, and blaming me over this.
Whatever. Finally get him off the call, and I take a break for a breather. I was trembling on this one, because I don't like being yelled at, and quite frankly, my natural reaction is reciprocate what I am experiencing.
And all through my breather, I debated about quitting. I just couldn't figure out how much my nerves would take, and how much longer I could stand it before destroying property, yelling at a customer, or killing someone.
My next 2 calls after my breather were simple transfers. My next call was a bad cell phone connection where the customer decided to call back later.
Then came my next call. A lady just giving it a go trying to set up her DSL by herself when her friend couldn't get it working.
When trying to find out what version of Windows she had, she had to move her plants off the desk to get her keyboard there, so she could type what I needed her to. She then started talking to her cat. Then she starts talking to me about her cat. A Tortoise-shell.
You have my attention. That's the exact breed of my two cats, which mean a lot to me. So we started talking about our cats, and going back and forth while she does this.
And the talk kept going with this lady over the course of the call.
Turns out, she was online, for some reason, it wasn't working earlier, but now, all she had to do was activate her account. Very straightforward, and I was about to cut the call off for the sake of my call time. She felt uncomfortable with the process at this time, and asked me to stay on the line. At that time I justified that by remembering that we almost never get the ActiveX controls on this page to install right, so we might have to do a manual setup.
I'm glad now that I didn't get her off the line.
As we went through the setup, she figures that is was just God's time to set up this DSL. Sounds crazy, but I think she was right. And yeah, I know that goes beyond any technical understanding or reasoning that I could apply to this. But I suddenly believe that.
As we got past the ActiveX controls, which amazingly installed correctly, she got to the point where she was able to set up her username and password. She was comfortable with that. I just gave her one fair warning: that the password must contain a number. Her response: "That's fine. My usual password's a bible verse."
I just felt myself calming down over this.
So I just let her know that I'd let her go, and thanked her for calling Verizon. And she told me, "Thanks for being so personable and patient. And God bless."
I couldn't get her off the call fast enough, as I was just breaking up.
I had to take another break to collect myself and get myself together. But this call was meant for me. Truly. I needed that one.
Every call that's made me bang my head against the wall, made me scream, and made me want to quit just seem meaningless now. Just because someone actually made me feel better while I was working. I had never felt that well after a call. She truly broke open a sense of peace at this job that I really needed. And I'm going to cherish that from here on in.
Maybe now I can start acting more Godly at work. Maybe now I won't feel miserable now.
I can't divulge names of my customers, due to our security policy. But I'll always remember her name. And if she ever reads this (I'm sure she won't, but if she does, she'll know who she is): Thanks. And God bless you.
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