The CSR Files

When I moved to my current position, my exposure to the basic stupidity of humanity was severely limited…or so I thought.

Conversations like the one I just had over IM for the last hour should not still be happening after someone’s worked here for several months.

Without going into too much proprietary detail, our primary service involves phone numbers. So, most of our trouble tickets involve testing blocks of these numbers. This is what I do. When a rep finds that a customer has a legitimate technical issue that is beyond the rep’s ability to fix, it comes to my team. We’ll test the account, the number, if necessary the block of surrounding numbers. This is standard procedure. Our most common issues involve blocks of numbers not working. When this happens, we report the issue to the teams responsible for maintaining the affected systems and include the block(s) of numbers affected, our test results, and the method used to test. Standard procedure.

So, this morning, an issue comes to us with the way a block of numbers is entered in the database. It’s an odd case, but there are still standard procedures. I should not have to explain THIS after telling him how to find the correct block of affected numbers:

Him: okay, what is that going to do?
Me: searching for the [block of numbers]? It will give you the full range affected.
Me: It’s not just this number.
Him: yes okay, but what do I do with it once I have it

Hello? How about include it in the report so that the entire block can be fixed?

And my favorite? After spending an HOUR explaining how to handle the issue (we should haveit reported and under investigation in under 30 minutes), I get this message in IM:

Him: my brain feels a bit dead

Ya think?