My mind is revolving in free gear today, whirling without moving.
Lots to think about, nothing to concentrate on, so much so that the transparency of my thoughts is as clear as fouled water.
Outside, the rain threatens with the increasingly frequent rumbles in the sky, and the shade of the afternoon gradually dampens the enthusiasm of the bright sunlight that is now only visible high in the atmosphere.
An appetiteless stomach with the whirling in the mind, absolutely spoiling the engine by racing the accelerator without going into any gear.
Conclusion: I think too much these days.
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General
We are always extremely free during the weekends. That is because nobody ever bothers to call during the weekends. They are too busy accompanying their friends and relatives at home, or busy doing their lounging at home on Saturdays and Sundays. Who would want to waste precious personal time on something important like their National Service liability?
These kind of work is usually reserved for the weekdays, so that they can sneak off work for a few hours to spend time on the phone queue along with other similar like-minded fellows. Some use the company phone to do the calling, so that when the bosses come around and ask about it, they can use the law to support their skiving activities. (The relevant law essentially means that employers have to support National Service activities that their employees compulsorily have to take part in.)
But what these people don’t know is the vast number of like-minded people who like to book their physical test just before the closing of their window, so as to procrastinate long enough yet not be late enough to get hauled back to be charged for not taking the test. Therefore, when these people find out that their only available date to book their test is fully booked, they throw tantrums, threaten to speak to the supervisor, and generally attempt to intimidate the CSO by screaming and ranting like small children to get their way.
What these people don’t realise is that more often than not CSOs are their only ones who can help out. Not the supervisors, who will handle the call, and then just ask the CSO to do the follow up. Neither will the other departments care so much, since they are not the ones dealing with people face to face. There is only one face that can help you, and it is the CSOs. Abusing them will not only not help your problem, you will also spoil another person’s day.
CSOs do the coordinating with the other departments, and give you the interface to connect with the faceless organisation. If you slap them across the face because the rest of the organisation has let you down in some way, there is no other way for you to get things done with the organisation. Writing in will only reach another CSO, and if you are unwilling to deal with them, then there is absolutely no other way around it.
Besides, there is an incentive for CSOs to do a good job. All calls are recorded, and will be monitored for quality assurance, so there is absolutely no room for rogues who are not customer oriented. The remaining ones are dedicated people who really want to help solve your problem, so please don’t treat them as if they are the ones who have let you down, even if the organisation may have done so. It just isn’t their fault.
Imagine, during a busy weekday, the customer gets put into a queue of more than 40 minutes, with many other customers in front of him. The customer does the waiting, but remember, the CSO is constantly busy with another customer, with no opportunity of rest until the entire call queue has been cleared. It seems strange to me when someone screams at me for the queue machine’s keeping him on hold for 40 minutes when I have been working non-stop the entire day just to try to clear the call queue.
Neither does it help make my day.
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General
co.mments.com — Track your comments on other blogs
I like to stalk people’s blogs. Stalking allows you to feel empowered with the ability to spy on the blogger without making your existence known to him. This way, you are able to effectively rattle off to the blogger some of his stunning revelations when you do get to meet him up in public.
In addition, I also know that I have people stalking me, no thanks to the server logs. A shout-out to the guys from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Media Development Authority of Singapore; I know that my blog sounds atypical of an apologist, but I won’t disappoint you if you intend to lurk around hoping for some juicy political comment.
Anyway, for those of you who like to stalk people openly (ala sending flowers to the owner of the flaming torch you are holding), your stalking life would be made easier with a tracking service that allows you to monitor specific posts that you have left your mark on for further activity, thus enabling you to extend your stalking reach to more bloggers simultaneously, and make it an even simpler task of watching your favourite blogger shriek in horror after you post the umpteenth dark secret about them on their blogs.
The website makes it easy to start your stalking spree: register and account, drag and drop a simple bookmarklet, and start monitoring posts with a simple click on the bookmarklet while you are on the target’s website.
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General
You start and didn’t look back.
It is almost like Life itself, when blogging becomes as staple to routine as brushing teeth.
In case you didn’t know, I love to scrub my teeth with my toothbrush, so I wear out one (the toothbrush) every two months, but usually don’t bother to change it until Mum starts nagging about the condition of the bristles.
I like the familiarity of the toothpaste on my tongue, just as I like flipping through my previous posts to indulge in nostalgia.
It is times like these when I realise that Life ploughs on like a speeding train, and all we can do is to take pictures along the way as we keep careening into the unknown future ahead of us. Now you are 20, the next moment you turn back to look, you are already past 30 and looking at your own kids.
Happy 2nd Anniversary of blogging for me! (Not to mention that it is an off day so that I can cut myself all the slack.)
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General
I was really happy today. For the first time since I got a job, I didn’t let a caller whom just happened to get off the wrong side of the bed rub me the wrong way. Well, almost, at any rate. I just cursed for a short 5 seconds, and went on to the next call.
I attribute the vast improvement to my after-call downtime to the newest book I picked out at random from the library shelf. I still have no idea how to describe its core idea, but here’s my newest interpretation:
You think all the time, without even being conscious of it. You are always unaware of it until you start thinking that you were thinking. So most of the time we think without knowing it, and it is these thoughts that creates the emotions in us.
“I feel angry” is because “I” am thinking that “I am being treated unfairly, and that I should get angry about it”. If we can arrest this thought and change it to “I am being treated unfairly, but this is the fact. It has has already happened, and what I can do is to either feel angry about it, or to accept that it has happened, and see if there is some way to solve it.”
I seriously don’t think I can manage to write a self-improvement book without some serious overhaul.
When you repeat something for the umpteenth time, does it roll out of your mouth any easier?
There is a standard greeting to answer a call whenever they come in, and it is always along the lines of, “Good morning, [name] speaking. May I know who is this on the line?”
While some of them manage to carry it through with the same ease as if they were answering the call in the comfort of their own phone, I manage to mangle it till the extent all the caller hears is a jumbo of words that doesn’t have any discernable accent: a mash-up of Singlish and Alien.
To some of them, I could well have answered the call in Japanese, “Mushi mushi?” So far there hasn’t been any Japanese callers to the hotline, not at least to my extension. Perhaps Japanese Singaporeans are exempted from National Service through some dark and hidden unofficial guideline?
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General
Apologies for the extremely rude and irresponsible post below.
I sincerely am sorry if that last post has offended anybody. That geek has now been slaughtered and forcibly shoved back into his rightful place watching me apologise. Yeah, I am sorry for too many things these days. The server, MINDEF’s policies; I even apologise that they couldn’t receive their money because they themselves neglected to update their particulars.
The stress is getting to some of us today. I won’t mention specifics, but some of us lost it. Including me. After a particularly tough call, I came off the phone and shot off a load of famous phrases commonly used in the SAF, and had half the office staring back at me.
I went to the pantry and continued swearing, while one of my female colleagues came and tried to calm me down. I knew I had read the books on letting it all go and all that, but those theories are hard to put into practice when you are steaming in the heat of the moment. We chatted for sometime, and I forced myself to control the thoughts, and let go of the anger.
It helps knowing that you are the thinker of your thoughts. I focused on controlling my thoughts, and eventually got myself to calm down enough to continue. After some time, we went back to work.
I wasn’t the only one who had irate callers. Just next to me, I had another female colleague whom suddenly turned around and told me after a few minutes of frowning, “I think I am going to get a complaint from him.” She didn’t really want to take that call anymore, so I tried to help out by handling the caller.
He wasn’t as bad as the first one, but it was still enough to shake me badly. Thankfully, I let go of it pretty soon, and went on with my life after he hung up. Rumours had it that the next CSO who called him back for follow up found him in an extremely jovial mood. Even stranger was when my boss did the follow up to the previous guy and found him in a relatively happy mood too.
Did I just absorbed their negative energy or something? I feel like a punching bag.
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Yo guys, this is pkchukiss da geek here. The regular bland guy that you get every day is no more, ya all hear? I kicked him off somewhere for today, so it’s just ya and me, little noobs!
It’s frustrating to get repressed by that boring rants of some call centre, so I’ll tell ya what I think.
The website is crap! Those uber noobies didn’t even bother to code da server properly, and broke da page in FireFox, our goddess. To make matters worse, they had to hail themselves to da devil by supporting Bill Gate’s piece of Satan-ware called Internet Explorer!
You know that boring nerd had to answer queries about why that piece of ******** didn’t work in them browsers; I can’t stand that no more, and he spent such a big effort trying to keep me from thumping the intestine guts out of ‘em.
To make matters worse, them overworked noobs had ta do stupid codings like seperate login pages; like it took a noob to know that ya all commoners prefer a single place to do ya logins ya? But nooooo, they had ta do their utmost to confuse ya all with rubbish they think is l33t. Yup, they ain’t no idea that they pwned themselves big time with their programming.
No ********, they didn’t even know to give notice that they were going to change something to the website. It’s whoooomp, and everything’s down, and I had to sit in that chair and listen as that nerd tried ta apologise for that pathetic server to all them angry callers. We oughta just rip that server out and shoot it to digital wasteland and back, I tell ya.
It ain’t that I am some hotshot, but I’m the uber geek here. You just tell that nerd when he comes back; I know he’ll try to keep me in again, he’s gotta let me outta here every now and then, or else I’ll drive him crazy with mai honest unconstructive views.
Till then, see ya, noobs. I’ll pwn you till you cry.
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General
The pace is getting a bit hectic. The calls keep pouring in at an insane rate, while the platoon of CSOs struggle to cope with the incessant flow of calls, callers lament the lack of attention to them.
“How come you take 45 minutes to reach me?” one of them whined pitifully.
Another hung up just as the system connected the two of us, and I sat there holding a dead line.
A caller took the trouble to ask me if I had my lunch, and I droned out, extremely tickled, “NO! I have not yet had my lunch!” It sort of made my day. It isn’t common for a customer to inquire into the welfare of the CSO.
Due to the sheer volume of calls, we were forced to have lunch breaks at 2.30 in the afternoon, with some clocking 3pm lunches. When I went to the cafeteria, there was little left, so being the beggers who couldn’t choose, we bought some heavy western meal and piled on the carbohydrates. Not to mention the fats. This made me drowsy for the better part of the day. And then it was back to call taking.
The mania went on for the entire of the day, up till 5.30, when magically the system stopped connecting calls to my workstation.
Surprised at the sudden turn of events, I popped my head out of my cubicle to see others suddenly popping their heads out at the same time, and we all swiveled the chair and chatted at this sudden lack of calls, someone occasionally jumping in alarm as the system beeped its alert of an incoming call. The system gave no mercy. Two beeps and the call is connected, and you can hear a confused person on the other end of the line, “Harlow? Anyone there?”
I grinned and poked fun at one of my female colleagues as she came off the line.
“He sounds so sad…” she started
“You can counsel him, so that he can call [her name]’s counselling hotline instead.”
“You are so bad!”
Yeah, handling calls all day can actually warp a human’s normal functioning. I think this condition is called dysfunction.
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General
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