The Truth Is Unreliable

This will have to be quick, I’m about to be one of those people and stand in line to get Grand Theft Auto IV.

The Gimp came back today after his two week vacation and it was a bit confusing as to what he really did on vacation. Depending on who asked, and who was within earshot, he gave a different answer. Most people he answered that he was in Germany for the two weeks, having been deployed briefly for his service indenture to the Army Reserves. To others; he spent the two weeks sitting at home playing Call of Duty 4 on his Xbox. It seemed that I was the only one present during his different versions of his story, because nobody called him on his inconsistencies. I on the other hand had to ask and his answer was that he was supposed to go to Germany but the deployment was canceled and he figured he might as well take advantage of two weeks of vacation, which he probably wouldn’t have been able to get in a row were it not for the Reserves, and just chill out.

I have to update my report on the firing of Stonehenge Mouth. It seems that there have been some developments that could not be foreseen, and may have undermined my cosmic powers. It seems that no one told him he was fired. I know, I know…who forgets to fire a complete pain in the ass and financial waste? The people I work for. They also decided not to tell him once they realized they had forgotten, because it seems that Stalker Bait has been pissing off the wrong people and they’re going to fire her instead. They haven’t told her either. I’m wondering if this is some sort of bizarre Human Resources version of musical chairs and they’re a bit hazy on the rules.

It’s GTA time…

Misunderstimatifiawtf

It’s amazing what a little misunderstanding can do. At the end of the day yesterday Sith Lord made a comment about how Stalker Bait’s boyfriend had left. As a result the conversation revolved around breakups and the like, such as how someone’s ex-husband ran off with his own father’s girlfriend into the bijou country of Louisiana. After Stalker Bait left I mentioned to Sith Lord how she didn’t seem terribly upset about her boyfriend leaving me and he looked at me blankly realizing I took it literally. What he had meant when he said it was that her fake boyfriend, Tweedle Dee, had left the office. I felt like a bit of a fool, but no harm done, so I went on like normal.

When I came in to the office today, the Cubers were laying in piles of massacred egos. It seemed that someone had been listening in on the conversation of the day before, but only long enough to get all the wrong information. The super spy then proceeded to disseminate the erroneous information, and it took on a life of its own. Such as that Stalker Bait’s boyfriend left for Louisiana with his own father’s girlfriend. Or how Stalker Bait was now dating Tweedle Dee. Or how her relationship was ruined by something I said.

The result of such wide ranging falsifications was rather bizarre. Such as how everyone was now talking about how they were gonna “hit that”, “do that”, “get some of that”, and of course “tap that”. The repetitious use of “that” leads one to believe that most of the depraved geeks that make up the Cubes don’t really know what “that” is, and how to do, make, or obtain it. The truly funny thing about all of this was that neither Stalker Bait nor Tweedle Dee made it in today. Could there be more to the rumors than meets the eye? No.

On a side not, the other day was Earth Day and to commemorate and do its part to safe the planet our company opted not to refill the two lakes on the premises that have been leaking and were being topped off daily since they were built 3 months ago. I too did my part; I didn’t flush the toilet at the office after dropping a deuce. Also, this post is 100% recyclable.

A Brief Note From Cube Town

It was a very busy Monday after one of the groups sent out some patches that if they weren’t installed all of the financial applications would stop working. The only problem was they updated the applications on the server side, but never bothered to send the patches to any of the client-side machines. Oh, and the group who did it was claiming it was the helpdesks fault, even though we don’t even have to ability to push out patches to either servers or clients. Way to go applications group!

Being that it was really busy, there haven’t been a lot of notable events. It seems to just about everyone is burning out all at once and they all seem to want to leave the company or change shifts, but no one wants to move around in a way that you can just swap people back and forth. The Sith Lord is reverting back to a former persona in which he complained about work the second I get in the office. I can only hear “Welcome to Sucksville” so many times before I snap and welcome him to ShutTheFuckUpsville.

Beardface, who has only been a Cuber for about two months, is complaining about never seeing people and being bored, though he cusses and tells people to die in a fire every time the phone rings. Beardface moved from Virginia Beach just before coming back to work here, he’s left and come back twice now, and is living with his parents while they get back on their feet. The crowded house (7-9 people in a 3 bedroom house) is becoming smaller with each day, so nerves are frayed as is, and then to come in and deal with assholes (both co-workers and the people on the phone) only makes it work. The fact that he works late nights and the rest of his family are daywalkers is enough to push you over the edge.

The Gimp, who may be known as The Bear in the future due to my weird dream where he was running around with a bear head on, is reaching his end solely because of his exposure to Nate Dogg. I can imagine how he feels based on my rather limited exposure to him. It’s like babysitting a stoned, retarded child. He has a permanent stoned college kid voice and is a little slow on the draw. Over the time that I’ve known him, I’ve decided that, in all seriousness, he has a learning disability. That’s the only thing that could explain the way he works and the fact that he can’t seem to retain things even after over three years. One thing he seems to have the hardest time with is realizing that calling daywalkers at 3am is bad. The fact that the trouble ticket is dated during the day, was submitted by someone on first shift, and that the sun is not anywhere to be seen doesn’t register with him. No imagine that you have to baby sit this oversized child and having to do your job and most of his and you’d probably start slipping.

I on the other hand am slowly becoming bitter and hateful. Days and days of having idiots ask me the same questions over and over, those would be my coworkers, and never learning, and having abrasive and annoying personalities has reinforced my old hatred of people in general. But I have a week kayaking and beach vacation coming up soon, so maybe I can relax and stave off going postal for just a little bit longer.

Master of the Cubiverse

It’s dangerous when someone has nearly absolute power. It’s even more so when that person realizes he has that power. Do you become a malevolent overlord, a beneficent inspiration, or a shadowy figure who stealthily dabbles his fingers in the pool so that the ripples are small, strategic, and precise? I recently discovered that I am the Dick Cheney of the call center. I’m not the figure head, but I have frightening amount of power. The recent incident with Stonehenge Mouth proved this. On Wednesday night I sent my open to my boss and on Thursday I was ordered to monitor everything Stonehenge Mouth did and write a report on anything his screwed upon. Today before I left the office I got a phone call from my boss telling me that as soon as they could hire someone else Stonehenge Mouth would be gone.

Now if this was the epic movie where the little furry footed guys are fighting the big scary eye over some sort of magic locket, or tiara, or say...ring…then this would be the part of the story where we all jumped up in triumph and sang obnoxious songs and smoked something that no one will admit it weed. Instead, I can’t help but feel guilty, somewhat dirty. From a business stand point getting rid of Stonehenge Mouth makes sense. He’s a detriment to morale, decreases productivity because of the fact that everyone else has to solve his issues, and he sullies our credibility by lying, misinforming, and not following through on his promises. On a personal and karmic level it’s just deserts. A foul, hateful man getting what’s coming to him. And yet, I can’t help but feeling bad because the whole reason he is getting fired is because I simply don’t like him. His wife and kids are going to be punished, ultimately, because of my selfish actions.

Now it’s not like him and his family are going to be destitute and living on the streets. His wife works for an aeronautical company and makes a decent living, he gets military disability, and will probably get unemployment after he leaves because they’ll make him step down instead of firing him. However, it doesn’t change the fact that it will affect all their lives. Yet again, my selfishness also rises to the surface on this part as well. The fear that the next person will be worse. Stonehenge Mouth was the replacement for a guy named Average Joe. His name was a joke. It really was Joe (the only real name I’m likely to disclose here), but he was anything but average. In fact, he was fucking crazy.

Average Joe was one in a long string of ITT Tech graduates. I don’t know how ITT operates in the rest of the country, but if the grads that have graced the Harmon Kardon chairs of the Cube then it’s basically a retail diploma store. Sadly, of all the grads we’ve seen he was the strongest, but also the craziest. Average Joe would be sitting at his desk, quietly, not having said anything to anyone in over an hour and suddenly he’d start shaking his head back and forth making loud noises. After a minute of this he’d stop as suddenly as he started and then he’d be quiet again for a long period of time. Average Joe would be on the phone helping someone, and doing a good job at it, and then he’d cuss someone out (either on the phone or his neighbor) for no reason. They tried moving him around from one shift and group to another and just when they were getting ready to fire him, he disappeared. He stopped going to school (he was going for another degree), he never went home, and turned up a few weeks later in Charlotte, NC emailing my former boss asking him to tell his parents. And this is who Stonehenge Replaced, who as crazy as he was, had nothing on Stonehenge Mouth.

These are the things that someone has to deal with when they have the power. Not the events themselves, but knowing you’re responsible for those events. If the next person is worse, I’ll have made everyone’s life even more miserable just because I wanted to cater to my whims. On the other hand, it’s just a job and these are just office politics. It’s not like I’m the dark puppeteer behind the war in Iraq, global warming, or civil war in Africa. Though, if this little experiment in shadow governance works out, maybe I will turn my attention towards Serialkiller. We shall see…

Slacking and Sacking

What a slacker I turned out to be. Missed two posts without even realizing it until last night. I’ve started working out after I get off work and I’m so tired when I get in that I didn’t even think about it. I even fell asleep during the first airing of last weeks Battlestar Galactica episode, but luckily Sci-Fi has nothing better to do than show the same thing 100 times a day. The waking and sleeping life have blurred so much that I’ve been having work dreams. Last night I had a dream that The Gimp was running around the parking garage in the dark screaming with a head from a big cartoon bear suit head on. That was it, just him and his big cartoon head, and screaming. But enough excuses.

Things are reaching critical mass with Stonehenge Mouth. I’m losing my ability to keep my mouth shut and my comments to myself and it seems I’m not alone. Since coming back from his surgery he has not only returned to his normal abysmal self, but has found the motivation and energy to exceed his previous record highs. His idiocy, negativity and unrelenting badgering have been honed and focused into some sort of doomsday device of loathing and hatred that would make a James Bond villain cackle with maniacal laughter at his ingenuity. Sadly, there’s no one to ransom to make him go away, and no secret agent to suavely take him out in a flurry of sex and flames.

Things probably started going south when I sent an email out to some of my coworkers linking to an article about a recent archaeological dig at Stonehenge with the caption “Looks like they’ve been digging around in Bob’s mouth again” where Bob is Stonehenge Mouth’s actual name. Oh yeah, and someone forwarded the email to Stonehenge Mouth. That didn’t go over too well. After that he was more confrontational with me, understandably, but he also started being hostile to others because it seemed he started to realize that most of the others around him couldn’t stand him either.

Today it became obvious that people had put up with Stonehenge Mouth for as long as they were willing when an open letter made its way around the office that was critical of not only of his personal habits, but of the business and monetary impact he was having on the company. The fact that the letter was making its rounds wasn’t the surprise, mostly because I’m the one that wrote the letter, but the fact that all but one person (other than Stonehenge Mouth of course) signed the letter in support and sent it to our manager. I’m actually looking forward to going to work tomorrow just to see if my boss says or does anything in response. I’m even curious if I’ll feel guilty if they fire him because of my bitching.

I’m going to work on the whole schedule thing. Here’s hoping I can tear myself away from the TV for a few minutes Friday for another action packed issue.

Mr. Murder Goes on Vacation

The weather is warming up, which means that people will inevitably start taking vacations. I’ll be hitting the beach next month, The Gimp is taking off two weeks to chill and go play Army (he’s in the Reserves), and this week Serialkiller is off to go fishing. It’s not really what people do that’s important; it’s the fact that they’re gone. Depending on who leaves it’s like a little vacation for those left behind. Such as when Stonehenge Mouth was out for over a month for his bypass surgery and it was near bliss. The only problem was that people misconstrued my sentiments when I said I hope he doesn’t come back and interpreted it as me wishing he would die. Minor difference, but still…

When Serialkiller goes on vacation there’s always at least a day where even though he’s physically not there, he’s still there in spirit. He sends us emails from his Blackberry asking status of certain issues, or just something stupid like “What does my out of office message say?” This could be understandable if Serialkiller was anyone of even minor importance, but instead he’s a nobody ticket monkey like the rest of us and the effort is more conceit than efficiency or dedication. What's worse is that when Serialkiller is gone, we really don’t feel the impact at all. Why? Because his only job is to answer e-mails. Instead of him answering emails it’s just divvied up amongst the rest of us which doesn’t really cause us much more work

Don’t get me wrong. I have no illusions that anyone misses me when I go on vacation however I, like most everyone else in The Cubes, get comments when I come back like “Glad you’re back” or “We missed you” even if it is all lies. When someone like Serialkiller or Stonehenge Mouth comes back it’s a sense of dread and complaints. The truth is that there are some people that you dislike working with so much you would rather be inconvenienced with more work and responsibility than have to go another day with someone that makes you break computer mice whenever they walk up to you. Or ask your boss in front of everyone else “So when is Stonehenge Mouth getting fired?” Or offer to do the work of two people all alone at night rather than spend another night dealing with the lies, complaints, and ineptitude of Shitpants McPooperton.

The sad thing is that vacation is finite. In many cases, just firing them would be so much more enjoyable. What you have to worry about is whether the replacements will be worse than the ones you’re getting rid. Just like it’s true that there’s always someone better, it’s also true that there’s always someone worse. Maybe The Executioner and I should conspire to get someone axed just to see what happens. Just a thought…

The Truth About...part ii

Friday’s issue was preempted by Rainbow Six and the new season of Battlestar Galactica.

The truth is that The Shill really is a complete and utter shill. For those who don’t know what a shill is, here’s a quick synopsis. A shill is a member of a con who acts like an uninvolved party to help sell or add credence to the con in the presence of the mark being conned. He could be a guy at a bar vouching for a story the principal in the con is telling the mark, or he could be your boss who tries to help sell the story that corporate office is trying to sell which is actually complete bullshit. Case in point, I had a bit of a payroll issue in which I was making one amount of money for a year and a half and then suddenly informed I was going to be having a 10% reduction because of a “clerical error”. After much arguing and fussing The Shill tried to convince me he was my cheerleader…then he spent 3 weeks avoiding me. He came back with an offer, in which I kept explaining that there was no offer, it was fix or quit. He tried to tell me this was the best offer I could expect, I reiterated by mantra of fix or quit, In the end I won the battle but it was a long fight, and at each stage The Shill kept trying to insist I could expect and more, I was making too much money to begin with so it wasn’t a cut in pay but putting me at what I SHOULD be making, that I should take it personally. He was trying to shill the story that corporate office fed him.

The truth is that Shitpants McPooperton never actually shit his pants that I can prove. The smells and noises and the frequent runs (as in him literally running to the bathroom) precludes that at some point he has shit himself, and probably at work. Shitpants had a routine that was unbreakable. First off, Mr. McPooperton would show up at least 20 minutes late every day, and then after almost exactly 20 minutes of being in the office would have to go. He would get up, grunt and strain and mumble “gotta go take a shit”. After that, he would go to the bathroom for whatever was left inside him every hour on the hour. He was much older than anyone else in Cubeville, but all of his stories were of a time that happened before I was likely even born. He was a drummer, which he pointed out any chance he got, and supposedly toured with a very respected regional band, opening regionally for bands such as Lynard Skynard and AC/DC. There was, however, no proof beyond his stories that they were more than a shabby bar band. As was discussed in The Gimp’s set, he was a horrible employee who was a terrible support person, a liar, lazy, and of course…full of shit.

The truth is that The JC is not Jesus Christ. He is the smartest man in the Cubes, which is why he’s now the lead for the Call Center. He’s a rather quiet, unassuming person who, despite his outward demeanor, isn’t above making heads roll and shaking up the system from the ground up. He’s not the second coming of Christ, but he’s the closest thing a helpdesk will ever come to. Thus..The JC.

The truth is Stalker Bait has not managed to earn herself any stalkers. Tweedle Dee has gone from leaning over her cubicle with amorous looks in his eyes to ignoring her completely. The Sith Lord is passively wooing her with uncomfortable innuendo and non committal passes at her which she seems to shrug off with great ease.

The truth is, these are pretty much just filler and next issue will be a real story and not just the blogger equivalent of a flashback episode. The truth is, the last week has been so busy that no one has really done anything worth mentioning. The same people whine about the same stuff, and everyone is acting exactly as they always have but no more interesting than usual. Such is life…

The Truth About... Part I

The truth is that Serialkiller isn’t really a serial killer. At least not that anyone can prove. He’s never left a bloody cleaver on his desk or a severed finger in his trash can. He has never had one of those uncomfortable moments where you walk up on him digging around in his trunk and he has to hide the body wrapped in plastic in there. He got his nickname because of this uncomfortable feeling that I get every time I talk to him. I look in his eyes and there’s this darkness and evil hiding behind those orbs. Serialkiller is a rather smart guy with an education that is wasted in The Cubes. However, he seems to have this sense of entitlement and acts like he is more important than anyone else. He’s a phone monkey like the rest of us, yet he actually struts around the Call Center like he’s a king looking in on his serfs

The truth is that Sith Lord isn’t really a Sith Lord. He doesn’t have mystical powers and doesn’t have Midi-chlorians teeming through his body. He got his nickname early in my employment because he would wear a Sith robe, and on occasion an Elven cloak, when it rained. He didn’t help the image any. I started working near Halloween and he was excited about the lightsaber that he had made from a kit and a pair of boots he had special ordered to look like the ones worn by Qui-Gon-Jinn in the prequel movies. I actually started a small war with him once when I kidnapped his Darth Tater figure he had on his desk. Despite that extreme geekdom, he actually hasn’t done any of that in at least a year. He took all his toys home (Treebeard, Darth Tater, a dozen Transformers, and more) and doesn’t even give me daily updates on his World of Warcraft character anymore. (In the effort of full disclosure, I had to Google most of the Star Wars terms because I didn’t really know them)

The truth is, The Executioner never killed anyone. He’s not Serialkiller’s accomplice. When he goes fishing he releases all his catches. He only recently got his nickname after Shitpants McPooperton got fired. It takes some quick back story for it to make since though. For every call that comes into the Call Center, we have to create a ticket. If we solve an issue over the phone, we close that ticket. If we can’t solve it, or it’s not under our scope of service we send that ticket to the next responsible group. Documenting issues and routing tickets is the majority of our job. At the end of each day all those tickets have to be checked for accuracy and adherence to protocol. For a long time this was my job, but it’s a thankless, monotonous job that doesn’t come with any extra money or perks. So I dropped it all on The Executioner. Shitpants was a horrible employee. He lied, he faked tickets, and he was rude to people. On top of all this he would be a few hours late for work at least once a week, and was on time if he was only 30 minutes late. There were months in a row where he couldn’t go a single week without calling out at least one day a week. So when he got fired there was ample reason to kick him to the curb. In Shitpants twisted mind though, he had never done anything wrong, and started e-mailing The Executioner after he was firing cussing him out and blaming him for losing his job. And that’s how The Executioner got his name.

More insider secrets and tell all interviews to come…

Mondays

It’s nothing specific to The Cube, but Monday’s are hell. I’m not sure what it is about sophisticated IT equipment, but something happens every weekend to make something fail spectacularly. Patches get rolled out and an entire office worth of computers crash. The email server, taking a well deserved siesta, wakes up late on Monday and sprains its ankle trying to catch up. It tends to claim it was “pushed down the stairs,” but we all know it’s in an abusive relationship. While it’s bad enough to have critical systems crash during the day when support groups are there and waiting for things to go bad, it’s a whole new game during the night shift.

Aside from the typical troubleshooting and ticket routing that the day shift does, the night shift is also responsible for monitoring critical systems. In other words, it’s my job to wake people up at night when things go bad. I’ve gotten cussed out, for waking people up, a surprisingly small number of times. The real problem comes when the people who are supposed to wake up when you call them don’t. Or they turn off their phones. Don’t return phone calls. The fun really starts to mount when the entire chain of command doesn’t answer their phone. Tonight was one of those nights.

To add to the teetering tower of mismanagement, tonight was also the celebration for the launch of a new, high profile product. This means that anyone who is answering their phone is sitting at a table with fine linen table clothes, real silver service, waiters with towels over the arms, and valet parking attendants out joy riding in their luxury vehicles. They’re also drunk. That part is kind of important, because I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to think logically and trouble shoot a system that has crashed and costing a company a million dollars an hour while you’ve got 6 glasses of Dom Perignon under your belt. It’s not easy.

What makes all this worth being the person responsible for getting all these over paid draft dodgers in line is being held responsible when you do your job exactly as your being paid to, but no one else does. When the chain of command failed for 2 hours straight (that’s 2 million dollars lost) my desk began swarming with tipsy upper management types asking me what things aren’t going the way they envisioned them when they spent a whole 20 minutes 10 years ago deciding how the emergency contact system should work. At some point protocol goes out the door and you have to be blunt. Saying “I’m doing my goddamn job, maybe you should find a few more people who give a shit where it counts.” is not the answer.

Tomorrow should be fun…