grassmonk.net

Last night I was torn between watching Flight of the Navigator and VH1’s 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs. So I settled for a bit of both.

I watched VH1 long enough to see 10 or 11 songs played and commented on. My favorite comment of the night referred to Butterfly by Crazy Town, and is as follows:

“The first 7000 times you hear this song you think, ‘What a bad song!’ Then the next time you hear it, you realize it’s not a bad song. It’s a [expletive deleted] atrocious song!”

Referring to the same song:

“These have to be, word for word, the worst lyrics ever written.”

My favorite song of the night was Informer by Snow. I had totally forgotten about this song until I heard it last night. I distinctly remember thinking it was cool when I was a kid, and my feelings haven’t changed. Any white boy that has the guts to write a song like this, much less perform it, has my respect. So what if no one understands a freakin’ word he’s saying? It gives me hope for my own songwriting future.

In fact, in Snow’s honor, I’ve penned some incomprehensible lyrics of my own. Read them out loud, and mumble exaggeratedly, like Bob Dylan but more stoned. It’s fun!

— snip snip snip —

callin’ keyboard keyboard monitor mouse me DVD
I go to DVD town eat some waffles on my way eat
a keyboard surfboard boardwalk don’t advance to go
it’s a back you take take you back spaces by the 3 jump
jailbird double roll
jelly doughnut roll slurp up slurpee date

on my tv spaceship ship on the water boat
story of the garbage can puppet in the basement
baseboard snowboard shuffleboard use a fancy stick
good sport sporting goods shoes me head on are butterlovers
soda popsicle juicy sweet a promise lick
short snort pants number sixteen in hole put a monkey cow

— snip snip snip —

I just need a few more verses, a drum solo, a cool foreign accent, and a record label. I can’t wait till someone calls my song [expletive deleted] atrocious.

With the recent addition of the grassmonk blog, I felt like the site really needed a little somethin’ somethin’, so I started giving it a tiny little makeover. Expect this look to permeate more and more of the site as time passes. Eventually I hope to implement multiple style sheets so you, the imaginary reader, can enjoy grassmonk.net at the optimum level.

Also of note is the fact that Firefox kicks IE’s butt.

My recent dealings with AT&T have brought to mind that I used to work as a Customer Service Representative, which should have made me feel empathy for them.

Turns out empathy ain’t my strong suit. In this case it’s because I actually knew what I was talking about as a CSR, whereas these people don’t seem to know their butts from a hole in the ground. Metaphorically.

Or I could just be a jerk–who knows?

Anyway, when I worked as a CSR, every day I was plagued with emails from people who wanted to terminate the service they receive from the company I worked for. Normally, responding to these emails is routine and relatively painless, but inevitably, there is always an email (or two, or five, or thirty) that I can tell just by looking at it was written by someone as literate as my brother-in-law, whom I suspect of having close genetic links with inbred raccoons.

I’m talking about emails that look something like this:

To: CUSTOMER SERVICE
From: SOME FOOL IN ARKANSAS (HOBOSTOP1@AOL.COM)
Subject: CACLE MY SEVERICE PLEASE NOW IW WANT TO FCANEL

SO YOU WANT TO DANCE I SEE I WANT TO DEAL WITH THIS ISSUE AND CACENL MY SERVIS WITH YOUR COMPANY I DONT KNOW MY ID NUMBER OR ANY INFERMASHUN THAT YOU WOULD NEED TO CANCLEE SO CNACLE NOW AND RESPOND BACK OK IT IS IMPORTENT OK SO NO MORE CHARGE ON MY CREDIT CARD OK OK CANSEL CANSEL CANSEL CANSEL CANSEL CANSEL OK BYE

Now, seeing one email like this every few weeks would be tolerable. But the sheer volume of illiterate goo that filled my inbox has convinced me that this is a problem of epic proportions, and must be curbed before the major part of Americans–nay, humanity at large–are walking only semi-upright and use different types of grunts for ninety percent of their daily communication.

Wait, I think I just described most of the male population, and two or three women whose company I do not look forward to sharing.

The solution I propose is that an email virus be created and sent to all people who use all capitals in their email correspondence. The subject line will read, “Are you for capital punishment?” Since people who use all capitals are some of the stupidest people on the planet, they will instinctively open the email, whereupon evil laughter will be played and a message will flash on the screen that says, “Guess so, loser.” Then computer crashes. Who are they going to complain to? Smarter people? Yeah, that would work:

Capital Offender: “DUDE MY COMPUTER CRASHED ALL I WAS DOING WAS WRITING EMAILS AND IT JUST STOPPED WORKING.”

Smart Person: “I’m speechless.”

I bet that if we petitioned, i.e sent enough money to Microsoft, it could even become a standard Windows feature.

A guy can dream, can’t he?

I just got off the phone with AT&T. Again. My new theory is thus: when your job consists of talking down to people who know more about your web site than you do, you really ought to look for a new line of work. The experience reminded my of my surreal encounter with Sony’s tech support, which is a story for another day.

It struck me that there is a connection between the people I talk to at AT&T and the people working in telemarketing. Before the job I have now, I worked for five months at a call center. We had a client called Splawn and Ward and we did calling for them for home equity loans and lines of credit. They changed (and, as I understand, continue to change) their requirements on a near-daily basis, while laying any blame for mistakes they made on us. As part of the loan application, we had to collect the customer’s social security number. If they could not or would not give it at the time, a supervisor was supposed to manually call them back later in the day and get it from them.

I was mainly in charge of programming the Splawn and Ward calling script, as well as various other web tools for the supervisors to use, such as one to input the social security numbers and update the customer database after the manual callbacks. The supervisors and call agents were routinely known for breaking things in record time. After several breakages, I composed the following email:

— >8 cut here 8< ---

Sometimes you order a pizza, forget to say, "No anchovies," and must rush back to the phone before your pizza is ruined beyond all possible reparation. This is what we in the Real World refer to as an Emergency. In the Realm of Telemarketed Disillusionment, the definition of "emergency" has become somewhat obscured; now it can mean anything from "The server room is on fire!" (an actual Emergency) to "I forgot my lunch!" (not an Emergency, but still important) to "I’m an agent and therefore exempt from all possible logical action, and anything I feel must happen now inherently constitutes an Emergency of Utmost Proportions" (definitely not an emergency, but somehow we still get duped into believing that it is).

Because manual callbacks for Splawn and Ward fall under the category of Emergency as defined in the Realm of Telemarketed Disillusionment, a web page has been created to update the CallHistory table for these manual callbacks, so that completed "applications" are exported nightly, hot leads don’t get cold, and most importantly, the fish stay in the ocean, far, far away from our Canadian bacon.

For reasons unfathomable, the Manual Dial Call History Update page has been abused. Exports have been jacked, yes, WOG levels have risen beyond Reason, and the Fiery Bowels of the IT Department’s Ire have been opened and unleashed upon the Realm.

After much Deliberation né Cussing, a Solution has presented itself, however temporarily.

Pressing the "Verified" and "Not Verified" buttons on the Verification page of the Splawn & Ward script will now update the CallHistory table for you. I feel it sad that I must, due to past experience, point out that this means one button or the other during a call. It does not mean both, and it certainly does not mean to become inexplicably color blind, lose voluntary control of your hand, and click the “Hot Lead” or “Ate Kidney Beans on a Full-Mooned Thursday in Texas” buttons. The Manual Dial Call History update page must still be used for a Hot Lead or Failure disposition. Why? Because we said so.

While we have tried to make this change as easy to use and as robust as possible, the words of Douglas Adams shed profound illumination on the hope that we will be completely successful: “A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

Please enjoy this new functionality, and when you manage to dispel its usefulness in the first hour, please refrain from running immediately to the nearest IT personnel, so we can bask just that much longer in the pride of a job well done.

Enjoy,

Your friendly neighborhood Steve Eastland

— >8 cut here 8< ---

So what’s the connection between the AT&T and telemarketers? I have no idea. Ben told me to put this email up for viewing, so I had to tie it in somehow.

And to be fair, the first guy I talked to at AT&T–the one who signed me up–was very nice and polite, and smart to boot, which is probably how I got duped into thinking the other people there would be too.

I recently changed wireless providers from Verizon to AT&T. I was happy with my service right up to the point where I actually had to speak to an AT&T representative in an attempt to decipher the hieroglyphical encoding used to display my monthly usage on their site.

But before I could actually speak to a representative, I had to dial the customer service number, navigate the poorly designed menu system, and submit information concerning the last time I changed my underpants at least three different times. Once I had satisfied the curiosity of the IVR–and after it laughed at me in a most sinister fashion–I was at last transferred to the Hold Music. It was like watching Hellboy, but without the tremendous benefit of… well, it was exactly like watching Hellboy.

After an eternity of “Please hold; your call is very important to us (if you live in one of three randomly selected major metropolitan areas)…” Decoder Boy picked up the phone. The conversation went downhill from there.

Him: “Hello, thank you for calling AT&T Wireless. My name is Decoder Boy. How may I help you today?”

Me: “Yeah, I’m trying to look at my usage on your web site and it’s a bit confusing.”

Him: “OK, can I get your wireless number please?”

Me: “Um, I gave it to the IVR three times. Don’t you have it?”

Him: “Yeah, funny things, IVRs. So, I’ll need that number, your mother’s maiden name, and–“

Me: “The last time I changed my underpants?”

Him: “So you know the drill. Usually customers have to call in several times before we can train them properly.”

Me: [gives information] “So, I’m looking at these minute reports, and–“

Him: “Well, actually, um… Sorry, but I’ve lost my secret decoder ring and so we’re just going to have to wing this one.”

Me: “Uh huh. Okay… so do you want to get a new ring or something?”

Him: “Nah, I’m good. I’ve been here all of five minutes. How much could I not know by this time?”

Stunned silence filled my general area, threatening to suffocate me.

After several minutes passed in this fashion, I came to the conclusion that my plan had been set up wrong and I had accumulated about $60 in overage charges in the past week, due to an error courtesy AT&T and its generous army of decoderless-ring gnomes.

Me: “So will I be charged for these fees that were, in fact, completely and totally, without question, your fault?”

Him: “Oh, of course. But when you get your first bill you can call in and they should be waived.”

Me: “So are you going to fix the plan setup so this doesn’t happen again?”

Him: “Oh, you didn’t want to have excess charges?”

Me: “Let’s pretend that I’m from another planet where excess charges are bad, and–“

Him: “You’re from another planet? Wow!”

Me, realizing that make-believe is a concept they must cover in advanced training chez AT&T: “Yes, I’m from another planet, and my civilization is so much more advanced than yours that I can make your spleen explode from here, just by thinking about it. I don’t want to do that, so why don’t you just fix the error, hm?”

Him: “Okay, but please don’t explode my spleen!”

I promised not to on the condition that my superiors would authorize it. Hey, they lie, I lie.