Tag Archives: job

Adventures In Customer Service (or Trying Not To Be The Bad Call)

Posted on November 7, 2014 | 1 comment

I’ve worked in customer service for many of my day jobs. Most of the time, I’ve been interacting with customers in person. But with my telesales job and my current box office job, I’m just doing customer service work on the phone (or in a chat feature like at my current job).

When I worked in telesales, I did discover that I was being much nicer to telemarketers on the phone. I didn’t hang up on them (unless they were robo calls) and if it was something that I know I wouldn’t be interested in, I would politely ask to be put on the do not call list.

But things have changed since I started my current box office job. I’ve had some really crazy customers since day one. I’ve never been threatened more at a job than with this one. Customers tell me that they are going to have me arrested to show up at a show and demand to see me so I can apologize for doing whatever they believed is wrong.

First of all, what saves me every day are my co-workers. While none of us work in the same city (I think only 1 other employee works in California), we are able to chat with each other through the chat feature while we work. We can ask if someone had previously spoke with a customer. Many times, customers will say that someone else told them that they could do something that is against the rules. I check with my co-workers to see who spoke to them and exactly what was said. That way, I can let the customer know that the information that they got from one of my co-workers is correct and I’m not able to bend the rules for them.

For some of the more detailed issues, we just direct them back to the location that they are attending. This is all done by email, so we have records of when we passed on a customer. Since a lot of the tough issues are not dealt with the box office, I’m grateful for that.

But ever since starting this job, I’ve noticed a change in how I deal with customer service people on the phone. I don’t believe that I have ever been mean to anyone, but I’m learning what preparation goes into making sure everything is done correctly.

For example, I ordered a DVD box set for my brother for his birthday. It was a pre-order so I knew it would take a bit of time to be shipped. I got an email 2 weeks ago saying that it would be shipped then, but there was no tracking number. I also had a charge and a refund on my credit card.

Before contacting customer service, I gathered all the information that I had gotten from the company. I knew when emails were sent to me, when the charge and refund was on my card, and when they claimed they would be shipping the DVDs. When I got a hold of customer service, I presented all my information and she was easily able to find out what happened and what went wrong (they are finally shipping the DVDs this month now).

I also recently called an Orangetheory location down in San Diego. I will be there for Thanksgiving and my dad, my brother, and my aunt all want to take a class with me on Thanksgiving. When I called the first time, the guy I spoke to seemed very confused by my request to schedule a class. He took down my information, but nothing seemed right.

After going to my Orangetheory and getting some more information about my membership from them, I called the San Diego location again to get everything straightened out.

The woman who I spoke to on the phone the second time kept saying how great it was that I was prepared to schedule everything and that I had all the information in front of me. It made her job simpler and allowed the problems to be corrected (it was mainly some typos and the previous employee using a different account to schedule my class).

Basically, from being yelled at on the phone every workday at least once, I’ve really learned that there is no reason to not do everything that I can do to make a customer service call as easy as possible. It’s not just about being nice (although that helps and I wish more customers were nice to me), it’s about knowing what had happened with your interactions with the company in the past and knowing what you need to have accomplished (as long as it is possible and not breaking any rules).

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Default ThumbnailBeing The New Employee (or Starting Yet Another Day Job) Default ThumbnailAdventures In Banking (or More Customer Service Stories) Default ThumbnailHaving My Patience Tested (or Taking Deep Breaths) Default ThumbnailBeing Upset With Customer Service (or Trying Not To Be The Type Of Customer I Hate) Default ThumbnailExcellent Customer Service (or A New Fitbit) Default ThumbnailA+ Customer Service (or Loving Benefit)

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Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff, Work

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Food Plans (or Working From Home Does Have Some Diet Benefits)

Posted on October 31, 2014 | Comments Off on Food Plans (or Working From Home Does Have Some Diet Benefits)

I’m basically only working from home now. It’s probably going to stay like that since any additional jobs I add on will pretty much have to be done while I’m working my other job (unless I find a night/weekend job).

I used to have such trouble with lunches when I worked outside of my house. Remembering to pack and bring my lunch was one issue. The other was the temptation of all the other food available nearby work.

I don’t have that issue anymore. My work hours are 10-3 and I don’t really get a lunch break. I’m able to step away from my computer to eat lunch, but I pretty much stay at my desk because I never know when a chat or phone call will come in.

Because of this, I’m eating pretty much at home for all my meals. My breakfasts on work days are almost always toast and peanut butter. It keeps me full and it’s not too bad calorie wise.

Dinners are a lot of prepackaged meals, but I’m still considering that better than ordering pizza or Chinese food delivery. I’m again being careful with the calories, but I know that there are things in the prepackaged meals that I don’t need.

Lunch is a little tricky since I am pretty much eating at my desk and have to stop every so often to help a customer. I’m working on finding things that I can eat over a long period of time incase I get stuck helping a customer for a long time. I’m really liking the egg white salad mix from Trader Joes. I eat that by itself with a piece of fruit (that’s exactly what I did yesterday). Also, the premade salads from Trader Joes are really yummy and don’t go bad or get weird if you don’t eat it all right away.

I’m finally out of my food rut of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I’ve told myself I can only have peanut butter once a day and right now, I’m really liking it for breakfast.

I know that I need to start cooking more and stop eating the prepackaged food, but I’m looking at this a baby steps. I haven’t had any fast food for a long time (easily over a month ago) and I haven’t been ordering delivery food either. I’m finally getting those bad habits out of my system.

Now I need to focus on the next step of introducing more good habits in. This is such a long process for me and I know that I need to be patient. I’m just trying to focus on the steps I have done so far and not how many more I need to go.

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Posted in Celebrations, Food, Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff, Work

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Sometimes It’s Not About Me (or Not Freaking Out)

Posted on October 23, 2014 | 1 comment

This past Tuesday, I was supposed to have an in-person interview for a babysitting job with the mom who didn’t want to hire me for a previous job because she could not read my entire background check.

This in-person interview was discussed during a phone interview I had with her last week. I had requested that she send me a formal interview request through UrbanSitter (the babysitting site I’m registered on) so that I would have all of her information and the request would block off my calendar so other families don’t request me for the same time.

I didn’t think too much more about it because the mom promised to put the request in.

Then the weekend came and I heard nothing from her. I sent her a message on UrbanSitter mentioning that she had said she wanted to do an in-person interview but I had not received the request yet. I let her know that I was keeping that time open to her and not accepting jobs with other families.

I still heard nothing back from her.

I started to freak out. What did I do wrong? Did the mom read my previous post and didn’t like what I said (although I don’t think that I made her sound bad)?

I really started going back in my head every encounter I had with this mom (which was pretty much 2 phone calls and a few messages through UrbanSitter) and couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong that she was no longer interested in interviewing me for this other position she needed filled (basically a driver for her daughter who is a child actor).

Finally on Tuesday, I realized that I was not going to hear from this mom through the UrbanSitter app. She might not get alerts that there are messages waiting for her like I do. So I looked up her phone number from our phone interview request on the app and called her and left her a voicemail. This already made me nervous because I don’t like sending messages to parents outside the app without previous discussing that.

About 30 seconds after hanging up the phone, I got a text message from the mom. She forgot that she had said she wanted to do an in-person interview that day and was out of town on business. She asked if we could reschedule when she was back in town.

I sent the mom a text back saying that I would be happy to reschedule and it wasn’t a problem that she forgot.

I felt so stupid for worrying about this. I did nothing wrong so why had I been so worried? But this is a common issue for me. I’ve had this with all of my day jobs. Whenever I’ve been called in to speak with my boss, my first instinct is that I did something wrong and I’m about to be fired. This is probably because I’ve had so many horrible day jobs in the past.

But I’m trying to think positively about my day jobs. I know that I’m doing great work and that my bosses know that I’m working as hard as I can. But sadly, that little negative part of my brain keeps acting up. I just need to learn how to make it quiet.

 

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Having My Patience Tested (or Taking Deep Breaths)

Posted on October 17, 2014 | Comments Off on Having My Patience Tested (or Taking Deep Breaths)

Lately, it’s felt like my patience has been tested all the time.

This mainly is work related, but my personal life has had its moments too.

At work, my main day job is working for the box office job I have. Even at my old box office job I dealt with a lot of angry people who wanted certain seats that aren’t available or want to attend a show on a date that isn’t happening. But since they knew that we wired at the theater, I think people were a bit nicer because they knew that we might eventually meet them.

At the new box office job, people pretty much know that they will not see us. There are always a couple of customers each week who are threatening me on the phone about suing me or having me arrested. What prompts this is usually either unavailable tickets or not having all the answers and having to pass on a message to the particular location that they are going to attend. Most of the customers are nice, but when you get a really angry one, it sticks out in your head.

Thankfully, I can use the chat feature to chat with my co-workers in other locations. We help each other out when we can and if we need a moment to vent, we are there for each other as well. This also has been extremely helpful when a customer contacts us multiple times hoping to get a different answer from a different person.

I’ve also noticed my patience being tested regarding babysitting jobs. First of all, many parents put out a job request to a dozen or so sitters. And whoever responds back first gets the job. So I keep seeing jobs getting cancelled on me because I’m not fast enough to respond (usually I respond within 10 minutes but there are some people who are very fast).

I’m also hearing from multiple parents that they need to see my background check before they can hire me. I’ve passed the background check that the service I use has and it says so on my online profile. But parents want to read it all before they consider me. So I contacted the background check company and they are mailing me a hard copy of the background check. My plan is to scan it in to my computer so I can email it out if necessary (after blacking out my address and social security number).

And in my personal life, it’s not too bad, but all of it adding up has gotten to me a bit. When I moved into my house 4.5 years ago, my landlord promised to re-do my kitchen. He would have done it before I moved in, but I didn’t want to have to wait an extra month. I never really heard back from my landlord on when he would fix my kitchen, but since he wasn’t raising my rent, I stayed quiet.

Now that my rent is raised every year, I want things that were promised to me to be done. Finally last week, the handyman came to my house and took all the measurements for my new kitchen counter. It was supposed to be done by Wednesday of this week.

On Tuesday, the handyman told me that the shop screwed up cutting the counter and that the new one won’t be ready for another week or so.

I shouldn’t let this bother me, but it did. I’m still getting my new kitchen counters (and refusing the clean my old ones since they are about to be trashed). I just need to be ok with things not being done when promised.

All of this has been a big lesson in patience. I’ve always considered myself a patient person, but realizing how this has all tested me has proved that there is room for improvement for me.

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Posted in Tough Stuff, Work

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Missing Out To Make Money (or Realizing When I’m Over-scheduled)

Posted on October 14, 2014 | Comments Off on Missing Out To Make Money (or Realizing When I’m Over-scheduled)

This past Saturday I had a really full day planned. And sadly, I wasn’t able to get everything done that I wanted to.

First I had my day job. Saturdays are 8am-11am (even when I’m working my normal hours). Then I had a girls empowerment event that I won tickets for right after that.

It was going to be tight for me to make it to the event after work. The check in for the event started at 10:30am and went until 11:30am. And even if I left my house the second my clock said 11am, it would be at least 30 minutes for me to drive there and to park.

But I was willing to be late because that’s the only other thing I had scheduled for my day.

Except that I forgot to change my availability on UrbanSitter and got a job request for Saturday evening for babysitting. I spoke with that mom on the phone and it turns out that they live pretty much across the street from me.

So as much as I wanted to go to the event, I would have arrived late and would have had to leave early to make it to the babysitting job. So it just didn’t work out for me to go.

I was a little disappointed because I really was looking forward to the event, but I had to focus on working money-making jobs.

And I’m glad that I did. The family that I babysat for had 1 kid and I was his first babysitter outside of family members. And he was a very sweet boy who listened really well. The job went really easily and the family told me in person (and wrote in a review about me on UrbanSitter) that they will be using me again as a babysitter in the future.

That’s important to me. I need to find work wherever I can. And babysitting for date nights and other occasional times really is a great way for me to help supplement my income (and it really needs to be supplemented right now). And the fact that this family is just a walk across the street is amazing! I haven’t had a babysitting job I could walk to since high school.

I’m working on not having a “fear of missing out” feeling or attitude, but it’s hard not to feel that way a little. But it’s my own fault for not adjusting my availability for babysitting. And honestly, it probably worked out for the best this way.

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Posted in Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff, Work

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Early Days (or 2 Weeks Of Long Shifts)

Posted on October 10, 2014 | 1 comment

For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been working 2 hours earlier than usual at my new box office job. And I’m still finishing at my usual time so I’m working 8 extra hours a week.

I agreed to this because one of my co-workers has been shooting a movie and he wasn’t able to work. So I agree to help cover his shifts.

Having this happen so early in my time with this new job really has been good. It reassured me that if/when I need to take some time off for booked work it can be done without having to be laid off. And I’ve proven myself to be a reliable employee by agreeing to start early.

It hasn’t been easy working longer hours sitting at my computer. I’m trying to get up every so often and just walk around my living room. I can’t go too far in case the phone rings or a chat comes up, but I need the time to stretch.

It also was tough making sure that I could get all my morning stuff done before I started working. Even when I was working as a recruiting assistant from home, I always was dressed and out of my pjs when I worked. I’m doing the same thing now. Every morning, instead of waking up and making breakfast in my pjs before getting ready to start working, I’m now not leaving my room until I’m ready to work. I make my bed and get dressed (even though it’s usually just yoga pants and a tank top) before walking into the rest of my house and starting my morning.

I’ve never really done that before and it does seem to make a difference in my day. Instead of easing into my day, I feel more urgency to get work done in the morning. I’m supposed to go back to my usual start time next week, but I think I am going to continue this new routine of not leaving my room until I’m fully ready for my day.

While the extra money has been really nice, I am looking forward to getting back to my normal schedule. There are some things in the morning that I like to get done before work (like checking email and catching up on the news) that lately I’ve had to do either between calls (there is a decent amount of downtime) or at 3pm when I’m done working.

And while the search for another day job continues, I’m starting to get more referrals to jobs, which makes me happy. I got this box office job off of a referral and I always feel more confident getting work that way. I’ve got 2 referrals for jobs right now (one as a virtual assistant and one as a personal organizer) and I’m just waiting to see if anything comes of either (or both!) of those.

I know that I’ve gone through the adjustment phase of a new job several times by now, but I really do like once I’m settled into a routine and I can pretty much schedule out how everything in my day will go. It’s nice that I’ve gotten to that place again.

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Fall Cleaning (or Making My Workplace Spotless)

Posted on October 3, 2014 | 2 comments

I’ve always tried to keep a clean house. I do my laundry weekly, vacuum at least weekly (now that I have a vacuum again), and seem to dust and wipe down various surfaces in my house a hundred times a day.

The one place that hasn’t been super clean has been my desk. It’s not dirty, but until recently it never looked that dirty.

But now that I’m working at my desk and computer a good portion of the day 5 days a week, I’ve noticed that things have gotten a little grimy.

The one positive about being chained to my desk so many hours a day is that now I’ve cut down my computer time to only be when I’m working and then again in the evening (which is when I typically write my posts).

The bad thing is that I’m noticing the grime more and more since I have to stare at it for so long.

One day after work I searched online for how to clean the body of my laptop (I have a MacBook Pro). There were a ton of posts that came up and most had one thing in common.

They said to use a Magic Eraser.

I don’t own Magic Erasers so I went to the store to get one and see if this trick worked (and hoped it wouldn’t ruin my laptop).

It was pretty simple. Wet the Magic Eraser and then wring out most of the water. You want it to be damp and not dripping.

Then you can start cleaning. I first shut down my laptop and disconnected the power source (most websites didn’t suggest this but it seemed like common sense to me). Then I gently wiped the body of my laptop with the Magic Eraser.

It totally lived up to its name!

No joke, it was only a minute before my laptop looked clean again.

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And it worked so well, I cleaned the grime off my desk quickly too!

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I know I sound like a commercial for Magic Eraser. I swear I’m not. I’m just impressed at a product that really cleaned well and easily and figured that some of you might want to know how to de-grime a laptop too.

Now I have another weekly cleaning task to add to my list.

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Posted in Fun Stuff, Work

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Awake for 40 Hours (or I Guess All-Nighters Aren’t Just For College)

Posted on September 16, 2014 | Comments Off on Awake for 40 Hours (or I Guess All-Nighters Aren’t Just For College)

So here’s the story behind my exhaustion on Sunday when I wrote my last blog post.

The graveyard shift coding job has pretty much moved to daytimes only. I’ve worked a couple of projects, but I’m only averages maybe 2 or 3 hours a week with daytime work from home. That should become more hours in the future, but to supplement that (and my income), I’m making myself available for graveyard shifts on the weekends.

I can’t do the weekdays because I’m working my new box office job, but if I’m available on Saturday or Sunday I let the company know that if they need someone to work, I can help out.

I found out that I was going to work an evening shift this past Saturday. That was fine with me.

I woke up that morning at 7am (my box office job starts at 8am on Saturdays) and worked my first job. Then I did some errands before heading into the coding job at 7pm.

Since the start time was 7pm (instead of 11pm like it usually is) I figured I wouldn’t be there too late. Even some of my co-workers agreed that we should be able to get the work done pretty quickly.

And the first part did move quickly. As a team, we finished it in about 2 hours. That’s not bad at all. Then our bosses had been told that there were a couple of other surveys that we could tack on to the end of our shift to get done and help out the other employees.

I guess there was some miscommunication between some higher-ups and my bosses because these extra surveys we worked on were not something to just “tack on” to our day (or evening as it was). There were well over 1000 surveys (usually we have about 300 or 400) and there were multiple parts to each one that needed to be worked on.

Even though as a team we worked as quickly as possible, these surveys never seemed to end! At 2am I was starting to get exhausted and tried to take mini-breaks to keep myself from going crazy. At 4am I started to feel nauseous. Probably because my last meal was at 6pm and I had a light dinner (I thought I would make it to a friend’s party that evening and wanted to save my calories). Finally at 6am after 11 hours of working, I was told that my part of the work was done. The sun was coming up as I was driving home.

IMG_3779

I was so tired from being up for almost 24 hours straight. And as much as I wanted to go home and go sleep for a long time, that wasn’t my reality. I had to be up at 8am Sunday morning for some things and appointments that I had scheduled before knowing I was working graveyard the night before (and I did cancel since I figured I wouldn’t be working too late).

So I had the option on getting an hour or two of sleep or not sleeping at all. I chose to not sleep at all because I was scared of not hearing my alarm to get up at 8am. So I just hung out and read until it was time for me to start my day.

Then Sunday evening, before I had time to write my post for Monday, my job emailed me and let me know that they needed me to work from home during the evening. I had plans to go to bed as early as possible, but I needed to take the job. So I worked as quickly as possible, wrote my blog post, and started to get ready for bed.

Then my boss contacted me again to ask me to work more. I was so tired that I could barely see straight. So I finally had to tell them that I had been up for almost 40 hours straight and I just needed to go to bed. They totally understood. Most people who work those graveyard shifts sleep in the next day until 2 or 3pm. That’s just not an option for me.

I’m still shocked that I made it 40 hours without sleeping. The last time I pulled an all-nighter was in college when I was preparing for my art history final (I didn’t do that well because I was too tired). I’m not planning on pulling all-nighters on a regular basis. If I go in for graveyard shift work and I know I have an early morning the next day, I’m going to let my bosses know at the beginning of the shift that I have to leave by a certain time (you can only do that at the beginning of the shift, not the middle). I need to look out for me, even though all the overtime pay is going to be really nice on my next paycheck.

But I made it through, and now I’m going to spend my week catching up on the sleep I missed!

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Feeling Like Normal In More Ways Than One (or Getting Better)

Posted on September 11, 2014 | Comments Off on Feeling Like Normal In More Ways Than One (or Getting Better)

I’m finally starting to feel better after my throat ulcer issue. I’m still having pain while drinking water and breathing heavily while working out, but the pain is not nearly as severe as it was when I went to urgent care. The doctor there told me to give it 2 weeks to get better and I’m just past the 1 week mark. Hopefully by the end of the weekend the pain won’t be noticeable anymore.

I’m still trying to take it easy while working out. My ear issues have not gone away as quickly as the throat issues. My dad suggested that I take some decongestants to make the fluid in my ear get absorbed. I haven’t tried that yet, but I think I’m going to start. I’m still getting dizzy a lot during the day (and especially during workouts where you go from sitting or laying down to standing a lot). As long as I’m sitting, the dizziness isn’t happening. So at least I’m able to drive and work without feeling like I’m going to fall over.

And speaking of work, that’s getting better too! I’m finally getting used to my schedule for the national box office job from home. There’s a lot of down time at that job (hence the low pay), so I’m trying to find the best use of my down time. I have done some survey coding between calls and online chats for the box office job, but there haven’t been a ton of surveys to work on lately (that should change soon).

I’m also looking into some other freelance type work that I can do from home between my work for the box office. I know that I can write and blog. I just need to find some gigs that pay for me to do that! If you know of any, please feel free to let me know in the comments.

I haven’t gone back to substitute teaching yet, but that’s mainly because all of my Mondays lately have been very busy. And since I can only work on Mondays, when that day is filled up, there’s no other option for me that week. But I’m checking for work each week and hopefully soon there will be a job for me to work.

And I emailed my old box office job. They claimed that they wanted me to come back in September when the shows were starting again. I’m a little concerned that they have decided that I’m not necessary since they haven’t had me work for a while now. But I did send them an email saying that I wanted to get back to work now that the shows are coming back as well. I haven’t heard back yet, so until I do I won’t know if they are going to keep their word about me coming back this fall.

I know I say this all the time with day jobs, but it’s feeling more and more normal now. I’m used to my schedule and I’ve created routines for myself each day that fit into the new schedule better.

If only I was making enough at one day job things would be perfect. But the struggle is worth it for me. And I know that I will find a way to fit in all the jobs that are necessary for me to support myself somehow.

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Posted in Acting, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff, Work

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Being The New Employee (or Starting Yet Another Day Job)

Posted on August 28, 2014 | 2 comments

I started my new day job this week. It’s box office/customer service work for a murder mystery theater group. They have locations all over the country, so we are considered a national box office.

Everyone started a week before I did (I’m not sure the exact reason, but it worked out well for me). So a lot of the kinks in the system were figured out before I started.

But since this is work from home, I don’t have anyone around to answer questions for me.

Thankfully, this is much easier than my other box office job (or the telesales job). There is a spreadsheet with all the information that we need to know. And if things get too specific or someone needs to know something about a particular location, we just email that location and they take it from there.

I have to answer questions over the phone and also on online chats, so that’s a little new for me.

My first day was Tuesday (this job is Tuesday-Saturday) and it was pretty scary. The phones are weird because they ring for all of us at the same time (there are 4 of us in different locations around the country). So sometimes I’d answer the phone but someone else got it a split second ahead of me. Then I’d hear a dial tone.

I was terrified that I was doing something wrong with the phones, so I kept emailing another employee asking her a million questions. Thankfully, she was patient with me and understood that it’s tough when you are working alone at a new job.

After my second day, I’m starting to get a hang of it, but it’s still a little scary. I’m worried that I’ll get asked some crazy question and have no idea what to do (it’s happened plenty at my other box office job). I’m just trying to remind myself to stay calm and not to be afraid to ask questions to other employees.

This isn’t my first work from home job, but it seems different from all the others. This is the first time that I have to wait for the work to come to me, instead of me initiating the work like I did with my headhunter assistant job. I’m learning that it’s ok for me to step away from my desk for a second to get a drink of water or something because I’m never more than a few steps away from my phone or computer (the benefit of living in a tiny house).

I’m so happy that I finally have a job with regular hours again. And I’m ok with feeling nervous. When I started my telesales job, it was my first telesales (or any type of sales) job ever. I was so scared and would hope that people wouldn’t answer their phones. But by my second year at that job, I ended up being the assistant manager.

I’m not expecting to get any sort of promotions with this new job (it really isn’t set up to be that way), but I keep reminding myself that in time I will be comfortable with this new job and it will feel easy to me. And having regular money coming in will be really nice too.

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