» Call Centres

Callmongers
Did my time in a callcentre handling up to 7 different brands/companies. Quite often i'd forget to check the telephone display and answer with the wrong company name. Never got any proper training, and my computer knowledge was mostly about playing duke nukem.
Out of my many hats and welcome prompts, I did sales/support for an OCR software which came bundled with scanners, of course it was the "lite" edition. People had to call us to be able to register and use the software and our job was to upsell the full, pro version for almost 300 quid. Given that the scanner itself was just about 80£ it wasn't an easy job. The bonus we got for selling the pro version was around 80p, so we weren't really trying to sell it.
For many people the installation of the drivers/software went wrong and they had to call us 5 times to re-register the damn thing again. So, once I had the same guy 3 or 4 times within an hour, he was desperately late on a project involving thousands of paper pages and really needed the full version to complete his job, saying he would get fired if he didn't have it done by the end of the week.
He didn't have the money for the full version, and as he was sort of friendly I hinted a visit on "warez" sites for a full version (it was in early 1998-no torrents, mule or even kazaa in those days!).
I also took calls for Symantec/Norton. 1 hour later the same guy calls the number saying some bastard in a call centre pointed him to a site where he caught several viruses and his computer was dying. Not being very good with those virus things I told him to back everything up on his zip drive until he could talk to a proper techie. Now i've learned that backing up an infected drive on a clean zip disc isn't a good idea.
I also took calls for iomega zip drives. Glad he never recognized my voice.
(Thu 3rd Sep 2009, 13:55, More)

» Near Death Experiences

when we were kids
My and my sister had two favorite stupid games : Stuffing as many wine gums as we could in our mouth (i think i could do 20 or so) and the other classic games jumping the last 5/6/7 steps of the staircase. Once i combined both and choked real bad. Its hard to breathe with wine gums down your throat and a broken ankle. I was somehow accepting the idea of choking to death with 20 gums in my mouth. Then, realising what the headlines would be if i died this way, i spat the whole thing. What a waste.
(Sat 27th Nov 2004, 11:26, More)

» Look! It's me in the Local Paper

Student strikes
In 1990, we french students were on strike, can't exactly remember the reason, actually. It went on and on and on, more than 2 weeks, because it's nice not to go to school. Protesting in the streets was fun for a few hours, but quickly most of us were spending our days in the cafés. Some journalist interviewed me and my friends an afternoon. We were rather pissed and talked a lot of shite, in fact, we were laughing at the strike. The next day on the frontpage of the local newspaper there was a nice picture of 3 half-drunk 17 year old blokes sitting in front of several beer glasses, peanut packets and playing dice games. The title said 'Students :not a hunger nor thirst strike'. Mum wasn't pleased.
(Thu 10th Feb 2005, 13:13, More)

» Evidence that you're getting old

The university gang
We all got together again for the 10 years anniversary of the year we spent together pretending to study while being constantly drunk and under the influence of various exotic medications. So everything was going to be the same again, we'd go out and party all night like monstars, as we always did. So we met in the old town north of france, Lille. We went to that restaurant first. Everyone tried to sit as far as possible from the one he/she cheated or puked on in the days or the one you fancied and who got married with that awful twat, etc...I got caught between 2 couples discussing the benefits of gas heating while the neighbour on my left was trying to redirect the conversation towards the benefits of wooden houses, which he happened to sell for a living. The best company i got all along that meal was the bottle of wine. As we paid the bill i counted a little more than one bottle per head. Then we went to that bar we used to love, and ordered shooters, as you do, did maybe 5 or 6, and we all died.
Before midnight I fell asleep in my seat, and woke up 13 hours later with the worst hangover in the world® and my host's wife in my bed.Not being able to remember anything from the night before I panicked and woke her up to ask 'why the hell did you do this?' She answered that her husband puked in their bed and on her and that she just came here to sleep. I went downstairs to find 5 very sick people around the living room trying to remember what they did after midnight the night before and asking me what i remembered. I said : nothing. They didnt know either. So we played board games for the rest of the week end. I think i'll switch to gas heating soon, or maybe, a wooden house, who knows, i hear it's worth the investment.

EDIT : oh yeah my wife just told me to add that my spunk tastes crap nowadays. That must be a sign. Bugger. *trying to find something witty to say about old casks*
(Thu 28th Oct 2004, 21:58, More)

» People with Stupid Names

Years ago
I was doing contract work for Logitech, my contact there was named Charles Hicks, and with their email address format, it came up as '[email protected]', which my spam filter never failed to notice and send straight to bin. Everytime i received a mail from him, i dreamt of chicks at logitech, naked babes testing the ergonomy of mice, etc...
I also got to work with a girl called Sandy Bush, which reminded me of summer holidays
In the famous shitty names, international section, theres the almighty orchestra conductor called Kurt Moll, he's very famous but in french his name means 'short and soft'.
(Thu 26th Aug 2004, 18:47, More)