The man who said he turned it off and on again
Monday · 61 calls · 1 cry in the car park
Calls today: 61. Calls where the router was the problem: 58. Calls where the customer agreed the router was the problem: 0.
Started at 7:58 because the system takes two minutes to log in and they dock you if you’re “not ready” at 8:00 exactly. Thank you for calling ConnectaLink, my name is Marcy, who do I have the pleasure of speaking with today? (The pleasure is never mine.)
Call 14 was Douglas. Douglas had no internet. Douglas had, he said, already turned the router off and on again, and he would like me to know that he had worked in IT for thirty years and did not need a girl reading off a card. I completely understand your frustration, Douglas. (I do not read off a card. The card is laminated and I know it by heart, which is worse.)
I asked Douglas to tell me what color the lights were. Douglas said green. I asked Douglas to unplug it from the wall, count to thirty and plug it back in. Douglas sighed for what my screen tells me was eleven seconds. Then there was a long silence and a sound like a man realizing something in a cupboard.
“It’s working now,” said Douglas.
That’s great news! Is there anything else I can help you with today? (He had not turned it off and on again. He had never turned it off and on again. In thirty years of IT he has not once turned anything off and on again.)
He hung up before the survey. Good. The survey asks if I “resolved the issue on first contact” and a man like Douglas gives you a 2 for making him get up.
Lunch was 30 minutes, minus the four it takes to walk to the break room, minus the three in the microwave queue behind Kevin from Billing, who heats fish. Every day. Kevin knows. We all know Kevin knows.
Afternoon: a woman crying because her son’s online exam had cut out. Not angry, just crying. I wasn’t allowed to credit her, so I gave her the outage reference number like it was a present and told her the school would accept it. I don’t know if they will. (I hope they will. I googled the school after. I don’t know what I was hoping to find.)
Average handle time today: 7 minutes 12 seconds. Target: 6 minutes. My team leader Bryce put a frowny face on my stats. An actual drawn face, with a pen, on a printout. He is 24.
Cried in the car for one song. A short one. Back tomorrow at 7:58.