It is a glorious day here at the MerleSneed blog, and for two different reasons.
As you may have gathered from my previous posts, I love to be right. I love being able to say I told you so even more. Before I get to the gloating part of our program, let me to bring you up-to-date on the struggle with DIRECTV over their unreasonable demand that I fork over 200 smackaroos.
I called back to DIRECTV today to see if they had a decision on the bogus $200 charge they were trying to get over on me. They didn't, but the woman I spoke to, transferred me to a second woman, who had an answer for me. Her answer was too bad, pay up, schumk, more or less. I took a moment to compose myself before calmly uttering the magic words, "Disconnect my service". This, of course, was a total bluff.
Well, that got me to the Customer Retention department, and fast. The helpful representative in that department did the math on who loses if I actually quit and blinked. She put me on hold for awhile and came back with better news. She said that they would make an exception, just this once and just for me. She made me promise to go forth and sin no more with respect to improperly discarding DIRECTV receivers and with a keystroke, she fixed the problem.
So, to DIRECTV I offer a tip of the hat. They did not go willingly, but they went, and that's all that matters.
Now to our feature presentation.
On September 18 and 19, I posted about how my coworker, let's call her Lindy, had failed to get some work done for a project and as a result, I had a really angry customer on my case, not hers. My boss, is a fellow we shall call Kendall. Now Kendall doesn't like to be bothered with these sorts of problems, you know, the ones where he has to actually get involved. Kendall would rather command the problem solved, through the mighty power of his Kendallness. He promised this customer that things would be just dandy without having gathered any evidence to support this contention. It was an empty promise, delivered by a fool.
The poor customer made the mistake of believing him and the trainwreck was officially scheduled, for early November.
Today was the day that the chickens came home to roost, so to speak. I received a call from a frantic coworker, who evidently was under some pressure to explain to someone exactly what was wrong and why we were about to miss the customer's date. The questions he asked me made it clear to me that someone was blowing smoke up his behind about what was really wrong. I gave him the real lowdown and off he went in a different direction.
Shortly thereafter, Kendall himself called me, with the first guy on the phone. He asked me the same misguided questions, except that he said, "didn't you, Lindy and I find a workaround for this problem?"
I said, "Yes, except that was a different customer and it was me, not you two. Plus that solution won't work here." In Kendall World, willing the problem solved, is synonymous with actually solving the problem. He and Lindy wished it was solved, so it must be solved and they must have solved it. Simple.
I also reminded him that a month ago I tried to alert him that he was going to have to deal with this problem sooner rather than later, but that he wasn't all that interested in dealing with it back then. I don't think he liked the reminder that much, but he went away and that is all that matters to me.
In a couple of minutes the head dude of the company we are failing called me and asked what the story was. He had been fed the same line of bullcrap that the first guy had told me. I suggested that he call Kendall and ask him what he intended to do, cause I am powerless to drag the unwitting or the unwilling. Plus if the guy getting the big money to be boss, refuses to boss, what can I do?
I did what I could do, told who I could tell, warned those who needed warning and now I get to say...told you so!
I am reminded of this;
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Oh yeah, and the resolve to let dopes fall in the holes they dig.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong and sometimes just full of it.
Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor
Oct 24, 2006
The Thrill Of Victory
This isn't too bad, we can pull this together.
It is a glorious day here at the MerleSneed blog, and for two different reasons.
As you may have gathered from my previous posts, I love to be right. I love being able to say I told you so even more. Before I get to the gloating part of our program, let me to bring you up-to-date on the struggle with DIRECTV over their unreasonable demand that I fork over 200 smackaroos.
I called back to DIRECTV today to see if they had a decision on the bogus $200 charge they were trying to get over on me. They didn't, but the woman I spoke to, transferred me to a second woman, who had an answer for me. Her answer was too bad, pay up, schumk, more or less. I took a moment to compose myself before calmly uttering the magic words, "Disconnect my service". This, of course, was a total bluff.
Well, that got me to the Customer Retention department, and fast. The helpful representative in that department did the math on who loses if I actually quit and blinked. She put me on hold for awhile and came back with better news. She said that they would make an exception, just this once and just for me. She made me promise to go forth and sin no more with respect to improperly discarding DIRECTV receivers and with a keystroke, she fixed the problem.
So, to DIRECTV I offer a tip of the hat. They did not go willingly, but they went, and that's all that matters.
Now to our feature presentation.
On September 18 and 19, I posted about how my coworker, let's call her Lindy, had failed to get some work done for a project and as a result, I had a really angry customer on my case, not hers. My boss, is a fellow we shall call Kendall. Now Kendall doesn't like to be bothered with these sorts of problems, you know, the ones where he has to actually get involved. Kendall would rather command the problem solved, through the mighty power of his Kendallness. He promised this customer that things would be just dandy without having gathered any evidence to support this contention. It was an empty promise, delivered by a fool.
The poor customer made the mistake of believing him and the trainwreck was officially scheduled, for early November.
Today was the day that the chickens came home to roost, so to speak. I received a call from a frantic coworker, who evidently was under some pressure to explain to someone exactly what was wrong and why we were about to miss the customer's date. The questions he asked me made it clear to me that someone was blowing smoke up his behind about what was really wrong. I gave him the real lowdown and off he went in a different direction.
Shortly thereafter, Kendall himself called me, with the first guy on the phone. He asked me the same misguided questions, except that he said, "didn't you, Lindy and I find a workaround for this problem?"
I said, "Yes, except that was a different customer and it was me, not you two. Plus that solution won't work here." In Kendall World, willing the problem solved, is synonymous with actually solving the problem. He and Lindy wished it was solved, so it must be solved and they must have solved it. Simple.
I also reminded him that a month ago I tried to alert him that he was going to have to deal with this problem sooner rather than later, but that he wasn't all that interested in dealing with it back then. I don't think he liked the reminder that much, but he went away and that is all that matters to me.
In a couple of minutes the head dude of the company we are failing called me and asked what the story was. He had been fed the same line of bullcrap that the first guy had told me. I suggested that he call Kendall and ask him what he intended to do, cause I am powerless to drag the unwitting or the unwilling. Plus if the guy getting the big money to be boss, refuses to boss, what can I do?
I did what I could do, told who I could tell, warned those who needed warning and now I get to say...told you so!
I am reminded of this;
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Oh yeah, and the resolve to let dopes fall in the holes they dig.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong and sometimes just full of it.
Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor
It is a glorious day here at the MerleSneed blog, and for two different reasons.
As you may have gathered from my previous posts, I love to be right. I love being able to say I told you so even more. Before I get to the gloating part of our program, let me to bring you up-to-date on the struggle with DIRECTV over their unreasonable demand that I fork over 200 smackaroos.
I called back to DIRECTV today to see if they had a decision on the bogus $200 charge they were trying to get over on me. They didn't, but the woman I spoke to, transferred me to a second woman, who had an answer for me. Her answer was too bad, pay up, schumk, more or less. I took a moment to compose myself before calmly uttering the magic words, "Disconnect my service". This, of course, was a total bluff.
Well, that got me to the Customer Retention department, and fast. The helpful representative in that department did the math on who loses if I actually quit and blinked. She put me on hold for awhile and came back with better news. She said that they would make an exception, just this once and just for me. She made me promise to go forth and sin no more with respect to improperly discarding DIRECTV receivers and with a keystroke, she fixed the problem.
So, to DIRECTV I offer a tip of the hat. They did not go willingly, but they went, and that's all that matters.
Now to our feature presentation.
On September 18 and 19, I posted about how my coworker, let's call her Lindy, had failed to get some work done for a project and as a result, I had a really angry customer on my case, not hers. My boss, is a fellow we shall call Kendall. Now Kendall doesn't like to be bothered with these sorts of problems, you know, the ones where he has to actually get involved. Kendall would rather command the problem solved, through the mighty power of his Kendallness. He promised this customer that things would be just dandy without having gathered any evidence to support this contention. It was an empty promise, delivered by a fool.
The poor customer made the mistake of believing him and the trainwreck was officially scheduled, for early November.
Today was the day that the chickens came home to roost, so to speak. I received a call from a frantic coworker, who evidently was under some pressure to explain to someone exactly what was wrong and why we were about to miss the customer's date. The questions he asked me made it clear to me that someone was blowing smoke up his behind about what was really wrong. I gave him the real lowdown and off he went in a different direction.
Shortly thereafter, Kendall himself called me, with the first guy on the phone. He asked me the same misguided questions, except that he said, "didn't you, Lindy and I find a workaround for this problem?"
I said, "Yes, except that was a different customer and it was me, not you two. Plus that solution won't work here." In Kendall World, willing the problem solved, is synonymous with actually solving the problem. He and Lindy wished it was solved, so it must be solved and they must have solved it. Simple.
I also reminded him that a month ago I tried to alert him that he was going to have to deal with this problem sooner rather than later, but that he wasn't all that interested in dealing with it back then. I don't think he liked the reminder that much, but he went away and that is all that matters to me.
In a couple of minutes the head dude of the company we are failing called me and asked what the story was. He had been fed the same line of bullcrap that the first guy had told me. I suggested that he call Kendall and ask him what he intended to do, cause I am powerless to drag the unwitting or the unwilling. Plus if the guy getting the big money to be boss, refuses to boss, what can I do?
I did what I could do, told who I could tell, warned those who needed warning and now I get to say...told you so!
I am reminded of this;
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Oh yeah, and the resolve to let dopes fall in the holes they dig.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong and sometimes just full of it.
Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor
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1 comment:
Success with Direct TV! If only you could get Virgin Mobile to return the unused balance on my phone.
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