Hi all,
Nothing dramatic has happened since the last time I posted except I've finally left work. Amex was fun and it was a great place to work however I can't sell for shite. It didn't help that I tranferred to telstra for exactly the same role. Fail.

Asides from that I've managed to save up a bit which will sustain me through unemployment and also a bit more so that I'll be able to go on a nice month-long trip. 

That's it for me now, it's 4;20 in the morning and my fingrs are numb from typing on the iPhone.

Till next time,
Helder

I hate the festive season, not as much as I hate slow walking people or people who stop suddenly in front of you. They deserve a well-placed club whack to the head.

*walk* *walk* *walk**stop* *WHACK* *drop*

That's how it should be!

I haven't blogged much these past few days. Alot of things did happen though, there was Christmas, my birthday, my friend, work and sickies! Christmas was the boring usual; family dinners, catch ups, gambling .. the usual East Timorese hoo-ha.

We have two new training groups, that are coming in around the middle to the end of January, that means, less calls during the day which means I'll be lathering my brown ass all over the TL's in trying to secure an early shift! Night shift's starting to take a bad toll on me. The train's are always late, the weathers cold and I'm badly sick. My birthday was semi fun. I bought myself a treat; a new watch (which I  hopefully don't lose like the old one) and a pipe (courtesy of the best friend). All in all, it was fun. Except walking through the city after Yumcha to find a shitload of people in the city. Who knew the BD sales would be this popular! Recession people! Recession!

If that wasn't enough me best mate finally has a girlfriend! Yes tis the girl with the baibeh. I'll wring out the financials here then you'll find out why he's stressing hard.

$250.00 every week/twice a week when they go out, $800.00 for a wallet on the second date, she expects him to pay for everything including phone credit, toys for the baby and for everything else. On top of that, he decided to go out and buy a near-new BMW totaling $45,000. He's paid half in cash and the rest is financed. $1000 per month for 2 years.

And he makes $500 odd per week. For his sake I hope he makes it.

I've just come to the realization how much call centre work sucks. Especially inbound ones. Many customers won't know this, but each representative is "marked" by qualities that affect our KPI's. Most companies will have compliance and quality and not much effort is required to hit those two KPI's. Oh no. Not where I work. We get judged on 6 qualities, ranging from "value and respect right up to recommendation".

Now when a customer calls in pissed, there is literally no fucking way you can "exceed" or "top box" that call. Yet, our tight arse team leader sent an email around stating "those who don't hit ATS, T2B, B2B or compliance" will be hit with formal warnings. Four warnings and you're out. I'm going to get slammed with not meeting T2B AND B2B. Why? I've never gotten a T2B box (out of 5 calls monitored they choose the shittiest calls to mark), 20% average (2/5) are B2B calls. So that's an amazing two-fold slap on my brown face, given this circumstance I'll last another 2-3 months before I get fired.

Most of the time, if a customer wants to know their balance and you give it. Bam, B2B call. Every single one of our calls, we're flooding customers with information just to cover our own arse. On top of that, we're taking 70-90 calls per shift (7 hours), 25% of that you'll get ripped open by customers, 50% of those are quick-fire answer calls and the other 25% of the calls, you'll be stuck waiting for another department to help you out.

---

Asides from that, I'm having a quick browse through various credit cards. Yesch, I'm applying for one, it's about time I take responsibility. I figured, if I leave my pay in the account and only use the card, I'll be able to "earn" points whilst paying off the card in full every month.

Question is, what's a card with a low annual fee, good awards and awesome features and benefits. And no, I won't be applying for an Amex card.