Work Snippets

[firstfrost]

• I've felt compelled to switch from answering the phone as "Hello, Athena User Accounts" to "Hello, Athena User Accounts, this is Laura" because of an increasing number of people who simply wait in silence after I answer the phone, assuming that I am an answering machine or a phone tree. When I eventually say "Hello? Hello?" they assure me that I sound just like an automated answering thing. (Now, after answering the phone the same way for years, I can see how I'd get fairly practiced at this, but last week had an unacceptably high number of these calls).
• I sent out the traditional seven hundred emails to sponsors regarding their guests yesterday (which caused the barracudas to decide I was a Spammer, but that's another story). There are far too many people who answer the question of "Would you like to continue sponsoring this account, or would you like it to be deactivated in the next round of deactivations in January of 2007?" with "Yes, I would like to continue sponsoring this account until January of 2007".

Comments

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Given that I sent out about 800 of these emails, I would dearly hope they didn't all answer by tomorrow! (But the response rate is pretty good, nevertheless.)

In any event, I'm fine with people who fail to answer - then I just eventually mark their guests as doomed, with a comment that the sponsor didn't answer. If the guest calls to complain, it's easy enough to say "we sent your sponsor email back in October, but they didn't answer us" and then the guest can go and poke the sponsor on their own.

It's the people who answer "Yes, A and B are good" that baffle me. :)