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]

I didn't used to say when deactivation happened, but that actually exacerbates the tendency of people to send mail saying things like "Yes! I do want to keep the account! We need it for at least another month!"

(Not to mention, the people who think I mean "tomorrow" and fly into a temper that this is all being dropped on them at short notice. Those are the people that I really want to avoid provoking; the ones who give me somewhat confusing but cheerful answers are much less of a problem).