Just a rant...

[Shadowe]

Nothing about CoX, anyone here, anything particularly personal. I just want to vent my frustrations.

2 things have happened today that have wound me up to the extreme.

Firstly, I work for a large finance company, in the customer service department of the Pensions section. Translated into plain English, this means that I speak to customers and Financial Advisers on the phone. Lots. A lot of people consider me to be a 'go to guy' - the sort of person you can ask any technical question of, and I will know the answer, or know how to get the answer.

My job is business retention - if a customer wants to move money away from us, my job is to either a) persuade them not to or b) make the process as smooth as possible, if a) doesn't work.

I cannot save a pension plan if the client is RETIRING.

So, when someone in another department comes through to me, and tells me they have someone on the phone for me, and I specifically ask them if the client is retiring or not (the answer was 'not'), I do not expect the person that gets through to me to tell me that the client is retiring. Straight away.

Secondly, also job related, I've recently been helping out a project team. They had a huge spreadsheet of information that they needed to have analysed. So I set up some stuff in the background to do this analysis, and every day had to go into it, update approximately 9000 cells (thank heaven for Copy Down), and progress the data another 24 hours.

So why, why oh why, when I looked at it today were the last 2 updates missing? In fact, not just missing, but deleted? Why did I not get told that this work is no longer required? (I now know that it is not, but only because someone else told me, not because anyone in management has had the balls to tell me that I've wasted roughly 7 hours of my time over the last 3 weeks on this thing.)

If they were going to create a database with a pretty front end to store this data and analyse it WHY THE HELL didn't they do that first, rather than wasting my time?

Thank you for listening

{endrant}

[Kitmarch]

Oh! Oh! My turn!

I have to source suppliers for a replacement system on *deleted* by next week.

In order to do this I need to give certain information to the suppliers. I can't do this without management approval. Management is on holiday/moving house/in Canada.

One of the suppliers already has approval to know some of this information. I need to discuss electrical control details (which is the sole reason I'm on the project). I'm not allowed to talk to the supplier. All questions must be sent to my (non electrical) project lead, who will then forward them to the supplier, and copy me the reply when it comes.

Oh, on top of this I am neither qualified nor experienced in the technologies we're looking at. For one of them, noone in the company is.

[Josh Stormfall]

Funnily enough Lumi’ you struck me as someone that did the job you do, financials was a bit broad, but I guessed spread sheets would be involved.

I also guessed you would be the guy that people come to when they don’t know what they are doing or are too lazy to do it themselves and want to try to pass it on, or simply want something done and know you will just get on and do it.

Not sure it I got that from the way you role play or the way you write your entertaining plottage reports.

Hang in there it's nearly ythe weekend!

I’m sure everyone has their issues, but jobs can be a pain in the butt “oh and by the way can you change your plans and fly from the UK to NY and Princeton on 2 days notice to blah blah” , “I know it’s 6pm on a Friday but we really need…..”, “I know it’s not your department but could you just…” Still If I didn’t have a job, I wouldn’t be able to afford to play COX so can’t complain too much

[Shadowe]

Hehehe. Thanks, Josh (And I really must change my screen name here to Shadowe - bring it in line with all my other CoH related sites). You have no idea how glad I am that it's Friday. Things have been kind of hectic here today, and one of my colleagues decided to get pissy with me about half an hour ago... Because I was doing my job... No, I can't figure that out, either.

Well, other than that, things are going quite well. Except it's now 24 hours since I first posted this thread and management still haven't told me that they no longer need the big-ass spreadsheet I was working on.

I'm a little... chuffed/confused... that you managed to work out what I'm like from my RP and/or stories (must write more stories in my copious free time). Though honesty compels me to admit that you may think too much of me .

[Josh Stormfall]

I wonder if everyone else subconsciously gives away much about themselves in the game?

[Kitmarch]

Not addicted to cake and pizza in real life.

Honest.

Really.

[Akkarin]

Official rant thread? Yes please, stickying this.

So today, I aksed my boss if he had any jobs that had just come in. He did. "This guy should be fairly simple. Sole trader, simple income and expenditure. Have fun." I'm a trainee accountant by the way, if you didn't know.

So, I open up the records and oh look: about 500 individual expense invoices. I cry at this point, that's about 2 days work alone.

Not only that, but so far, 3 of these are actually business related.

Arg.

[Shadowe]

kitmarch said:

Not addicted to cake and pizza in real life.

Honest.

Really.

He. Lies.

[corpos]

I win on this one.....

Think of this:

I also work for a financial institution in the retention team......

I get all the same calls as Shadowe.....

.....but I've got to put up with his rants IN PERSON!![/i]

[Kitmarch]

My boss has been trying to freak me out with mental images of a coworker of mine (some of you will know who I mean). He's been at it all week with no success. Hanging round said co-worker and being signed up to a load of CoX globals means the mental filters are working fairly well.

Today he succeeded. I managed to retain mental cohesion by repeatedly banging my head on the table. I'm glad that worked, as plan B was to stab my hand with a box cutter.

No, I'm not saying what it was about, except to say that it would cause a relapse to think about it, would probably have the forum reclassified by the firewalls as disturbing pornography, and that what was described apparently actually happened.

[Shadowe]

ARGH!

PEOPLE ARE STUPID!

Here's the deal - right now at work we are offering customers something that pretty much amounts to money for nothing: If they keep paying us for 5 more years, we'll give them some more money. No strings. If they accept the offer, they can get it. If they don't pay us for 5 more years after accepting the only thing they lose is the free money. There is no other impact in any way whatsoever.

So WHY THE HELL would someone accept the offer, then phone up and say "Oh, actually, I've decided that I don't want it."

We are a huge multi-national finance company. We are offering you free money. WHY THE HELL DON'T YOU WANT IT?

[corpos]

Shad, I think you know the reason for this...... it's an age-old saying (well, for us anyway!!!)

"IFAs are STUPID"

Remember: It was the adviser[/i] who told the client not to accept the offer yet....

Personally, I think Shad's biggest problem with these calls isn't people's stupidity, it's that because of the number of calls coming in, we've actually got to do some work!!!!

[Shadowe]

*shiftyeyes*

Cheers, Corp.

No need to tell the world.

And that's only a small part of it, though having spent a year in a job where we do pretty much jack-shit all day has spoiled me more than a little, I think.

I think what's bugging me is the crappy implementation of this offer: At least 70% of the contact we're getting is from people who didn't get a letter from us, but got the follow-on letter, and are calling to ask what was in the original one.

So, yeah, we're doing a fair amount of work (for once), but there is no good reason that the workload is as large as it is - the job should have been done right in the first place.

[corpos]

So true.... can't argue with that point at all. The implementation of the project has been poor to say the least.

The worst point for me (and has been mentioned by SO many people) is why on earth did they do it just before Xmas - especially knowing that there's a very limited time frame on response!!!

You're also right that doing jack-shit for 12 months has spoiled us rotten. As much as I'd love to earn more, I can't see there being another job with as much or more pay where I'd be doing so little!!!

[Kitmarch]

So, with all this free money lying around that nobody seems to want........

GIMME GIMME GIMME!