Tag Archives: work success

Swinging on the Limbs of Phone Trees. Stress, Part 3

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Dateline:  Left hand on one phone tree limb…Right hand gripping another tree limb…oops.

PART THREE.  Hour Three. You will not be able to properly feel my pain or find some shred of forgiveness for my behavior unless you have read Parts One and Two of my torture history.

Hour Three in Phone Tree Stress

Now I’m bumped up to Level Three Customer Service since my request is
apparently too complicated for the first two levels. Level Three Customer
Service Guy thanks me for choosing Dell and asks me to give him all my
information again.  He assures me he will solve the problem. I let out a sigh of relief.

Level Three Customer Service Guy comes back on the call where I wait with gratitude and anticipatory excitement. LTCSG says, “I see the problem.  Your computer only fits with a six cell battery and what they sent you was a nine cell battery.”

I struggle to breathe. Okay. Just because common sense made no sense to Levels One and Two, maybe it will work with Level Three Guy. I begin, “Sir, I’m afraid you are mistaken. Yo see, the computer in front of me came with a nine cell battery and I have purchased several replacement nine cell batteries from Dell.”

Didn’t even make a dent. He continues, “Ma’am. No. Please listen. You have
the right battery for your computer. We just need to send you six cell batteries of the same type and you will be ready to go.”

“But–”

“Trust me. Your computer can only use a six cell battery edition of the same kind of battery you were sent. I will order two of these for you.”

At this point, I suspect I’m going insane. I give up. “Fine. Here’s my credit card number…though you are sending me an incompatible battery and wasting another week.”

To check out the insanity possibility I now drive to Best Buy to get checked out with a Geek Squad Guy. I run my story, show him my computer and ask if I’m losing it. Geek Squad Guy says: “No ma’am. That is a nine cell battery and your computer uses a nine cell battery.”

Trembling and nauseous. I know what hell lies ahead. I call Dell back. I trudge through levels one, two, and three spouting my name, address, and shoe size over and over.

Level Four Supervisor Guy apologizes profusely and says he’ll fix the problem. Could he please have my name, address, last four digits of my Social Security Number, and place of birth.

Hour Four

Fifty-six games of solitaire and four dropped calls (each requiring that I give them my birth certificate again), Level Four Supervisor Guy is back on the phone. I tell him my sad story. He looks up the order for the two batteries Level Three Guy ordered for me. He agrees that those batteries are not the correct batteries. He tells me not to worry, when I receive the batteries, my money will be refunded after I take the package to a UPS office, since I have nothing to do with my life except to do research and run errands for Dell.

Level Four Supervisor Guy has a special goodie for me since I’ve had so much trouble.  The goodie? “We are going to give you free shipping for these new batteries!” he says grandly.

I go back to the insanity possibility.  Did he just say Dell was generously going to
pay for shipping back to Dell the batteries to replace the wrong batteries for which I had paid Express Shipping?  I couldn’t hold in my glee and laughed. He asked me if I’d be interested in opening a Dell credit card.  Now I am roaring with joy.
“Oh, yes, that’s just want I want to do. I want to arrange my life to deal further with
Dell customer service, that is exactly what I want to do.”

Then, Level Four Supervisor Guy asked if I would stay on the line for a survey to help them out.  What?  I’m working for Dell Human Resources now?

Maybe I would have answered a few questions, but I was thinking margarita and a Jorge’s enchilada platter for lunch.  Oh, but wait.  My other phone is ringing….which was handy since my call with Level Four Guy had dropped before the survey commenced and before he’d ordered the correct batteries for me.

I answer the cell. “First, let me thank you for choosing Dell. We show that earlier today you ordered two six-celled batteries. We’d like to follow up on your call to Customer Service. Would you punch in your name, phone number, and the Day Lincoln was shot…and then choose from the following options…”

Lunch turned out to be a fantasy. You’d think this situation couldn’t get worse, but it does. Going insane seems like a small price for how I spent the afternoon.

 

Stress. The “Ha Ha, We’re Here to Help you…” Incident

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Dateline: Voice Mail Hell.

Dealing with the stolen luggage was nothing compared to the day I spent working for Dell.

I have a dream.

One day, I will take my seat on a plane and the person who plops down next to me will be the pathologically cheerful woman who makes all the sugar-laced phone tree recordings. She’ll say, “Welcome! Thank you sitting next to Time Warner, Dell, Hilton, American Airlines, Southern European Sushi.”

I cannot in a pubic medium give you the exact words I will choose. But my first sentence will begin with “Please choose from the following options…” And none of the options are going to be pretty.

Not since Hitler has any one person caused so much screaming by so many people.

Hour One

When my luggage was stolen in Albuquerque, I had two expensive Dell batteries inside. That very miserable day—anxious to get back to work–I called Dell and ordered replacement batteries. Today I’m calling Dell because they sent me the wrong batteries.

The call began, of course, when Bubble Voice Lady Sugar Voice greets me with: “Thank you for calling Dell!”  We all know what the woman THE VOICE is as really saying, which is:  “Hi, sucker. So glad you are willing to do this company’s work for us. Because by you spending your time trying to match the words I’m saying, we don’t have to pay real people to work for us. You can just imagine how this is helping our profits, since we don’t have to pay social security or benefits to machines!”

I punch one for English.

“Great! You are now with customer SERVICE and I want to help
you….Now TO SERVE YOU BETTER…”

Which really means: “To continue not having to provide you with services… please choose… between the following sixteen options…. And don’t even think you can skip this trial by fire, because if you do, you will be punished by having to start the game over….and over and over until you shoot yourself and we don’t have to take the chance that you will ever bother customer service again. Now aren’t we having fun?”

I punch buttons like a trained donkey and get to this message: “Okay! Great! Now I can get you right over to someone who can help you!”

I breathe a sigh of relief. I’d walked through the fire. I hadn’t thrown anything or cursed. Would this be the one time customer service solves my problem? Had I previously been too hard on invisible mankind?

Now I am on terminal hold…Every two minutes the Bubble Cheery Voice comes back on to gaily remind me how important my call is and ask, “Did you know you can have your order completed faster and more conveniently online at www.DoThisCompany’sWorkForNoPay? If you choose to stay on the line,
your call can take up to an hour or however long it takes to get you to give up.
Now wouldn’t you rather do this all online?”

I’m trying to remember where I keep the pistol….to be continued.

Last Mexico Tourist Standing, Anxiety, Part Two

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Stress to the Max, The Togetherness Force in Mexico City Traffic and How It Can Get You Killed

Dateline:  The outer reaches of a traffic circle on the magnificent including impaired health. Whether or good or bad depends on whether driven by emotions or thinking.

What does the great leader of the Aztecs, Moctezuma have to do with the togetherness force and the individuality force? Well, he did lose touch with what he believed…when he was awed by the horses, the guns, and the facial hair of Hernán Cortés.  Some kind of rock star worship, I guess.  Allowing the conqueror to take over his “bests thinking” decision-making didn’t end well for the chief.

Now back to whether or not you are a relationship junkie, that is, unable to move if someone you care about is anxious.  Or unable to stop moving away if someone you care about is anxious.

Too much of the togetherness force (fusion) is when you can’t tell where you stop and the other person begins. When you feel what the other person feels. If when your important other (or, heck, could be a particularly annoying stranger) gets upset…and you automatically get upset. You automatically go into ‘fix-it’ behaviors. You know you will not be okay until the other person is okay. Fusion is not all bad. All intimate relationships have some fusion.

Too much of the separateness force can result in too much distance as occurs when marital partners or siblings share so little they do not have enough common experience to know who or what the other is talking about.  Separateness like fusion is not all bad and is a part of all relationships.

All of us experience both forces.  The forces are not descriptions of pathology, though some people and cultures value one over the other, such as when “true love” is seen as one person being unable to survive without the other, or in frontier days when a person could not compromise sufficiently to live with others and rode away as the admired “rugged individual.”  This same over-sensitivity to others contributes to homeless persons preferring to camp out rather than suffer the closeness of a shelter.

If driving in Sonoma, California, the relationship junkies will fare better than the loners who will get chewed out for being rude (?).  In Mexico City, relationship junkies on the road–looking left and right, letting drivers in from side streets, even obeying red and green lights–endanger not just to themselves, but also innocent drivers who play by the city’s rules.  As a relationship junkie you will likely be found months later babbling incoherently as you drive round and round, circling the Statue of the Angel…and praying a little.

As Jessica LeFave, the psychologist sleuth in “Too Rich and Too Thin, NOT an Autobiography” says: “The rule in the horseshow warm-up ring is: Pay attention to what’s in front of you, and only what’s in front of you. Go soft–try to take care of who’s behind you and to the side–and you’re just mucking up the show.  We fools hooked on jumping horses over fences learn anti-defensive driving to survive in the warm-up ring before each class. The warm-up ring is always a tiny space, usually cut into units by steel girders supporting the coliseum, dividers perfectly positioned so that should you lose control for a moment, slip slightly left or right in the saddle, your neck will snap back as your head cracks into the steel. In this insane space, several dozen giant and excited horses randomly charge over fences in zigzagging paths with no regard for on-coming traffic or flying poles.  The straight-ahead, terror-factor-focus learned in the horse show warm-up ring is why I can drive in Mexico City, and why I’d make it through tonight and tomorrow (confronting a killer).”

Next:  Beginning of the Relationship Dependence Series, the “It’s Only Thunder” Incident.  Also facinating updates from the Last Mexico Tourist.

 

 

 

 

The Fat Lady and the Hannibal Lector Credit Card

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“Which is more important?  The world that exists?  Or the one you are responding to?”

“Which is more important?  The world that exists?  Or the one created by ADVERTISING?”

A frequent Mysteryshrink statement in the official Home Branch Office:  Each of us makes decisions about how we spend our TIME, our ENERGY, our MONEY, and our LOVE.

Our love isn’t limited, in fact the more we give away, the more we have.  Not so with money, time, and energy.   Our money, time, and energy have limits…and there’s a great big, better paid, and highly motivated industry out there trying to decide FOR you on how to spend your resources.

The next several entries on how ideas planted in your brain…can direct behavior…will be concerned with CULTURAL FORCES DESIGNED to TAKE YOUR MONEY and YOUR FREEDOM….Not to mention keep you all around nervous…

Keep in mind the lesson from Inception–the notion of planting an idea in the brain of a person— then watching that idea grow.  (See Leonardo DiCaprio, Inception, and the “Lady Who Loved Freud Incident”)

Now, I must first confess a teensy lack of objectivity when it comes to advertising games…a tiny, itchy pain haunting me from a very young age.  And this teeny pain has resulted in run-ins with the commercial powers-that-be more than once. 

The Fat Lady Fiasco.

The first time I locked horns with the power-brokers of persuasion, I was ten.  The family was attending a travelling circus with a carnival side-show alley.  This was before the era when children didn’t leave their parents’ sight, though given what happened, perhaps the new methods are better.  As it was, after studying the photos and sketches on the outside walls of her tent, and pausing for much deliberation (I was one tight-fisted kid), I decided to pay $.50 to see the Fat Lady.

Well.  I’d seen fatter women digging through the frozen food bin at the Safeway.  I was hot.  I demanded a return of my funds and was refused.  Thinking this was indeed a free country, I planted myself by the entrance and informed everyone passing by that the Fat Lady was a gyp.  You’d think “carnival security” which didn’t have the best reputation…(My sister and I believed that the freckles on the carnival workers’ arms were evidence of syphlis, not that we had the faintest idea what syphilis was.), you’d think carnival security would be backed off by a paying customer practicing her rights as a citizen.  But, no, my budding efforts at spreading the truth were shut down and my parents were called to collect me.  That was my first brush going against the Commercial Man. 

The Hannibal Lector Credit Card blood-sucking machine will have to wait.  Just don’t buy anything for a couple of days, okay?  What does advertising have to do with what we tell ourselves about ourselves and how much fun we’re having on this little trip?   Close your eyes, click your ruby heels together and repeat to yourself:  “I am not my car….I am not my car….I am not my….” “…I am not my butt size…I am not…my…”

Think You’re Having a Bad Day? The “Nail Gun Attempted Suicide Incident”

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blooddreamstime_10027047

One way you can tell you are making decisions based on baloney from your Emotional Guidance System is…when…with each step of the process, the bleeding gets worse.

One of the features of being crazy humans is that we do not always…maybe even ‘usually’ do what makes sense.   Instead we do something familiar or handy.  I’ve been particularly amazed at our consistency in thinking negative or fearful thoughts… and  when the first negative doesn’t destroy us…we repeat the procedure…until we’re somewhere below the dumps.

We also have this need to tell other people negative things (opinions) about them or people they care about…and when the first piece of information isn’t convincing…we lay on another…and another.  (This is particularly true when talking politics.)

So, as you read about the man below…think of your negative thoughts or statements as big ole long construcktion nails. 

Okay, now I’m not absolutely sure of the exact story, but I did hear this one on the radio (which means it’s true, right?).  The man in the story gives us an excellent lesson on one way to know when we are making a decision using our Emotional Guidance System. 

The story stars a construction worker who was having a pretty good day… until he slipped with the band saw and cut his hand off at the wrist.  Seeing the horror of his stump spraying blood in all directions…our construction worker could see no way to go on with life and decided to kill himself …now…He looked around and spotted a nail gun.  Two inch nails driven into the body in essential places could do it…He picked up the nail gun and fired one into his forehead…but he didn’t die.  He fired a second nail into his forehead.  Damn.  That shot didn’t end his consciousness.  What to do?  What to do? 

What else?  If at first you don’t succeed….He fired a nail into the side of his head…and then two.  Then one on the other side of his head…then two.  Our hero fired a total of twelve nails into his head before he lost conciousness.  But he didn’t die.  He woke up after surgery, his hand sewed on, his head nails removed.  I suspect his family will never let him forget…oh, the cruel nicknames…

Talk about the Emotional Guidance System running the show…Did it not occur to the man after, say, the eighth nail….that, just maybe, his chosen method of suicide had shortcomings?

Think of focusing on fears and reminding others of their weak suits…as you with the nail gun in your hand…the method doesn’t work…and is really messy.

Can People Change? Behind the Battlelines

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soldierdreamstime_9029015I’m going in.

Teaching children with cerebral palsy to ride horses presented many challenges.  One I always remembered was when the child’s skills had advanced to the point she was ready to jump, I’d present the good news, then set a cross-bar.  Often my student would shrink back, saying she wasn’t ready, she was too afraid.  I’d insist, even urging the horse from behind if needed.  I’d explain…and this was a fact born of experience…that I’d push her forward even when she didn’t believe she was ready because I’d taught many students through this stage and… each and every one survived and was happy to have made it over that first jump, no matter how messy.

Now the truth was, in my head I’m thinking… “Take a jump on a horse chosen because he’s safe, a horse maybe not even awake?  You’ve got to be kidding!”  But I’d push, they’d limp over, and all ended up happy.

Often when I’m talking with someone in my office about working on managing anxiety, the picture comes back of the student rider on the ancient steed, and how I expected the rider to do what I didn’t have to do.

Thus, today…I’m going in behind the lines.  I’m going to knock the spider webs off my Thinking Guidance System and see if I can loosen up a self-defeating habit.

The Mission: Infiltrate a group of unknown people and function with an open heart and open mind.

To stretch…instead of allowing my (self protective) Emotional Guidance System’s warnings to run the show:  “You don’t have anything in common with these people.”  ”Just get in and out as quickly as possible, don’t obligate yourself or you will be sorry.”  And the biggee:  ”What if everyone there is a genius, is model thin, actually has spiffy coordinated outfits with scarves and big purses with designer buckles, drives a Bentley, has a house in the South of France, is a perfect wife who cooks and actually decorates her house instead of using the space to collect stuff from Mexico, is a great sister, a medal-winning mom, an acclaimed writer with a has a killer New York agent…What if?

Full Report to come.

Who’s In Charge?

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2963_75x75.jpg  I was going to lie low until the Spring as I have a book coming out in early summer, timing and all.  But I can’t wait.  Yesterday on the plane the man behind me chastised his wife, “You make decisions based on your emotions while I make decisions based on what I see and hear for myself.”

I had to mention this because so many times this argument is used as if WHAT YOU HEAR and WHAT YOU SEE isn’t determined by your emotions.  Example later.