Can You Hear Me Now

Video about breaking away!

2011-04-12T21:21:00.000-04:00

Music

2010-05-19T17:33:00.000-04:00

Check out Camburn

2009-12-16T08:43:00.002-05:00

A blunt and raw blend of meaningful old school hip hop mixed with various rock, alternative, and R&B flavors. Check us out. If you find something you like, please don't hesitate to buy, lol.

2009-12-09T06:51:00.001-05:00

2009-09-03T11:02:00.002-04:00

Donate to help support this independent artist:

Tasberry's Full Review of the LG CHOCOLATE

2006-08-23T13:34:00.000-04:00

Normally I don't really care for LG cell phones. I've always been partial to Motorolas. Moto gets a bad rep sometimes but I've never had any problem with any Motorola that I've even owned except for those old ass ones with the long ass battery/back that used to just die after three seconds of conversation. Anyway, I've owned two previous LGs ONLY because they offer the one sided phone conversation recording feature and the Motorolas for my provider are not capable of it. That is the ONLY reason I owned LGs because this was a feature I decided I could not live without.
When I heard about the Chocolate I immediately had desire to get one. It was different, it was hot looking, they marketed it really well, and it was something I knew would cause a big commotion. OMEGOODNESS an ipod/ phone right? Yeah. Well anyway I ran out on August 6th to be one of the first people who got this phone. I've now been experimenting with it for an entire two weeks so I feel I can give my entire review now. So here goes:

LOOKS:
Looks hot, there's no doubt about that! I love the glossy casing (even though it gets dirty as shit), the red touch pad lights, and the overall size of it. I've never owned an ipod so I didn't really know if it looked like one or not but it damn sure looked smokin'! And I dont' even like slider phones but this one caught my eye. A plus on the eye candy aspect of the design. Sweet indeed.

RECEPTION:
I've had no problems with the reception on this phone, but then again I had no problems with the reception on ANY phone that I've owned. I live in a well towered area so i can't really say if there's issues or not. The phone would have to be REALLY bad to screw up in my area.
Voice clarity is excellent. Yes, I can hear you now. Volume settings are sufficient enough for my liking. No static or weird tunnel sounds or anything. They did ok there. A for reception/voice clarity/ volume.
The music player is actually pretty good. Kicks pretty good ass for only having one speaker but I still think the 8100 and 8300 had louder sounds. Factory ringtones are pretty loud and "interesting" but they took one away that I had on my 8300 that I used to use for texts :-(

BATTERY LIFE:
Sucks complete and utter monkey balls. The extended battery is a MUST with this phone. Original battery did not last an entire day when I had it and I wouldn't say I'm a real heavy user. I talk, I text, and I go on the internet a few times a day to check my e-mail but wtf? Plan on spending an additonal fifty dollars for the extended battery unless you enjoy being CLICKED in the middle of a really good conversation. D- for battery life.

FEATURES:
This phone is packed with a lot of great features. Well you've got your music player (which can play mp3 and wma. awesome), your camera (which takes excellent pictures), your long ass video taking capabilities, your bluetooth, your internet, your v-cast, your touch pad, your voice command, your voice memo, your tty, and your blah blah blah. What you don't have is a speakerphone and just for that I want to throw the phone out the window. How can a manufacturer even think about making a phone without the speakerphone feature??? When I found out I had no speaker phone I almost pissed myself. I use bluetooth sometimes but mostly I like to put my phone on speaker and sit it next to me when I'm doing something. I prefer that option to bluetooth. We should have a choice.I'm going to have to give this phone a rating of WTF for the missing speaker phone. Is LG on crack? So I can listen to music out the speaker but I can't listen to another caller out the speaker? What the hell?

QUIRKS AND FLAWS:
Now for the good part. I just don't think LG was thinking much when they developed this. It was a good concept but the flaws on this phone are just too annoying. For one...no speakerphone. Number two there is not enough area for text messaging and the keys are too close together. I am a lady with very small fingers and text messaging has become a really hard TASK. I text a lot and I literally have cramps from screwing around with this matchbox sized texting area. No effing good unless you are an elf with a toothpick handy.
The touch pad is way too sensitive even after playing with the sensitivity setting. I find myself going into the wrong menu items a lot, activating menu items with my cheek while i'm in a call, muting myself with my cheek by mistake when the phone's up to my ear and other such bloopers.
The keypad has a lock that you can't change the settings to. It locks on you if you don't press anything in three seconds. I'd rather have the option to lock my keypad when I feel like it and unlock it when I don't. This is extremely annoying especially if you have a thought that takes more than three seconds to process. Well then you have to stop and unlock the damn phone! Not only that but when you're in a call and a call waiting call comes in you have to UNLOCK the keypad and then answer the call. By that time the other caller has probably gotten pissed off and hung up and your other party will probably hang up on you too because most likely you will activate the mute button with your cheek and they won't hear wtf you're saying anymore till you again unlock the keypad and then turn the mute off. Oh and I forgot, to unlock said keypad you have to press the voice memo side button TWICE. Not just once.
If you're listening to music with a stereo headset and a call comes in, you can't answer the call and talk through your headset like on the 8100 and 8300s. Oh no no no, you have to take your headset off and then put the phone up to your ear and talk in it.After of course unlocking the keypad and accidentally activating the mute button. Wtf kind of bullshit is this??? There's a setting in the music controls called "music only." It makes it so that you can only listen to music and not be bothered by the phone. It's really not necessary because you pretty much will be listening to music only after you and your caller get frustrated as shit a few times. No one will call you anymore.
When you're connected to bluetooth and you use voice command...after the conversation ends the voice command bitch keeps asking you if you want to call so and so. If you say no she calls them anyway. You can't slap her so it becomes another annoyance.
Weird software stuff happens like phone freezes and speaker stops working intermittently. I like the fact that I can get and respond to text messages while I'm on a call but sometimes that feature does not work properly and the phone freezes up on me. Lost all of my sound one time for no apparent reason. Had to reboot the phone to get it back. Not good.
No standard headset jack. Have to use stupid looking adaptor that most people lose from jump because they have no idea what the hell it is.

GOOD STUFF:
There are a few good things about this phone. You can make and send your own sounds to yourself and save them as ringtones. That's a good one. You can set your texts to autoplay which I love because I'm too lazy to press buttons and open them up. You can listen to music. Text messaging ringer id is pretty cool. And er...well...that's about it.

OVERALL OPINION:
My overall opinion of this phone is that it's way more glamour than goods. It's really sharp looking and different and all that, but basic functionality becomes a really hard and annoying task way too much with this. So...come September I will puttting my candy back in its box and getting something a little less freaky and possessed. It's not going to be a keeper.

THe Einstein Award

2006-06-07T05:33:00.000-04:00

And the Einstein award goes to...the guy who dropped his cell phone in the toilet and then rinsed it off in the sink as not to leave "toilet germs" on it. Oh yeah, that's reeeal smooth, boss. I'm sure the phone wasn't damaged enough from falling in your funky toilet. You had to run a stream of water over the electronic components too. This idiot's wife had nerve enough to ask me to do a phone book transfer on that phone too. Some how I didn't quite think that that machine was going to be reading any phone numbers off of that particular phone. I don't know what clued me in. The piss coming out of the charging port or the fog on the display. Hrrrm. Anyway, this guy was definitely on my Einstein list today. Yeah.

Pissed

2006-06-06T08:44:00.000-04:00

I was a little pissed at my job yesterday because the LG 8300 was officially released so naturally I wanted to buy it. I'm not eligible for upgrade so I had no problem with pay full retail cost. Latest and the greatest, you know me. Turns out that my employer does not care if I have the money or not, employees are not allowed to buy said phones at a retail store location. We are only allowed to order phones on the online store. Of course I was off yesterday and couldn't access the employee store from home so I just wanted to go to the store and buy a new phone. What's the fucking problem? I don't know but this company has way too many stupid rules for me. I see now why they pay us so much. It's because if they don't they know we'll get aggravated with their stupid rules and leave. Yeah I almost fought with employee accounts three times because I think it's so ridiculous that I have to order this phone online and then wait a fucking week or two for the order to get processed and for fedex to bring their lame asses to my house. By that time the phone won't be new anymore. Ug, I am not a happy camper. At all.

Summer Cellphone Releases

2006-06-02T06:27:00.000-04:00

There's a few interesting CDMA phones coming out this month. some have already come out and some are days away from being fully released. Motorola has come out with a revised CDMA version of the razr (bottom pic). This version will sport a memory card and an mp3 player. Well DUH! It should have had these things to begin with, dorks! It only took Motorola two years to get their thumb out of their asses on this one. Way to go Moto! Why do I even bother? Anyway, I won't be getting the new razr. I dont' believe in getting the same phone twice and I already had the razr when it first came out almost two years ago. I had it when not many people had it. Yes, I had it when people were crazy enough to spend $650 for it! Ha. My razr craze ended in about two weeks back in '04 or some shit. Now everyone has it so I don't want it.
Motorola has also released the Q (second pic from bottom)...its razr styled PDA phone. This puppy comes packed with windows mobile 5.0, windows media player 10, STEREO bluetooth capabilities (listen to your music with bt headet), a kwerty keyboard, thumbwheel navigation (like the blackberry), and other nifty treats. I won't be getting this either. No matter how feature packed I can't stand PDAs. I like a phone that looks like a phone, NOT a a brick. That's what this phone looks like. A gray brick that got run over and flattened. A paper thin brrrrrick. Yeck. I love Motorolas, but not enough to carry around their newly released bricklette.
There's a Samsung 930 (third from bottom) being released also. Don't know any of the features of this phone because I wasn't excited enough to even do research on it. I hate Samsungs with a passion and to me this particular Sammy looks like a very discreet knockoff of the Motorola Pebl (third from top). This offends me greatly as I feel the Motorola Pebl is GOD. This phone is so freaking hot I'm still sweating over it. Too bad there's no CDMA version of the pebl (gsm only). My mom has it through T-Mobile. I am mad jealous. Anyway, yeah, the Samsung 930 sucks.
So...that leaves me with the Lg Vx 8300 (second phone) as the phone I will be upgrading to. This will be the updated version of the 8100 which is the one I have now (top phone). The casing on the 8300 isn't as nice as the blue casing on the 8100 but it doesn't matter because I use a leather case at all times anyway. This phone adds STEREO bluetooth capabilites, customizable Flash interface, and uses microSD memory cards instead of miniSD. Oh and I also read in reviews that you can also voice record your own ringtones and send yourself mp3 files to use as your ringtones. That's a huge PLUS. However, you can't view your pic messages and text messages on the outside display like with the 8100. Wtf?! And I don't understand the whole mini SD to micro DS situation. So what they're telling me is that I'll have to buy a whole new memory card when I move to the 8300. ????? What an asshole (LG). Lg is good for removing important features and changing unecessary shit. Still and all I have to have the latest and the greatest and the 8300 is the best out of all my options. I was hoping Motorola was coming out with something new other than the Q but I guess not. Maybe next time.

Testing testing 1,2,3

2006-06-01T09:33:00.000-04:00

I'm just testing this out. The reason I haven't been posting much is
because I couldn't get on blogger from work. Lol, but now I've found
a way around it. Yes. So I'll be stopping in more frequently. Word!
See you soon.

Work

2006-05-04T06:36:00.000-04:00

I fell asleep on the couch again and didn't even set the alarm. I'm surprised I got up at all. Gotta be in at 8AM. One more day and then mini VACA. Yay! Forgot to mention I got two compliments yesterday from my customers. One guy told T I was very helpful and such. The other couple told J. I was like "Yes!" I love when they say shit to T. I wish we had comment cards. Glad they went out of their way so he knows I do shit.
D is trying to transfer to Vineland. I will be so pissed off. I'll really feel like the outsider once he leaves. We kind of formed a mini click because we went to training at the same time. Once he leaves I'll be the lonely outsider, lol.
It was a crazy day yesterday. The guy that complimented me almost got into a fight with this other dude. Both men were like 65 years old and I don't know what the fight was about but the one guy was waiting for the other guy outside doing jujitsu warm up excersises and shit, lol. He was ready to bang this other fool out. We had to call the cops. It was hilarious.
About an hour later I was fighting with a Russian (?) couple about their bill. They had $600 worth of bills and when I looked at their bills I noticed two things: 1. They hadn't made a payment since March and 2. They were going WAY over their minutes every month. They tried to argue with me that their bill should be $100. Yeah, IF THEY HADN'T GONE OVER THEIR MINUTES it would have been. But they did and plus two more bills had been generated since they paid last. The billing period was on the 20th. They made a payment for $100 on March 18th. That was for the previous bill. Then March's bill was generated on the 20th. No pay pay. Then April's on the 20th. No pay pay. Of course it was $600. Duh! They just didn't get it and I got real tired of trying to explain it. They ended up going to J who went and got T and T came out and gave them whatever the hell they wanted anyway (a new phone). T is so customer oriented but sometimes he just lets the fuckers walk all over him. They aren't supposed to get shit until their bill is current. Wuss. I guess they didn't bitch about me though because he would have said something.
My last hour and a half this retarded guy was blocking my station talking to prepaid customer service. His name was Wyatt and someone had stole his phone and switched it for another while he was at work. He was flipping. You just had to be there for that. I can't even put into words how crazy he was but when he walked up to the greeter I was just looking at E like "Please don't send that guy over here." She did and she thought it was funny so when he wanted help with the bill payment machine I sent his ass back over to her. Lol. We were both cracking up. I had to hide behind the wall once because I was laughing. He wasn't really retarded, he was just nuts or something. It was a hoot when he was snapping to customer service about his phone getting stolen. He was like "My phone was stolen by a 'theif by coincidence'" What the fuck is a "theif by coincidence"? I don't even get that. Whatever. At any rate he made my job easier 'cause I couldn't help anyone else for the last hour and a half being that he was standing in front of my computer from 6 till 7:30. Lol.

A Crazy Day

2006-04-12T20:14:00.000-04:00

*12:13 PM*. Today is starting out to be the day from hell already. OMG, my very first customer was a guy with a business account who wanted to do assumptions of liabilities with FIVE of his numbers. Two to one of his workers, and three to his himself. Need I say what's all involved with just one of these? Yah...it took an entire two hours to do these assumptions because his numbers were split up into two different accounts And they were all on family share so of course "the old system" wouldn't let me move the numbers until splitting them into five individuals, etc. It isn't hard it just takes a long time and there's a lot involved. One assumption usually takes 20-25 minutes with no complications...but there's always a complication, lol. After all that this guy actually had the nerve to request an early upgrade just because he did assumptions. T of course did it for him. I wouldn't have. Oh and he asked me to do the upgrade and such like I was a salesperson. Wtf?! Two entire hours. Everyone gossips at my job so when K came in someone had chirped to her that I had done this great big multiple aol early this morning. She came to me and said "Damn, after that I would have told them I had diarrhea and went home." Yeah it was a pain but the time moved fast.

My second customer was a very grumpy old man who jumped out of the tech line, came to me, and started snapping out calling his phone a piece of junk because he didn't know how to use it. I showed him the manual but he said he didn't understand it. He was so mean and he wanted to return his motorola e815 and reactivate his kyocera 3125 because he was used to it.Well I definitely didn't feel like doing a return and I hate to see a good E815 come back so I took my time with the man and showed him how to dial and press the send key. Then I showed him how to text message. By the end of our time together I had turned this grumpy old man into a smiing E815 user who thanked me for all my help. You're welcome. Now, get the Fuck out!

*3:17 PM* Just took my break and got a little catnap. Ready to get the rest of this day over with. Things calmed down a little after my customers from hell left. I got a couple that came in and said that I had helped the woman yesterday activate her 3300. I don't even remember these people. I see a million people a day so I had no idea what the hell she was talking about so whatever. Today her husband's phone seemed to be having a problem. Problem was he was getting his voicemail every time he called his wife. I was like "wtf?" That didn't sound right. Figured out the problem really quick. Problem was they had accidentally swapped phones because they both had the 3300 so he was actually calling himself when he thought he was calling his wife, lol. Yeah they switched phones and they were out in five minutes.

*3:54PM* Customer just got irate with me because he wanted to return an acessory and I had to tell him he was out of the 15 day return policy (which btw is stated on EVERY receipt) period. He looked at me and said "Ok, so you're not going to do it!? That tells me a lot about the organization." Mmmmm, ok! Yeah verizon sucks. Get over it. Two minutes later I got a guy and a girl who just wanted their credit ran to see if they would qualify for service. I am not a salesperson but a salesperson asked me to perform the credit checks. Why? Because he probably figured he wasn't going to get any money out of it. So anyway, the girl came up $125 security deposit and that was just too much so then the boyfriend wanted me to run his credit. His non driver id was expired and his birth certificate was crusty as was his social security card. Neither of which we could take for service anyway. I verified it with T and he said no. So when I notified the dude as nicely as I could he responded with "Fuck this!... we're going to cingular." He stormed off. Guess what pal? Cingular isn't going to take your crusty outdated id either. Not only that but in a case where we ask for $125, they will ask for $300. Been there. Done that. See ya, lol.

8:09PM. I'm home now. The rest of the night was ok. Had to help a woman in the tech line with bluetooth. I don't like pulling people out of the tech line because if it turns out to be something I can't help them with then they get pissed because they can't get their place again. Luckily this time she just needed to be paired up and I knew how to do it so I did.

After that I got a couple of insurance phone activations I had to do and then at the very end I got a triple line deal from Lisa which was a little complicated because the dude was tax exempt and all this. Well it wasn't hard, it's just that we have so much remarking to remember and if we don't the ding happy bitches on the morning shift will get us. Tomorrow I will be said ding happy bitch and I'm going for blood. Fuck 'em and fuck 'em all. DING! DING! DING! HAHAHA!

Damn!

2006-03-31T23:23:00.000-05:00

Well, as predicted we didn't get out until damn near 11. I'm starting to really hate J with a passion. Several times I was contemplating just putting my coat on and leaving. He's just slow as fuck and then there was an issue with B and the new system we have to close on.

My day started out pretty good. I had taken a iron pill and was zipping around being very helpful and working hard with my customers. Went the extra mile a lot for those folks and felt good about it. Then at about 7PM I got the transaction from hell.

Guy came in with a Samsung i730 Pda phone. He wanted to return it, go back to his old phone (motorola v710), and then have his contract put back like the upgrade had never happened. No problem, right? Wrong!!!
First of all it was a return of an exchange because first he had gotten that audiovox vx6700 pda and he didn't like that so he exchanged it for the i730. Now he didn't like the i730a and wanted to put his old phone back on. I absolutely hate returns of exchanges and shit like that because then you have to search and find the original transaction, study the first exchange, and then do your refund or exchange of the exchange. Things get complicated with the pricing and codes and all that and I started wigging out just on that part of it alone. The person who did the first exchange didn't have the pricing right on the exchange phone and it was all down hill from there. Then the guy had a leather case that he had bought in the original transaction so that was a whole other return I had to do because it was on a whole separate order (long story).
When that was all said and done I thought deactivating the pda and putting back on the motorola would be easy. WRONG!!! When you switch from a pda to a regular phone or vice versa there is always some type of error message with the features and the system gives you these numbers of what you're supposed to put on or take off, but the numbers never match the choices you have of features to put on or take off so you have to pretty much play trial and error. ?????? AHHHHHH! Well this time I didn't even get that when I tried to put the moto on. I got the error that I needed to take off the unlimited pda feature in order to do the esn swap. Went into the features screen and tried to take the unlimited pda off and the error said "This feature can not be deactivated". That's a serious problem because without deleting the feature I couldn't do the esn swap because the feature was no compatible with the motorola v710. I tried everything under the sun. After about a fucking hour I called customer service because I felt like an idiot that needed help. Guess what? They couldn't do it either. Ran into the same problem. Tech support couldn't help us either so we were just all stumped. Well, J finally came along and did some shit but I have no idea what he did. At the end of the night he told me the only reason he was able to do it was because he ran into the same problem before and it took him a good hour to figure it out. Would have helped if he had told me exactly what he did in case I run into it again.

So yeah I was good and aggravated by the end of that and then the night dragged on with the closing and stuff. If I could drink a beer right now I would. Unfortunately I have to be up at the ass crack and I'd be too tired. Guh!

I'm still here

2006-03-24T06:21:00.000-05:00

My life got crazy for a little minute then I got a bad cold but I'm ok now. So I go back to work today and get off at 9:30. I'll be back then ;-)

What don't they understand?

2006-03-15T05:32:00.000-05:00

I will try to keep up with this blog now. I'm going on a mini vacation on the 17th. A mini vacation right at home so hopefully I can write more. Nothing really stuck out too much yesterday. Been kind of a wreck because my marriage just broke up so I haven't been paying much attention. I do however, remember this one guy that was very disgruntled that we didn't give him a free phone because he dropped his phone in the toilet and chose not to purchase insurance before hand. He wasn't eligible for upgrade so the only resolution was for him to pay full retail for a phone. *Sigh* Here's my advice for that: 1. ALWAYS get insurance. 2. Never piss and talk on the cell phone at the same time if you're a man. Men are easily distracted by their own penises. You might suddenly become more interested in your penis and accidentally drop the phone in the water.

Tonight

2006-03-11T21:08:00.000-05:00

*11:59* I'm getting threats already. Guy came in with his broken OLD nokia phone and wanted me to activate another one of the same OLD nokia phone he had with him. Problem is that the phone was non gps and there's no way I could activate it even if I wanted to. The system will no longer take non gps phones. Even if we wanted to activate a non gps phone for someone we would get a big ole error message. So he didn't understand the concept of "If you already have a non gps on your account you can keep it but when you go to change to another non gps phone we can't do it." So he's all like "So what are you going to do? Do I have to buy a new phone or are you going to give me a new phone? Or am I going to have to change companies?" Lol, I love it when they threaten me that they're going to change companies. Everyone knows how I feel about that don't you? Lol. He was actually out of contract and was definitely eligible for upgrade with the $100 credit toward a new phone at the two year promotional price (with contract renewal of course), but yeah he would have had to pay something. He wasn't going to get a phone for free. We don't have any phones for free. Said he might be going to Nextel then. He pulled the old "muscle move" to get me to what? Hand him a phone for free? Whatever. Bleep bleep and I'll see you back in about 2010 or earlier when Sprint pulls the plug on Iden. Lol.

*3:33* Not too bad right now but a lot of razrs went today. That and the motorola e815 because it also went on bogo today. Just been sitting here chillin' and e-mailing S and R back and forth.

*4:11* B the jolly Irish technician just pulled me to corner to show me this secret cabinet where she had mad bubble wrap. I'm like ok??? Well she began to tell me that SM hates when people pop bubble wrap. Not just hates it, but he literally wigs out when he hears someone pop bubble wrap so he hides it. Lol, now you know that makes me want to just walk past him and pop some now. HAHAHAHA! But then again I wouldn't want anyone to do that to me. There are three sounds that drive me absolutely mad: Whistling, typing, and clucking. They just boil my blood. Don't know why but lord have mercy. I think the typing one gets me the worst and it's messed up because I do a lot of it. Ug. And these people just told me this long story about how they ordered an e815 online or some such and there was a special for them to get a free bt headset and they didn't get their headset. And?! We're a completely different channel. Our specials wouldn't even be the same as one offered online or through telesales. They need to call the channel they ordered their phone from. See ya.

*5:47* Just got done with a four line deal. Whew. I'm ready for a nap now. Guess that isn't going to happen 'cause R just brought me over two more razrs....

*6:09* We just got complimented by those people with the two razrs for our great service. The woman said she was going to write a letter about us. Heh. Well gotta go. Cool J just brought a couple with two motorola e815. And he did such a good job of not even putting the discount codes on his deal or anything. He is such greatness.

*6:43* Just got a customer come in and request a number change and a "good number". Looked in the old system and found him 7771. He was all happy and whatnot. He said "That's right up my alley right there" Lol

From a few days ago

2006-03-06T06:52:00.000-05:00

*wrote this a few days ago. Now i'm off till tomorrow*

Wow. I have never heard TN raise his voice before but today he was snapping out. The techs were getting an earful of a guy who refused to leave his phone for an hour. A had explained that the line was backed up and they had to keep the phone to do diagnostic tests and to try to reproduce whatever problem it was having and he could not jump in front of everyone else whose phone was being worked on. He flipped out and the problem escalated to him havnig to go into "the office" (in the back where the techs work..away from customers) and have a heart to heart with TN. All I heard was TN wigging out and screaming at this man that he could not BUMP everyone else to take care of the issues with his phone and such. Everyone was like "woah" because he is like the gentlest of men...almost seeming a little sweet. Well today my boy was mad as shit.

And why are the salespeople at the **** Mall still selling the razr with the regular headset/case/car charger bundle when THE RAZR HAS NO JACK FOR A REGULAR HEADSET!? Wtf? How long on that error? And why are their customers continuously exchanging them at our store? Ug.

We know how much I can't stand assumptions of liabilities right? Well how 'bout I had to do one and then do a reverse one back to the original account holder. AAAH! Yeah that was a good hour. It went something like this: A woman came in with her mother and wanted to put the mother's number on her account and add her to the family share plan. I had them fill out the assumption papers, did the credit check, tranferred the mtn and everything. I was just about to do a price plan change on the assumed line and get this chick's sig when she notified that me that she wanted to change her family plan from 1000 minutes to 1400 minutes. This required me to have to do a multi line price plan change. Any price plan changes extend the contract out, so there would have been four contract extensions. It was my duty to notify her of such. "I can do that but it will extend the contracts on all four lines", I told her. So then she didn't want to extend her contracts by changing the minutes and she didn't want to keep her mother on with a measly 1000 minutes. She saw no advantages to keeping the mother on the individual plan she was already on when the number was tranferred either. So they asked me to "put it back". What???!!!! Put it back?! It's not as simple as just putting it back. She only had one line and when you do an assumption you are pretty much cancelling and turning your account over to someone else's account. So now to "put it back" I had to run a whole brand new credit check on the mother like she was a new customer, create a brand new billing level for her, call **** and explain why I ran a credit app on a customer that had just did an AOL three minutes ago, tranfer the number back, try to figure out the dates her original contract ended on, her original upgrade eligibility date, and all that and try to put them back like they were...and write a novel on why all of this was going on. Unfortunately there is no "put it back" button. There's a lot required to try to take back an assumption of liability. After all that I needed a beer. Word!

Then toward the end I got another butthole customer that wanted to exchange his damn phone forty times. This fool went through three blackberrys and finally got the vx **00. He now wanted the blackberry back???!!! The last exchange was already done outside of the 15 day guarantee period. Plus there is only ONE exchange supposedly. Wtf?! This guy got three and was on his fourth???!!! TN did it too. He was tearing his hair out but he let the guy get away with it. Hell? That place is insane and the people are out of their minds. I'm right where I belong...lol.

Oh and we had this black guy come in today who sounded like he was straight from England. I was looking at him like wtf. It was just odd because his face didn't match his voice. It was odd in a cool way though. I wish I could do a British Accent real good. Anyway, he had dropped his motorola e815 off to get worked on 'cause he "couldn't get any calls." I wanted to die laughing when I found out that the reason couldn't get any calls was because someone had been playing with his phone and had restricted all of his incoming calls. Remember those neat little settings I told you about? Allow all, allow none, or allow only from phone book? Yep. He used allow none by accident. Problem solved. Damn I wish this 8100 had that capability but it doesnt and my spouse doesn't want to trade back with me now and I'll be damned if I buy a phone that I've already had again.

You know what?

2006-02-25T22:29:00.000-05:00

I just noticed that the subtitle for this blog is still "True tales of a wireless sales consultant". Dude, I'm not even a sales consultant. That was sooooo Pre-November 2005. I should change the subtitle, but I wont. For one I'm too lazy. For two there's just something not so cool about "True tales of a Rep-Retail Customer Support". Wireless Sales Consultant just sounds like it's hot. Rep-Retail Customer Support...not so much.

Just Crazy

2006-02-25T18:44:00.000-05:00

*writing from work* It's 10:21 and I'm stressed already. First of all I opened so I had to do all the paperwork with V. We had gotten all the deal files done and I was just getting into the 901 reports when this man came in and asked to do a transfer of liability for a phone number he had on a business account with his company to his personal account which he had four phones on a family share. As we well know assumptions of liabilities are a pain even in situations where the assumer is also the releaser. Yeah he was the owner of the company so he was pretty much releasing this number to himself. I still had to do a credit check on him and it came back MR status so I had to call COOS and see what the F was going on. They fixed it and approved it so then I went into the old system to move the number and it wouldn't let me transfer the number because of a price plan conflict. I forgot the wild ass error messages I was getting but they had something to do with the price plan. Could not move this number without changing the price plan. I tried everything...changing it to the secondary family share plan that it was to be under the new account, changing it to an individual plan, one year plan, two year plan....nothing worked. It wouldn't let me change the price plan either. WTF?! I then asked for the Assistance of one SM who also spent a half hour trying to fix it. He finally was able to change the price plan to whatever just to get the number transfered. That's it, right? Wrong. Nope...I still was supposed to do another price plan change in the new system once the number was transferred so I could get this man's signature for his new contract. Well...guess what? Now the new system was not letting me change the price plan to what it needed to be on (Secondary family share 6000 min). I kept getting another error message. I was about ready to explode by then and the customer wanted to leave. SM was just like "I think we're going to have to do a manual contract" so I whipped out a manual contract and had him sign it. I'm still working on filling that out. I don't even care if I get dinged for doing it wrong. Fuck 'em. Still in the middle of the 901 reports and aggravated as all hell now. Plus this guy asked me to mail his paper contract to him. Does my name tag say USPS?! And the whole time he was bitching about how he didn't have these issues when he did the other transfers in Pennsylvania the other day (he had all PA numbers which was probably part of the problem). I wanted to tell the fucker to go back to PA and get it done then.

*6:00 and home* The rest of the day was crazy. There was no time to eat or anything. I ordered a small wonton soup and was about to go to my car and dig in when N told me V was on break and I couldn't go. That pissed me off because whenever we order food everyone runs to the back and whoever doesn't make it back there is fucked. I wasn't about to eat in front of 80 people so I was trying to go on my break in my car and couldn't go. When I did finally get a chance I only took twenty minutes.

It was just ridiculous in there. K had to whip out a paper contract too later because of system issues. The revisions they made to the system sucks balls. Tons of error messages and such. I had all kinds of customers coming in expecting me to solve problems that I had no control over like payments that never got credited and so forth. This chick had already sent proof of payment to corporate. If they didn't fix it then I surely couldn't. I am not allowed to issue any credits. Wtf? Another call for SM.

Another woman came in wanting me to credit her for $11 worth of games that she downloaded and "didn't know they were going to charge her monthly" for said games. Wtf, dude...it tells you all that when you click the link on your phone that you will be charged monthly. Whatever. Customer service. 1-800-$$$-@@@@. Leave me alone. Yes, I am customer service, but I am retail customer service. I can't help you with that.

This other dude looked at me like I was crazy 'cause he wanted to pay his bill with me. "You have to pay at the bill payment machine right behind that wall, sir." "What?! Bill payment machine???!" "Yes. BILL PAYMENT MACHINE." See you. We can't take bill payments at our little stations. See you.

Full retail purchases now require the buyer to have a license and to be authorized on the account. A girl came in wanting to do a full retail and I had to turn her down. She was authorized on the account but she had no license or a non driver id. Just a school id and a debit card. SM said no because the license is a requirement. N and R said they would do it but I went with SM. He's the Supervisor and I'm not getting dinged. The little bitch was upset. Oh well. See DMV.

Me and K were a good ass tag team today. I helped her out with a five liner deal. Put all the phones together, programmed them for her, bagged everything, etc. She was very appreciative of my efforts. I told her it was no problem.

Later on when it was time for me to go I saw her struggling with an assumption of liability. The husband was releasing three lines to his wife and all were on a family share. You have NO idea how complicated it is to move around family shares. It's enough to drive someone crazy. You have to plan the shit out and use schematics and calculus to do it. So I opened up my old system and made some changes while she was making her changes and it worked out ONLY because we had two old systems open. See when it's a family share you get errors about moving the primary line AND you can't change one of the leftover secondary lines to a primary 'cause you'll then have two primary lines which is not allowed so you sort of have to do two things at one time (move the numbers AND make the left over number primary at the same time) or it just doesn't work. Hard to explain. Glitch in the system. Sucks balls. You can't open two old systems on YOUR computer either which makes it more fucked up. It has to be two separate people doing it at the same time. Arg!

So then she was asking me all these questions about the credit app and creating the shell account. She had created the shell account but then forgot to create the bill account so old system hit her back with "bill account not found". I fixed it but didn't really have time to explain it. After all that she had problems doing the final price plan change to get the signature electronically. She was trying to do it in newest system but wasn't familiar with it so I was going to do it in account inquiry. That's when N came along and advised us to "do it in account inquiry". Uh...yah. I was.

It's just crazy. I can't even almost express how complicated this job is and how funky our systems are. Saturdays are always short staffed too. It's a mess. But anyway, I'm done now and ready to enjoy my two days off.

My dieting has been going well. This is my third day and I'm getting used to not cramming myself with tons of fat shit. Been crapping more often lately. Had to bust one at work today. I hate that. So...I'll do some housework and try to make it to the gym tomorrow or monday.

Oh so I'm Liberace Now

2006-02-23T20:44:00.000-05:00

*Sometimes I write this stuff while I'm working so it's in present tense*

I wore one of my suits to work today. It was all black with this really sharp white shirt with a couple little ruffles that I pieced in with everything. Black boots and dress socks of course. Ok so I thought I looked presentable and whatnot. Maybe I over did it. Lol, anyway A, D, and N started messing with me as soon as I came in. They said I looked like a Casino host. They said my suit looked like a bus driver uniform. They said I looked like Liberace!!!! LOLOLOL! D was like "Where'd you park the bus at?" I said "Yo momma's house!" Too funny. But on the real..... L, L, and big T all liked my suit. As long as T### #. N#### likes my suit I told the three stooges they could kiss my ass, lol. Especially A who wears the same NAVY (they are supposed to wear black) pants every day and they're missing a button so he can't even say they aren't the same pants. Hahaha! I got some laughs anyway.

Two exchanges today already of something for the Motorola E815. First guy said the Samsung 950 was the worst phone he had ever had in his life and he wanted the e815. The other guy just wanted the e815. I want the e815 too but can't seem to steal it back from my spouse. The 8100 is ok and I really like the British woman that announces my caller's names improperly when I get an incoming call...but I much prefer my Motorola stuffs.

*5:22 PM* Wow, I just got a chance to write some more. Today has been crazy exchange/ return day. It's like everybody and their mother is returning something today. My last exchange took about an hour. The woman said that she had been in this store for two hours because she kept getting in the wrong line and talking to the wrong people. She finally got to me and had to spend another hour standing while I almost went crazy trying to figure out the necessary coding and such. First of all she was doing a return of an exchange which is complicated enough. Then the freaking phone she was getting kept on ringing up with the one year pricing when she should have been getting the two year pricing and I had to try to figure out how to discount that down. D kept bickering with me to use the ADJ codes and I was getting mad because he was wrong. The ADJ codes are to mark a phone UP if they come out the two year price instead of the one year price. I was looking to mark the phone DOWN and the ADJ codes don't do that. Anyway, I ended up adding the $50 to the RC 97 code I had to use to issue this person $100 off because she was buying a pda and had an unlimited data plan. Ug, long story, and then I had to notate all this in their account. Yikes.

Some guy walked up to me and told me that everything I told him about porting his number and such was on point and that I had done a good job and deserved a raise. I have no idea what he was talking about, who he was, or what I had advised him on, but if he wanted to tell T I deserved a raise it would have worked for me, lol.

*6:11* I am so glad J left for the day. The man can NOT do ANY deal without screwing it up royally. So far I've gotten deal papers with missing order numbers, missing phone numbers, scribbled phone numbers, wrong upgrade reason, no upgrade reason, etc. It has been complete hell just deciphering his madness. If a person wants a one year plan the pricing of the phone differs from if they want a two year plan and you have to pick the correct upgrade reason in the system so the pricing will come out right. Twice he picked a one year plan but a "u2" reason which would have had the phone at the wrong price had I not caught it. Ug. Die.

Doing good today though. It is now 6:15 and it's sort of slowing down. One more hour to go.

*7:05* My last exchange of the day was buck wild. This chick with mad facial piercings just walked up to me and said "I'm gonna swap out phones. W sent me to you and said you'd know what I'm talking about." Um...yeah...no...I had no idea what she was talking about. Turns out she had bought a Samsung a970 in NOVEMBER and her and W had somehow how got T to agree to exchange this phone for an Audiovox cdm 8945. But get this....she had no box or anything and the 970 she was giving us back wasn't even the original one she had bought. It was a fru replacement. Wha???
I was able to locate the original receipt but everything still took a long time because there were discounting codes and such that I needed to put in. At then end of this transaction I couldn't get the new phone to activate because the phone she exchanged wasn't the original phone or some craziness. Had to manually do it in the old system. Arg. Wild!

I got to play with the Motorola v325 today. Nice looking phone and everything but no good for me. I tried to record a conversation on it and I got myself instead of the other caller. One way the wrong way. Wtf?! Glad I tested it out before I ordered one or something. I think I'll stick with the 8100 till upgrade time. ESN changes on CDMA are too much of a pain. I'm not really interested in any other phones so I'll wait for another good motorola to come along.

Slackass

2006-02-21T19:19:00.000-05:00

Damn I've been really slacking on my blog lately. Forgot it was here. Oops. I'll do better my dear lonesome reader. Just been busy and having some personal issues. Today is my second day off so I have nothing to report today, but I should late tomorrow night.

A Sales Pitch?

2006-02-10T07:31:00.000-05:00

I always seem to remember little stories from work when I wake up in the morning. Yesterday i got accused of trying to sell someone insurance and that what I was telling the customer was a sales pitch. I was deeply offended. First off, I am no salesperson and when I advise a customer to take insurance I am truly advising them for their own sake, not mine. Secondly, insurance isn't even commissionable for the salespeople. It doesn't do me or my co workers any good if a customer signs up for insurance. We have a third party insurance company. They make the money, not us.

I explained to this woman that the one year manufacturer's warranty only covers malfunctions with unit and not theft, loss, damage, etc. and if anything happened to her phone she would pay full retail price for a replacement. She proceeded to tell me "that's just a sales pitch", "I had my other phone for two years and nothing happened", yadda yadda and other such reasons to not take insurance. Well ok then. I can't force anyone to take insurance. I know I always take insurance and I have no worries about any of my phones. It cracks me up because these are the same people that will snap out when they have to replace their stolen/lost/broken phone for $300 or something because they wouldn't fork over $5.99 a month and they are not eligible for an upgrade. Alrighty then.

Today

2006-01-25T18:52:00.000-05:00

M let me do 8:30 to 5:30 'cause if I had to be there at 8 my little ones would have been standing outside the school for a half hour.

Work was wild. I had a customer completely wig out on me because he broke his phone, he didn't have insurance, and he wasn't eligible for upgrade. Options? One. Pay full retail. It is NOT my problem if these people do not want to pay $5.99 a month for insurance. I always encourage it and if they don't listen...oh well. So he wanted to speak to a supervisor and all this. Same results.

Then I made the mistake of answering the phone. I even used the whole ********** scripted answer thingy. Chick wanted to know if she was eligible for upgrade. I checked her account and she was not. Before I even got a chance to check the other lines to see if any of them were eligible (I was going to kindly suggest upgrading one of the other lines and then doing an esn swap) she was threatening to take her business elsewhere. Lady, I dont give a fuck. And this threat was supposed to force me to upgrade her? Yah, I'll do that upgrade for ya lickety split!

After that I got the assumption of liability from hell. I thought I was doing just fine. Did the credit check on the person who was assuming responsibility of the two lines. Looked on the screen and it said zero deposit so I went ahead and created a shell for this person's new account. Then I reassigned both of the numbers from the other guy to this guy. There was a problem with that because he was on a family share and was giving up two lines which only left one line and you can't have a family share with only one line. So....I had to do a triple price plan change and THEN reassign the two numbers to the new guy. Then I had to do two more price plan changes to get electronic signatures from the assumer. Not to mention all the paperwork and copies of id an all that. The whole process takes about 30 minutes to 45 minutes. It was a nightmare. But wait till you read this: After all that for some reason my instincts told me to go back into the credit app and look at it again. Guess what? It said I was supposed to collect a thousand dollar security deposit....ON EACH LINE!!!! How the fuck did everything go through without me collecting the money? That is so NOT supposed to happen. Also, when I looked at the screen before I did the assumptions it said 0 deposit. I know I'm a little off right now but I know the difference between 0 and 1000!!!!! I was freaking out. I immediately went to P with it and he said he had no idea how to fix it because he had never seen anything like it before. So P said he had to go to T. When I told L about it she figured out what happened: The system is slow so when I first looked at it it must have been still in "pending" status. I went too fast and it actually came back 1000 deposit per line. You HAVE to wait until a AP shows up next to it. Mine probably still said P. I dont' know but nobody could still figure out how it went through. Aaaaah! So I knew the customers were going to be pissed and I was afraid this man's phones were going to be disconnected soon and I was just so upset.

T had to work on that problem all day because he also said it was the first time he had ever experienced that issue. It was crazy, but he was very calm with me and he said "Unfortunately this is something that you can't get coached on until it happens." In other words I had made a fuck up that they don't even teach you about in training because it had probably never happened before, lol. I'm losing it. Anyway, he finally was able to convert everything back to the original account holder. They weren't too happy about. The man yelled at me a bit and all I could do was apologize. He said it was ok, he just didn't understand how it could have all gone through if it wasn't approved. Beats me.

Hiatus

2006-01-23T22:30:00.000-05:00

Till January 31st.

End of dingless streak

2006-01-13T19:48:00.000-05:00

Today my dingless streak ended. M beckoned me from inside the inventory room and said she had one "coaching opportunity" for me. Damn. "It's only one", she said and it was a rather complex refund situation. I was still pissed. I'm a perfectionist with certain things. Anyway, here's the deal: When people do an upgrade or get new service they are offered certain discounting on a car charger-headset-leather case accessory bundle. They get money off each item using a certain code. Now...if the customer wants to later return only one or two of the items out of this three item bundle, we have to do a return on all three items, then physically resell them back the items they're keeping....but with no disount. I did that part right and was praised on that. M said most people forget to even do that part. Anyway, this particular person returned a regular headset from the bundle and a car charger I think, wanted to keep the case, and then buy a bluetooth headset. So when I went to resell them their one item they were keeping and sell them the bluetooth headset, they were still entitled to get a two accessory or more discount of 10% with a reason another reason code. I didn't do that. Oops. Yeah refunds and exchanges are really complicated between all the remarking and all the codes n shit you have to remember. But anyway she said it was no big deal because I saved the company money (not intentionally), but I still got dinged, lol.

But she gave me mad props on all my remarking because it has been on point. She even told T I write perfect remarks on full retail sales. She said I was the only one that actually does it half the time and I do it right. Yeah that's because they change the rules every day with this remarking and stuff. Some days it's required some days it's not. Some CSRs tell you to do it, others don't. WTF? You never get the same story twice in that place. I just remark damn near everything then we don't have any issues. You can't get dinged for extra remarking.

Oh and I found out A used to date W and I was thinking in my head "WTF?!" because she's really pretty and W looks like ass and he's the last guy at our job I would have thought she would get involved with. They don't date anymore but...ILL.

And W came to the back and told us a customer told him to go fuck himself right on the sales floor tonight. Why? Well...because he wouldn't let him return DSL equipment to our store. Uh...we don't even sell DSL equipment.

Walked into wtf

2006-01-11T22:42:00.000-05:00

Today when I walked into work I walked right into whatthefuck. It was busy as all hell. There were just mad people there. I didn't have time for anything. I needed to get those folk the hell away from me.

My first guy had gotten a phone from insurance and it wasn't working right. He said every time he tried to make a call it would say he was roaming and wouldn't let him complete a call. Hrrm..."Did you ever get this phone activated?", I asked. He said they activated it over the phone then I knew what was wrong. Whoever activated the phone never told him how to program it so it wasn't programmed at all. I did it for him then did a phonebook transfer and sent him on his merry way.

J is back from vacation and fuckin up. He gave me a deal with NO order numbe on it. Order number was just missing because he wrote his salesperson id on the paper twice instead of the ace number so I couldn't pull up the thing in the system. Tried to find the order by searching with the mobile phone number and that didn't work. He had written the wrong damn number on the paperowrk anyway. Had to leave my customers and get this straightened out. Got the order number finally, started processing, and had to do half his damn job in order to finish. No customer information in the fields, no reason code for the upgrade. Wtf. Welcome back, J.

Then there was a chick trying to argue with me about nights and weekends. She asked me what the times were. I have them memorized. Monday thru Friday 9:01 PM-5:59 AM and Saturday 12AM-Sunday 11:59PM. She bickered that that was not what the salesperson told her and that "You people need to get your stories straight". I said "You know what..Ima go get you a brochure which will tell you the same exact thing I just told you!" Yeah, she pissed me off but i calmed myself and was able to turn it around and make her laugh before she left.

Did three price plan changes. Then a chick wigged on me because she asked me to do a price plan change and it extended her contract. Uh...yah.

A man came in and had to return a car charger and a battery for an LG phone. The reason was because "The charger will not stay in the phone", therefore he couldn't even charge the battery. I asked to see his phone, looked at the charging port of the phone, and it looked like ass. It was completely destroyed. Wtf? Who the F sold this person these items with his port like that? B. Wrong. But more importantly, why didn't the customer look at his port at some point in time? Duh!

Another customer returned a plantronics headset that they were sold for the razr. Why? Well because our version of the razr doesn't have a jack for a headset at all. You can only use a bluetoothe headset with it. Who the F sold this person this regular headset for the razr? B. No just kidding. Actually it was someone at the ******* Mall.

I got my 3 personal days to spread about between now and March. Woot! I should take all three of them in a row right BEFO my days off! Yah.

Ooooh and employee accounts had me MAD as shit! They will not activate my V60 and deactivate my ****! They have all these fucked up rules and shit for us. The reason was because the phone has to be either: A phone that was on my account previously, a new phone, or a phone that used to belong to another employee. Wtf? I am so pissed off I think I'm going to cancel my service. I don't use the shit anyway, I got no real deal on the actual equipment, and now they're telling me what phone I can and cannot use? I will cancel and sell my **** on ebay anyway. How's that?

Well, I gotta go to bed. Gotta go to PA at the ass crack. Later.

I'll be back

2006-01-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

Just been busy but I did write about work in my other diary. I'll find the entries and post them later. Yes I still have a job and no I didn't snap on anyone, lol.

About to snap

2006-01-05T20:38:00.000-05:00

I don't know if my emotions are just funky right now or what but I've been cranky all day and way too sensitive. First I got a little offended because it seems that I've been ignored for the lunch orders at work for the past week or so. When I first started they used to come to me and include me in the lunch orders and ask me you know if I wanted anything to eat and l'd put my little order in and give them my money. Lately it seems I've been skipped over. Don't know if it's intentional or not but I was a little upset about it. I worked next to K today and she was mumbling something about getting her money together for her lunch order so I said to her "Oh, where are you ordering from?" She said "I don't know." Flakey ass bitch. If she was getting ready to get her money together and give it to L then obviously they had already ordered so how the fuck could she NOT know where she ordered from? Bitch. Yeah I was a little hurt but fuck it I went to Pizza Hut across the damn street and ordered my own personal pizza. Fuck 'em. I never eat with any of those people anyway. D went to Phat Steaks and got me a cheeseburger and milkshake yesterday and I grabbed my stuff and ate in my car as always. "You're going to your car to eat?", he asked. Yeah. I do it because I'm shy. I don't like to eat around a bunch of people and usually EVERYONE goes to eat at the same time and it makes me uncomfortable. Maybe they think I'm an asshole because of such. I dunno. I'm not. I'm just very shy.

Other than that....K irritates me and has done/ said several things to me since I started that pissed me off. I don't know if it's because of her age that she wants to boss someone around or whatnot but I am NOT the one and I was almost snapping out today. Me and her were up front and V was in the back. There was a little line of customers in the back so K told me why don't I go back there and grab some of those customers and bring them up front to help them. Um, first of all I don't take orders from other CSRs and secondly if V was that backed up I'm sure she would have sent them up front. WTF is this bitch worried about what I'm doing for? That was number one that ticked me off and the way she said it. Then she tried to tell me what time to go on break. The way it works is that whoever comes in first goes on break first and so on. K came in at 7 so she had long gone on break. V had her break. I was third and I wanted to go at about 3:30. K was leaving at 4 and N was coming in at 4 so my break time should have made no fucking difference to anyone. She was trying to order me to go on break at 3:10 when she wouldn't have even been there when I came back. That irked me that she is not my supervisor and should not dictate my break in any way. Not only that, but she keeps saying to me "I only take 15 minutes" over and over and she said it again today. Some of the CSRs are greedy and they only take 15 minute breaks so they can get paid overtime every week. I am entitled to an HOUR break and I take my entire hour. I don't give a fuck what K or anyone else does and I was tired of hearing what she does. She just had me pissed and it's a good thing she's off for the next three days because I wouldn't have been able to contain myself much longer. There's always got to be someone who's a dick. I get along with mostly everyone but she's the one that irks my balls (if i had a pair, lol). She has only been working there since August and she fucks up every day. Can't even answer half the questions I ask her when I need help. As a matter of fact she tried to help and told me some WRONG shit today. Was she trying to help or was she trying to screw me up? WTF? She goes blank. She gets dinged more than me and D and she's just plain flakey. I dont' know but I'm 31 years old so she can go head and take that bossy bullshit to one of those young ass mofos.

I even verified with N that I am entitled to an hour. Just wanted to make sure I was right on this. Yes. They schedule us for nine hours and we are entitled to an hour break which we have the option to take or not take.

The actual job was ok. I haven't gotten any dings or "coaching opportunities" in the last few days. Yesterday T asked me how I was feeling and we had a long conversation about asthma and such. He has triplets and two of them have asthma so he was asking me stuff about my inhalers and shit. Today we had sort of a quizzing/ informational session about three instances when a manager HAS to make notes in an account.

Later on a customer asked me the difference between the Motorola **** and the Motorola ****. I was more than happy to elaborate on that. The **** has the same features as the **** PLUS an Mp3 player..but it's butt ugly. The **** is hot looking but does not have the MP3 player. Both of them have awesome reception, pretty loud ringers (For our company), and work well. IF you want style go for the ****. You want more features go for the ****. He went for the ****. So did I.

A wiggy work day

2006-01-04T19:27:00.000-05:00

I'm home. Worked an earlier shift. Today I enjoyed myself at work. Just had to get over that "first day back" hump yesterday. I didn't do much processing. Maybe seven or eight deals today. I had more long drawn out customer service issues such as price plan changes, esn swaps, analyzing people's bills, and other such cs stuffs.

For some reason customers were very testy today. People were just SNAPPING at the drop of a hat. I heard this woman screaming at the techs about how voicemail and call waiting work. She was bitching about how she couldn't listen to her new messages without listening to ALL the old messages first and this sucks up all of her minutes. Not exactly true as you can fast forward past messages but... She screamed about how checking voicemail should not go against a person's minute allotment (I agree completely). And then she damn near cursed C out about how when someone beeps in and she answers while checking her voicemal they will charge her for two minutes instead of one minute. True. Whenever you answer a call waiting call and you have another call going on...you're charged minutes for both calls while both calls are active. You need to hang up to stop being charged. She was like "Who are you to charge two minutes for my one minute?! Blah blah blah this and that! It's just another way for *name of my company* to SUCK US DRY for our minutes and we the people are upset! We the people aren't going to take it anymore!" We the people? I was cracking up!

This other woman snapped on her daughter because she asked me to look into her bill and see why it was so high and I discovered the charges were coming from text messages sent to non ***** customers. She was like "If this happens again You won't have a phone!!!"

This man got nasty with me because he had a business account so I had to verify his federal tax id number in order to answer any of his questions regarding the account. He wanted to make some serious changes to the account and I couldn't do that unless I verified the identity of one of the people who was designated with full access. He was such a jackass. He wouldn't tell me what his first name was, if he was Lloyd or Harry (two names of people who could access the account), he couldn't verify the federal tax id so I couldn't do shit for him. Then he snapped on me. "You mean to tell me I can't make any changes because I don't have the federal tax id number!!! You go get a manager right now!!!" Lol, I went and got M and he told him the same thing and that we were "only trying to protect the integrity of the account". Anyway, we got it all straightened out and I was able to turn the guy completely around in the end, but at first I wanted to punch him. I mean he would NOT fucking tell me who he was so how could I help him??? When M came out he showed him his license and shit. Yo....he was fucking with me.

Another couple flipped on L because of the $20 fee for the esn swap. Anytime you swap handsets there is a $20 fee UNLESS it is a handset you got from the insurance company as a replacement. Then we don't charge for the esn swap or the phonebook transfer. Other than that....twenty bucks! If you do it at home online it is free. If you do it in the retail store...Twenty bucks! This man wigged like "No! There's no activation fee! VIP pays no fees!" Yes, vip DOES pay a fee for an esn swap. The only thing a vip customer gets is like 25% off of accessories and free PHONEBOOK TRANSFERS! Not free esn swaps. That's all he kept saying. "NO! VIP pays no activation fee!" Shaking his head no and shit. It's not an activation fee, it's a processing fee, lol! Anyway, L had to go get M (another manager) and she broke it down to them again.

yeah so everyone was acting funky today but it was ok. Time flew 'cause I did these three complicated ass price plan changes. Something new learned in the old system.

Been off of work

2006-01-03T11:42:00.000-05:00

Been off of work since New Year's Eve. Will write tonight about my work night. Toodles.

Work Tonight

2005-12-30T21:40:00.000-05:00

Work was good. Don't have too much to talk about there except it went by fast and I like my job. No real bad customers or anything. Sometimes we catch hell over the accessory "essential packs" though. The salesperson explains it to the customer like they're getting some kind of deal and whatever they tell them to get them to buy the essential pack somehow makes them think they are not going to have to pay for it when they come to us. So we get all the questions like "I thought that was included" and "The salesperson told me such and such". Shit, sometimes Salespeople like J will just force the damn accessories on them and then when they get me they'll be like "WTF? We didn't ask for any of that." Then I'm looking like a smacked ass if I can't work some type magic to make them keep all of these acessories they didn't ask for and don't want to pay for. Ug! That part is a pain. And upsell upsell upsell. If they aren't getting accessories I'm supposed to try to get them to after the salesperson has already hounded them. If they have no insurance I should talk them into getting it (this actually works a lot because of the obvious pitch: If something happens to your phone a replacement phone at full retail cost is $419.99). They they go for the $5.99/mo insurance REAL quick. And if they have no text messaging/pic messaging/ internet/ packages and things like that I'm supposed to try to sell that too. That's a little harder but I did sell one today. Wee!!!

I spent a lot of time with this one mother and her daughter. The daughter had been using LGs her whole life *vomit* and for some reason when her LG got lost the insurance company sent her a Motorola **** to replace it. Heh?! Anyway, she was all frazzled and whatnot and not sure if she'd be able to learn the Motorola menu. I told her I loved Motorolas and I could answer any questions she had so I took the time to go around to the other side of the counter and show her how to: Take pictures, take self portraits, change the menu list from icons to an actual word list, get rid of those aggravating home icon shitz, download ringtones, etc. In my opinion Motorola menus are very easy and the LG menus suck balls. But it's a matter of opinion. Obviously my employer's opinion is different because they've chosen the LG interface to be their new universal interface for ALL of their new phones...even the Motorolas... starting with the RAZR. Yep the Moto RAZR doesn't have a MOTO interface. That pissed me off enough not to buy it for my work phone. The **** still has the Motorola menus and such.

A very good day

2005-12-28T19:29:00.000-05:00

Man I feel good. Don't know if it's from all the lung steroids or the fact that I stopped smoking cigarettes but something had me all euphoric and shit. I do believe it is the steroids. They have some very strange effects on me. More energy, happiness from no where, and I wake up mad early in the morning every morning. Shit's working so good I can't even cough even if I want to. I wonder what will happen after my five days of meds are gone though? No more antibiotics and no more happy pills. I don't even want to know.

Work went well. I can finally say I'm there now. I know what I'm doing, I'm confident about it, and I'm doing it faster and more efficiently now. I think this is only the beginning of my third week in the store so I think I'm doing good. It was busy as all hell today. From about 9-11 it was like wtf slow but then we just got bum rushed and it continued till it was time for me to go. In fact I got stuck there till almost 6:30 on this last transaction. And it wasn't even returns it was new lines and upgrades and just everything. B told me that was nothing compared to the summer time. He said wait till July and I'll probably get stuck for an hour after I'm supposed to be gone. Nice. I don't mind though. Really. I like what I'm doing and I like being busy because the times flies.

I've started trying to upsell more data services and accessories since T touched on it in one of our "coaching opportunities". I've been getting some upsells. Not with this one guy though. I did try to get him on a text/pix/flix package but he had no idea what text messaging was or how to do it. I ended up showing him how to use text messages and he was amazed.....but he still didn't sign up for the package, lol. Said he'd rather pay ten cents per message. Oh well.

And these other folks I showed how to take pictures and make wallpapers out of their pictures. The lady had no idea you could do that and she was all like "COOL!" Gotta love that part of the job. Watching people's eyes light up over something stupid like that, lol.

Then I had this extremely old man come in and tell me his son was playing with his phone and it was all out of wack. The "LG BITCH" wouldn't stop talking every time he pressed a button, voice command kept activating every time he opened his flip. He didn't want it to do all that. The only time he wanted to hear speaking was when he dialed a number only. He did not want voice command to activate when he opened his flip. However, he did want music to play when he turned his phone off and on. No problem. Just took a little minute to get used to the phone. I don't really know LGs but I figured it out. I shut that aggravating bitch up, deactivated the voice command, and set his phone to play music when he powered it on and off. He was very happy when he left. Yeah me too. Now I'm more familiar with LG menus. Wee.

One Spanish woman wasn't very happy though. She broke her phone. She had insurance. They sent her a new phone. She didn't send the broken phone back in to them. She got hit with a $175 charge. Her defense was that "they didn't tell me I had to send broken phone to them so I throw it in the trash." She didn't feel she should pay the $175 fru phone fee. She told me if they didn't erase that charge she was going to cancel her service. I told her if she cancelled her service then there'd be another $175 fee she'd need to pay on top of the first one, lol. There's nothing we can do about that. It explains in the insurance literature what you are supposed to do with the damaged phone when you get the new phone. There's also a return package that comes with the new damn phone that should clue you in that you need to send the broken phone. Aside from that I'm sure someone probably mentioned it. Wtf? So I told her I could do nothing. Then she went to A and A got M. M said we would not remove the charges. She left in a hissy.

Sick

2005-12-27T20:47:00.000-05:00

I've had Bronchitis since Christmas Eve since Is why I haven't written. I Do go back to work tomorrow so I'll write tomorrow evening.

Busy as F***

2005-12-22T19:40:00.000-05:00

Today work was busy as fuck, but I have to say that nothing really went completely bonker ass and I am enjoying my job more and more as I am understanding what I'm doing and getting better in the systems. J is still screwing things up though. In one of his deals he had called T-Mobile and actually ported the wrong number to us. The customer's number ended in a 7...the number that J ported in ended in a 1. It said 1 on his paperwork and it said 1 in the system. WTF?! How do they even get away with that. I thought when you port you have to verify the account holder's name, account number, and social security number. How the fuck did J and T-Mobile get past the fact that this number did not belong to this customer. WTF?! Anyway, it wasn't too bad because I just HAPPENED to read off the number to the customer BEFORE we got to the activating part and the customer was like "That's not the number that's supposed to be ported.That's not our number." It got fixed before there was real issues with the order. But geez there would have been a real pissed off person with a number ending in 1 if this stuff had gone through, lol.

I made a tiny error today with the same customer. Bless her heart she was so patient and friendly and me, her, and her son were just goofing off and stuff and she never really got mad. What happened was I took payment for that third line by electronic check. The amount was $419.00. Immediately after I ran the check through the machine a little voice in my head from training said "We can't take checks from federal credit unions." I looked down at the check and guess what it said. Blah blah blah Federal Credit Union. Shit! I said "Maam, I'm so sorry but I wasn't supposed to take this. I'm new and I just realized it a little too late. I'm going to have to void out the payment. Would you mind paying again in another form?" She was very nice about it and we voided the payment and did it again by credit card. P said it was no big deal, just so long as I caught it before she left because they would not have gotten paid by Federal Credit Union. Don't know why, it's just like that.

Other than that everything was ok. This customer guy told me I was good and I looked like I really knew what I was doing. "Lol, it's an act" I kidded. I have no clue what I'm doing just know how to make that professional poker face, lol.

I had the tastiest pizza roll calzone typed thingy for lunch today. It was called a buffalo pizza roll and it had buffalo wing sauce all through it and it was good as hell. B took the orders for lunch and I was so out of it from being busy that I got jokingly smart with him for ordering me the wrong thing. Come to find out that WAS what I had ordered. It was soooooo good. Gotta tell my Italian friend about this.

Yeah I had to pay for my lunch today. I had some tomato soup and crackers in there for myself but the techs ate them. The techs are like scavengers and they don't give a hoot if you have your name written across your items (which I did). They will wait till your day off and eat yo shit.

What else? I turned A on to Smile Empty Soul and let her borrow my cd. We'll see if she liked it tomorrow. SES is coming out with a new cd in January. I already heard some of their songs and it sounds like the new one going to be better than the debut cd.

OMG and WTF?!

2005-12-21T21:25:00.000-05:00

As soon as I stepped into work at 11AM D was already at his computer in the back WIGGING out about the whole reason code and remarking system. It gets a little complicated when people get a buy one get one and the phones are on two separate order numbers. You then have to cross reference each of the separate orders with all this jazz and if you do it wrong you get dinged. He was flippin' 'cause he wasn't sure how to remark and cross reference. Said he's transferring to ******* in six months. It will be less busy, lol.

My VERY first transaction was totally fucked up. Appartently the sales person (W) had done upgrades and didn't put the secondary line on the same plan as the primary line (one was on 700 min and one was on 500 min and it was supposed to be a family share so it should have been one on primary 700 and one on secondary 700) so when I went to activate it would not activate either line. Once you take payment you can't fix anything. You have to take payment before you activate so you don't even find out something is fucked until you go to activate. We had to void the whole payment out, take payment again, get supervisors and signatures, and all this shit. Then on top of that when we went to start over and do it right and charge the lady again, the debit card transaction wouldn't go through because they had put a hold on the first $300 (even though we reversed the charges there was still a hold on her money) and she didn't have another $300 in her account. She was pissed off with good reason. We ended up just billing it to her account but it was a whole hour long situation. These fucking salespeople are never concerned with doing their part of it right. They just want to get that commission and they fuck shit up. If the processor catches it early then alrighty..maybe. If not everybody's fucked.

My next transaction you wouldn't believe also had an error code at the activation part of it. Some shit about the pro rate effective dates not being the same for all numbers. This was L's deal. I went back and looked at the pro rate dates and sure enough the primary line was set for a back date, but it wouldn't let me change it at this point. Also when I'd go to pull up the new number, the whole line would disappear and an old number would pop up. It was some creepy shit. Luckily she came back and just issued the people two new numbers and did a new order. However the remarking process was ungodly for that. Had to cross reference the new shit to the old shit and all this BULL shit.

Then J handed me a deal. I automatically started checking his shit 'cause I knew he was fucked up. First of all he had no reason code written down on his paperwork. Just said ***. So I went into the old system and saw the person should have gotten a ** discount for that phone. Also the second phone was supposed to be free. J didn't write that on there either or the ** I was supposed to use, but I caught that shit before I processed and I thought everything would be ok. It wasn't. The phones would not activate. I got a code saying the *** dicount was given to a non *** customer. Well naturally by that time I'm like "Ok wtf am I doing wrong today?!" I had P come look at this deal and I asked him if I had done the right thing by adding in the codes and doing the discounts. He said I did nothing wrong and he didn't even know what the fuck that error code was from. Neither him nor B had ever seen this code before. B said "No...there's no way. It's the system." Big T came out and finally said to me that he thought we were having system issues today and some of the orders were getting corrupted. That made me feel a lot better that it was just me screwing up or something. Never had these error codes before. Anyway, that one was a long reprocessing and long remarking process. Whew. By the time all that shit was done it was about 4 and I had had enough. I took my break at five and came back at six. V said W fucks up all the time and so does J and they (the veteran csrs) still get screwed up all the time from those two.

No more problems the rest of the night. I did a few deals, changed a few esns and whatnot. It was really busy. Toward the end this woman flipped out on all of us because her daughter broke her phone and she had no insurance. She wanted to reactivate this old ass phone under that number. Couldn't do it because the phone was not e911 compliant. It's an fcc regulation and it can't be done. She flipped. Said our company was always ripping her off and if she didn't get a phone she was going to freak out. P came out and she cursed him out. She said "IF I don't get a phone you won't have any more customers after I'm done." P replied with "No, this is the way it's going to be: We're going to treat each other with respect and if not then I'm going to ask you to leave. That's it." Lol, T came out and this woman was still flipping. It was hilarious. I don't know what happened cause I counted my drawer down in two seconds and rolled out. Today was ass but now I see why they pay their employees so much money. That job is like WTF????!!! Went by fast though.

Another story from work

2005-12-20T21:12:00.000-05:00

Weird thing that happened to me at work today. I had a return/exchange on a samsung ***. The woman was indian or something and could not speak good english. She handed me a little piece of paper with a motorola **** on it and just said to me "features. same features" Ok so first I gathered that she wanted a camera phone, but the samsung *** had a camera. Whatever. I went and got the motorola **** from the inventory room and she asked me to open it up so she could see it. When I showed her she said she didn't want it and explained in partial english that she wanted a phone with an outside display that would display pictures on it. Immediately I thought of the Motorola **** so I told her about that and showed her mine. Then I explained that if she wanted to return the samsung and get a motorola **** she would owe a difference as it was a more costly phone. She said she no like so she asked me to show her some other phones that could do that. The first other one I showed her was the LG ******. Said she didn't like that one then I found myself on the sales floor with this woman and this is not my job. But anyway, after we looked at several phones she decided she wanted to see a salesperson so R came out and talked to her and suggested the LG ****. She bought the LG ****. Wtf? Hadn't I just shown her the same phone???? Well what in the shit did she pull me out on the sales floor for if she was only going to listen to a salesperson? Next time leave my cubicle and go sign the waiting list to see a salesperson then instead of wasting my time, lol.
Had to coach a few folks in bluetooth today too. Lots of people don't quite know how it works and need to be walked through the process of pairing up the phone to the headset. Didn't mind giving lessons though. That's a part of my job I really like. L8r.

An imperfect day

2005-12-20T20:52:00.000-05:00

It was an imperfect day at work. I got three dings for the last day I worked. Whenver you get dings either the person that checked the paperwork or the manager "coaches" you on what you did wrong. There's always several people on the ding list for something or another. I was told for the first two months our (me and d's) dings don't count. Still I get upset if I get one. The fucked up part is that I knew that day that I was going to get them. I knew exactly what I did. For one transaction I forgot to choose "uprade yes" in the (new) sytem when I did a phone return/exchange. If you don't chose upgrade yes then the esn swap has to get manually done in the old system. You get dinged for that. Was something I didn't even know or learn till that day when I got the ding for it. The other thing was the discounting. A customer bought two essential bundle packages of accesories and I gave them a reason code ** (two or more accessories) discount on them which was ten percent. Because they were bundle packages I was supposed give them an ** discount and take ten dollars off. I knew it was wrong immediately after the transaction but once the transaction is done it's not something you can correct. Don't even know why I got dinged. The customer got jipped not the company. Just kidding but I forgot what the third ding was for. I think that was for the upgrade yes thing also.

So much to remember. So many different things for different situations. Like when you're doing an upgrade and the person says they had or did not have insurance previously, you have to stamp the contract and have them initial whether they had insurance or not. THEN, you have to manually go into the old system and make sure their features either says they have the insurance or the have the "declined insurace $0" feature on there. If you don't you get dinged.

It's kind of hard when you're new and you don't know everything and then you have salespeople fucking up too. I got one of J's deals where the customer was supposed to get a buy one get one and I was supposed to discount the second phone down to the rebate amount , use a reason code ** for this and write a novel of remarks. Well....J's paperwork said nothing about the discount or the ** I was supposed to use. And because I'm new and haven't studied EVERYTHING yet I didn't know that a free [insert phone model] comes when you buy a [insert another phone model]. I figured it out when I told the customer her total and she said "That other phone was supposed to be free." Who's fault? Partially mine for not studying all the phones and deals/promotions and whatnot. Partially the salesperson because they are the ones that really HAVE to know this so they can do their paperwork right so we will know what codes to put in the damned system.

I was told to watch out for J for shit just like that so obviously he's tripped up quite a few people with this stuff. I'm getting better though. Still learning a little something every day.

I thought D was the only one with stank breath. J's breath stinks too and so does S's. S's nickname is bobo. That's what they all call him at work. Bobo needs to find a tooth brush. He was standing by me telling me "need to know" information about a deal he passed off to me when I got a whiff of whatthefuck. What is wrong with these people? Brush yer teeth. Use listerine. Chew gum. Please.

Crazy Day

2005-12-15T22:20:00.000-05:00

Today was just one of those days where you say to yourself "I don't give a hot damn what my salary is I'm not coming back tomorrow"...then you calm down and say "Just kidding! I'll be back tomorrow with bells on!" Everything that could have gone wrong did today. First W handed me a triple deal to process. The first two lines were new and they were purchasing new phones. The third line was new but the phone was a customer provided phone. Getting through the service, item, payment, and activation parts of the first two deals went smoothly. When I went to activate the used phone it wouldn't let me and I got some funky error message that said "no items found" or some crazy shit. I tried and tried and tried but it would not let me activate this phone. I thought I was doing something wrong and the people were real jerks and the woman was saying stuff like "We shouldn't have got her. She's new." Well...A and K (who are veterans) both tried to help and they couldn't get it activated either. I had to go back to W to see if he knew what the fuck was going on. He went back into the order on his computer and did something, but didn't tell me what he had done. It helped because whatever he did let me activate the phone, but he still should have told me what he had done so I would know for next time.

That's not it. THEN when I went to do the phonebook transfer for the bitch I tried 3 different data cables 5 different times and the shit would not take. K came back and tried to help with that but it didn't work. So she advised me to just go tell the woman it wouldn't work. I did. This bitch looked at me and said "Well, I don't want the phone then." I wanted to jump over the counter and beat her to a bloody pulp with a data cable. We tried a few more times, sprayed the contacts with cleaner and finally got it to work. Whew. But no wait. When I went to program the used phone it wouldn't fucking program now!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAh! I ended up having to call technical support to get this phone up and running. It was nothing I had done it was something funky that was going on because the phone was on a different number previously so we had to do a manual program. Ug. The whole processing part of this deal took about an hour but I finally got that lady the hell away from me.

About fifteen minutes after that I had this chick snap on me because I wouldn't add a text messaging package to her mother's account. It was the girl's phone but the account was her mother's. When I looked into the account the girl had not been listed as an authorized contact so I was not authorized to make the changes. She wigged. I actually understand where she was coming from. I can't even get information on my own damn car's balance and stuff because it is in my husband's name....even though I drive and PAY for it they don't care. It IS frustrating. I tried to use that story to align with the customer (taught in training). It helped a little but not much. I told her she just needed to tell her mother to call customer service to make the changes.

Later on I had the same exact problems with activating a used phone with one of B's deals. Difference was B came from the break room and went back into the order, fixed the problem, and explained to me exactly why the system was kicking me out of activating and what to do the next time it happened. It was a step that the salesperson was actually supposed to do when they were in the service screen in the system. If the phone is used and not new they needed to choose "service" instead of "purchase" in the drop down menu. If they forgot to do it, someone needed to go back in and fix it before the phone would activate. But...now I know. I said to B "Thank you" for explaining it to me. He said "NO, thank YOU." Wtf? But anyway, after I got THAT phone activated this woman's battery died and I couldn't program it with a dead battery, lol. So I had to search for a charger just to give it enough charge to program it. Another prolonged processing. Aye.

Things died down at about 6 or so. I was supposed to stay until 10:30 but N told me and A both that we could leave at nine. Cool beans.

Sick

2005-12-15T11:15:00.000-05:00

I've been sick for the past few days. Bronchitis I think. I've been working but I've also been very tired so that's why I haven't been posting. Tonight I don't get off till 10:30. Perhaps I'll have time to write in the morning.

Day 3...my own drawer

2005-12-10T19:22:00.000-05:00

Went into work at 8:30 and N was coming in too. I guess they felt I was ready for my own drawer so they gave me one. From about 8:30 to 9 N showed me how the openers check the salespeople's and sales support people's (me) paperwork in the morning to look for mistakes. Whoever opens (which is usually 7AM) goes through all the deals from the previous day and checks for differnt errors such as: If a salesperson forgets to check and make copies of two forms of id, or if a sales support person (us) forgets to get a customer's signature on the features and insurance part of the contract, etc. If any errors are found the person who made the error receives a ding (strike against them) and I think you are only allowed fifteen a month or some shit. So she had me checking half the paperwork for the first half hour. I had to ding poor B. He forot to get a second form of id on a new deal. Damn, why'd I have to do the dirty work?

After that I started working on my own computer and stuff with customers. First little piece of action I had was an ESN swap. It was a pain in the balls. The old system sucks. It takes twenty keystrokes to do something in the old system that you cando in new system in two. Unfortunately you still CAN'T do ESN swaps in the new system. Oh, and then you have to go into the new system after you do the swap in the old system and charge the customer for doing the damned swap. I got through it though and G actually came over and walked me through it and told me a few quick old system tips. Like if I want to change an esn I can hit control C then alt TLN and it would get me where I need to go faster. Brilliant!

Did a few activations and such after that and then I got tied up for an hour with an 80 year old woman. Ok maybe she was only 65 but she sure did not need that small two inch big nokia as her first phone. I forgot the model. 3101i or some shit. It was small as fuck. Anyway, she had all sorts of problems. First of all I would say the salesperson sold her the wrong phone. Why give an old lady a two inch phone? Apparently she had asked for the cheapest phone so that's what she got. Wasn't the salesperson's fault. Secondly, whoever processed her deal forgot to program her phone so the shit wasn't even working. I had to program it. Thirdly, this bitch had no idea how to use the phone so I had to be her personal little human manual for the next 45 minutes. I didn't really mind but wtf? Our job is to at least tell them how to turn the phone on. Someone didn't explain dick to her. She was going to cancel and I figured I was doing a save by sitting with her. Ok so we went through that and then she wanted a bigger phone. She peeped my Motorola and wanted one of those. So....I'm not a salesperson so I was supposed to hand her off to a salesperson. R did not want to deal with her. He said "Fuck her. Let her cancel. She spent an hour with B 3 days ago then she didn't want him because she said she didn't want to deal with a man. Then she spent an hour with L the next day who sold her her phone. Now she has had you for an hour. Let her cancel." Anyway, R finally did go to her and he ended up sending her to another store for an Audiovox something or other. She came to me and thanked me for all my help and said I was nice. Aw gee.

Did some more processing. While me and N were working on a three phone deal together this woman stormed up to us and said "I just wanted to let you know that the service here is POOR!" Then she stormed out. Sorry? Oh and I didn't even tell you about the obese woman who was cursing R out while I was trying desperately to get this old woman to keep her service. All I heard was "Fuck" something something and then she turned to me and this old lady and said "Don't ever buy a phone from {name of my store}!!!" Like that old lady needed to be made any more nervous. Yikes!

A came in and brought me coffee. So nice. She even wrote my name on the cup and spelled it right. Cool. She's nice. And there's this greeter that looks just like Ashley and she became my new best friend. Kept coming over talking to me and shit. Wtf? ***** employees are high and shit from their salaries I think.

We all put in for pizzas for lunch so I never really took an hour break. Just ate for twenty minutes and went back on the floor. That job is cool though. It's so cool you don't even feel like taking a break.

Toward the end it slowed down and I just processed mad acessory sales. At the end of the night I counted my drawer down and I was square so wee diddly.

I'd say I had a pleasant day today. I'm getting more of a feeling of knowing what I'm doing. Did I tell you about that fucking phone though? The phones ring about 800 times a day. It is really the greeter's jobs to answer the phones but I was doing it whenever I wasn't busy. Half the time it's a fast busy and you have to hang up 'cause there's a problem with the system. The other half is some dumb ass questions from people like "what kinds of phones do you have?" Yeah, I'm going to list the entire inventory of makes and models for you. Would you like me to dance also? Wtf, bitch. COME IN THE STORE. Lol.

I know

2005-12-10T06:13:00.000-05:00

I've got three days of work to talk about. I get off at 5:30 today and I'll tell ya then. It's been wild to say the least, lol.

My kind of stuff

2005-12-05T17:06:00.000-05:00

Had a great day today. Started out with long ride to ***** with Nickelback as my musical escort. Their new cd is kickass! Wish I could drive some more just to listen to it as I haven't transferred it to my mp3 player on my phone yet.

Class was good. My job has two systems: ***** and *****. ***** is an old dos based system and it kind of takes a million steps to do anything in it. We had one day of training and that day their computers were down for a while so we didn't get to learn everything. They are trying to get rid of it but as of right now you HAVE to do ESN swaps and changes in ***** still. ***** is their other system used for activations, payments, credit checks, billing inquiries, contracts, payments, and... EVERYTHING. I like *****. If I had had this training BEFORE I went to my store on Black Friday I would have been kickass. Instead I was just looking at the screen like WTF because my experienced co-workers were zipping right through everything and not really explaining. But, it clicked later or and now that I've actually been in there I REALLY see the light.

They let us out at 4 and I wanted to stay and get into the training version of *****. I asked my instructor for passwords so I could tinker with the dummy system. She said no because that would be considered working and if I'm working then she would have to pay me. Alrighty then.

It's supposed to snow here tonight. I will be really ticked off if they close the headquarters down and I have to come back here. I so don't want to come back. I have one more day and I'd like to get it over with.

Oh well. Nothing much else to discuss right now. Gonna go take a bath while I'm alone. S went home to get some clothes. Tonight I'm sure i'll be up till 1AM talking to her but it's ok 'cause I'll probably never see her again. I've had a good time though. It was nice to meet someone who seemed genuine and like they weren't just trying to take advantage of me. I mean she stays in my room but I offered and it really didn't cost me a damned thing. She buys lunch and dinner sometimes for both of us or at least goes half. And I believe she's doing something funky to my hair tonight. Rod set or some such. She'd be cool to have as a bud back home.

Complicated

2005-12-04T08:37:00.000-05:00

Last week in training was complicated. I have mixed emotions. We sort of got away from all the technical stuff that I like and got involved in role plays and sales techniques. Problem with that: Not only am I not a salesperson, but I'm also as timid as a deer. Always been like that and there was just something about standing in front of a classroom full of people and pretending to make a sale that just made me want to scream for my mommy. But I got through it and I did get something out of it. After all customers are going to have a million questions for me. I will be dealing with them as much as the salesperson if not more so we did need to learn things, I just don't think it should have been that extensive. The people doing the activations should have learned more about what our jobs entailed (activating, putting in the proper discounts, etc) but oh well. I guess I'll have to learn that at my store.

Tomorrow and Tuesday we're actually going to get involved with the activations system so that will be good. This is the home stretch baby! Wednesday is my first real day in my store.

Sick

2005-11-27T17:18:00.000-05:00

Today I am not feeling well. On black friday there was a sales rep that came in with some type virus. I think he passed it off to me. Thanks buddy. Anyway, On Saturday me and D got to do more hands on work. At first their system and all of their codes and the way they were doing things confused me. Looked like a bunch of mumbo jumbo on the screen and i didn't understand. I hate not understanding exactly what I'm doing. Today I took time to think about it logically and rationally. I said to myself what am I really doing here? When I thought about it like that I figured out that what I was really doing was opening the order back up, making sure everything matched what was on the salesperson's paperwork, and assigning the phone to the phone number. Then I was going to the payment screen and scanning the products in again so I could get payment for them. After that I was merely getting the appropriate signatures from the custoemr and handing them the paper work that they needed. Then I was actually programming the phone and answering questions. Seems a whole hell of a lot less complicated now that I've broken it down. I really can't wait to get back into my store on December 7th and tackle everything now that it's all clear. Tomorrow morning I go back to PA for more training. Training doesn't end till the following Tuesday and I will be SO glad when that is all over so I can just work in my store and not have to deal with PA traffic.

Day One: Late Post (from black friday)

2005-11-27T17:14:00.000-05:00

Ok so I'm done my first day of work. Now I know what the fuck's going on. First of all, I got about 12 different stories on what my actual job description was, now I know the dealio and it goes a little something like this: Customer walks into the store and greeter says "Welcome to ********, how can I help you?". The greeter figures out where this person belongs (sales rep, tech support, customer support, etc) and send them there. If the person needs a sales rep then they sign a list and the sales rep gets them as soon as they are available. After the sales rep is done with said customer, the sales rep then hands off the customer/ customer's phone/ paperwork to little ole me. I would then take payment, activate their phone, answer all the questions (how do i check my voicemail, etc) and all that. We also appear to do esn swaps, address book transfers, rate plan changes and such. I've heard some call my job description "processing". I call it customer service. Yeah. Looks like exactly what I wanted to do but we haven't yet learned their systems and the girls we were shadowing were just zipping through whatever they were doing because it was WAY too busy for them to be training.

Everyone was very friendly, helpful, and just damned happy to be there. Everyone introduced themselves and accepted us newbies quite nicely.

First Day On The Job

2005-11-25T07:53:00.000-05:00

Today is my official first day in my actual store. Needless to say I am nervous and haven't got a clue what to do. They called us in for Black Friday and the day after. Monday I go back into training for five days. So tonight maybe I'll definitely have some stories. Gotta be in at 10:30.

A Bit Long Winded But...

2005-11-22T17:10:00.000-05:00

Lol, I finally got my presentation done and I took the mastery test today. For the first two hours we had these LONG courses on ******* and *******. Then we took the review test for that and went to lunch. Today P drove us (me and S) to ********* Mall so we could get some cheap grub. Wendy's! Yes! I'll bet our British server at Steak and Ale missed us though. Anyway after lunch our trainer made us do live skits/ role play thingies about ******* and ******* *******. I was SOOO nervous. I hate standing in front of a class doing anything. But I got through it. At the end P looked at me and said "Are you...nervous?" Well DUH! Anxiety pilll please. Then I was thinking how the F was I going to do this presentation without passing out??? My chunk of it was the biggest chunk! I did most of the work! I was the one who would be speaking the longest in front of all these people! AAAAAAAH!

Well...I went ahead and offered for our group to go first and get it done with first so we did. It wasn't too bad. Everyone was actually surprised that I had done so much work. I think P even said "I had no idea you did so much work." Yeah, just because I goof off a lot doesn't mean I don't get serious when it's time. It was hilarious though. R and P's parts of our presentation lasted about sixty seconds. Mine lasted for a period that no one even knows yet. I must have talked about competitor number 1's rate plans and features for an hour the way S was going on (in a fun way). She sent me company e-mails saying stuff like "Damn, now I see why your ass was on your floor for two hours. You wrote EVERYTHING about the damned company! 10 Minutes NOT 10 hours, lol" But yeah I must have done ok because at the end when I said "Any questions?" no one had any. Either that or they just wanted me to shut up, lol.

Too bad I didn't get competitor number two because E (mr. over acheiver) ran competitor number 2 into the ground. He had so much information wrong it wasn't funny. I wanted to interject on several things. Like he said they don't have any type upgrade plan (when actually they have the best- upgrade ANY TIME you feel like it and still get a discounted rate on the phone) and there were features he said didn't come with the competitor number two plans that did. I should know. I have one. But when someone is doing a presentation it's REALLY rude to interject or something and no one is perfect (although he's one of those people who really thinks he is. It's not just me saying it...it's everyone). Of course some of my classmates need to learn some manners because P (over acheiver number two) interrupted him before he was done. Rude.

Ok so after that we had our mastery exam. I got a 96%. My trainer embarassed the shit out of me by screaming "Look at you!" when she saw my score. WTF?! Hows about you don't express such shock in front of the entire class so they don't think I'm some type of arrogant over acheiver. Tone it down, lady! WTF?!

Well that's about it. I am glad to have both of those things done. Presentation and test. Now we move on to the next set of classes. I'm having a good time here but I want to go home. Can't wait till tomorrow is over with so I can get home.

Well I've been naughty

2005-11-20T20:26:00.000-05:00

I have been really neglecting my blog, huh? Sorry if there's actually anyone who reads this. It has been a busy week but it HAS been fun. I love the wireless industry and every aspect of it so I haven't gotten bored yet. The only boring day was orientation. Since then we've just been doing back to back online modules about our company and their rate plans/ features/ data packs and things they have to offer. At the end of each module there are tests that you must get an 80 percent on to pass. I've been doing well. The big master test is Tuesday for this part of my training. I'm a little nervous but I think I'll be ok.

Other than that I've just been enjoying my hotel room on some nights and the fine dining around town. It's nice but I like my own State just fine. I don't have to pump my own gas here. Yes!

This weekend I came home and finished up my presentation. We were assigned to shop a competitor and compare all of their service and things to ours. I'm sure everyone else in my class probably used powerpoint or some advanced computer program. I did the old large poster paper manual "write it all out yourself" program. Hell, it was fun. I hope I don't fail for not using powerpoint though.

WTF?!

2005-11-14T21:04:00.000-05:00

Well, traffic on the way there and the way home looked just like the picture above. Imagine my disgruntlement. This is going to be a rough few weeks. My new employer did provide me with a free hotel room but I'm sort of having disagreements with my spouse on whether I should stay there or not during my training period. He would prefer me to travel in said vehicular clusterfuck just so I can snuggle with him at night. Grrrr.

Orientation was rather lame. All of them are. But I did find out a lot about the company and what they have to offer their employees. They are by far the best company I've ever worked for as far as benefits and assistance. Seems like they've thought of just about everything that an employee could need and provided it to some extent. That's the way it should be. If you pay people well and treat them well, then their happiness from knowing they can afford to pay their bills and have extra for some nice things that they want, their happiness from knowing they're covered medically, their happiness from knowing if they need a babysitter the company can provide one, that will all carry over to the customers which will in turn will make for happy customers and greater profits. Omegoodness I sound like my trainer.

so that's pretty much all we talked about today. How to utilize the employee systems, what to do and what not to do, discounts and benefits and such. Tomorrow will be actual training. Today was just a long eight hour intro. Cool though. I got a free company napsack, some pizza, and a whole lotta books, lol.

The Big Day Has come

2005-11-14T00:11:00.000-05:00

Orientation has come. It will be happening in about 8 hours. Gotta get some sleep but I'm so glad I'll have something to write about soon. Sorry for not posting. I've been busy dicking off. I've been all over with all of my friends doing all kinds of stuff. This has been the best week of my life. Be back tomorrow night to tell you all about orientation. Later.

Training begins soon

2005-11-09T18:01:00.000-05:00

Well, my husband was kind enough to drive me up to the place where I will be in training. It wasn't that had to get to but I'm still going to be nervous the first time doing it. Will probably leave at 6:30 AM to get there on time (9AM) out of fear I might screw something up. One of those hermity chicks that fears driving anywhere out of my little box which is about twenty miles away from my house in any direction.

I'm excited about starting. Just wondering what it's going to be like, what they're going to say, etc. In a way I can't wait to get started but in a way I'm getting kind of sad because once I start that's it for a long long time. I've been doing a lot of recreational things over the past couple weeks that I will no longer be able to do once I start. My new job will be my first priority because I plan to be very successful at it.

The good thing is that once I start I'll have plenty to write about. However, I decided to erase all the spots where I've mentioned my employer's name and also not to mention it again. I heard jobs get kind of funky about people keeping blogs. Wouldn't want to get shit canned just for writing about my day or anything.

Remember These Shits

2005-11-08T07:09:00.000-05:00

C'mon, you know you wore one before...as an adult. And you know you thought you were hot stuff when you had it on, didn't you? Well, I'm here to tell you...you weren't really hot stuff. You were just an old ass dork with a paper crown on and you probably had mayonnaise in the corner of your mouth also.

Bowling

2005-11-06T16:22:00.000-05:00

I've been busy practicing my bowling. I haven't been doing it that long and I was someone who started out getting 70s n shit. Today I got my highest score ever...158. Gonna play my husband tonight and see if I can't whip his ass AND raise my score even higher. Be back after the game.

Nextel i870 Review

2005-11-03T19:29:00.000-05:00

I had a beta version of this phone about a month before it was released and I was in complete awe even over an incomplete beta. I immediately fell in love with the looks of it, the sound of it, and all the features it was jam packed with. There was some problems with my beta (missing menu items, mms messaging errors, video lost sound, RF was not good, couldn't insure it or get it serviced because it was a beta) so I had to end up returning it to the person I got it from.

My final cut version was received on November first and I have to say I'm blown away. I'm someone that will always find something wrong or lacking in a cell phone but this phone I just can't say anything about. It's perfect. Everything I wanted in a Nextel phone and more.

This phone might be in a classic silver case but the design is just off the hook. I love it! Much improved over the i860 which I thought was a pretty hot looking phone also. Both the outer and inner display are huge and beautiful. The camera was bumped up to a 1.3 megapixel which looks clear as day to me. 30 second video record time (or longer if you save to your memory card). My MP3player rocks! Crystal clear and plays songs so loud through the speaker. No need for a headset. I love it! The Widen high speed data is cool as hell. Internet pages change in light speed. BIG difference over previous models. As always all my calls are clear and loud! Walkie talkie...loud. Everything...loud! In addition it's got the off network feature, the group connect, games, gps, datebook, voice dialing AND voice record, you can watch tv on it and mo shit. I could go on and on about this phone but I won't cause I'm getting pretty tired of writing. But all I can say is DAMN. The beta version I had was faulty because it wasn't finished yet. The final cut is awesome. This gets an 11 out a possible 10.

Nextel i930 Review

2005-11-03T19:08:00.000-05:00

I got the i930 right before they were sold out and went on backorder. I was very excited to get this phone because it had been hyped up so much and everyone had been waiting for this for two years. When I got it I was very disappointed. For one it was WAY bulkier than I expected. The casing was very glossy and classy looking and it wasn't an ugly phone but it was thicker than my liking. Still for a pda type phone it was smaller than most.

The menu took a day or so to get used to as it wasn't the usual Motorola Nextel menu, but I wouldn't say it was complicated. Just different. What dissapointed me was the lack of features this had being that it took them so long to release this. There was no off network walkie talkie on it. There was no group connect. No video. No bluetooth. No picture caller id. Sometimes when I pressed buttons the phone reacted a little slow, just like a regular computer does when funky shit is going on. All that I could have overlooked but there was no VOICE RECORD on this phone. The little program on almost ALL Nextel phones that allows you to record your phone conversations was not there. That just pissed me off greatly that they would release this phone without that. I had assumed it would have it. Not only did it not have it, but there was no way for me to get it or install a similar program because i kept getting an error about the programs I was trying to install "not being digitally signed". Well...the next day I sold it. I just wasn't happy with it. The good things I liked about the i930 were that it had the International GSM bands on it so if I was going to Europe I could just go without switching phones or sims. It could have also been unlocked to use a T-Mobile or Cingular sim because it had the 1900 mhz GSM band on it. Windows Media player played my songs in many different formats. I liked that. The screen was nice and large like it was on the 860. The camera was excellent. The RF was clear. The speakers were nice and loud. It had that cute status light on it like older nextel phones. It was very easy to add music and wallpapers to this phone using active sync. Don't get me wrong there was a lot of positive things about this phone, but for the price it was released at it should have had ALL the features of any other Nextel phone plus more. This was a good for phone the business person, traveler, or pda fan, but for a feature and media monger like myself it just wasn't good enough. I give it a 6 out of 10 for lack of very important features.

******** Called This Morning

2005-11-03T10:23:00.000-05:00

I was having my morning hot chocolate and driving around when my friend called. Was talking to said friend for a bit then a blocked number beeped in. It was E from ******* and he asked me if I had a few minutes and I said sure.

He said they had found something in my criminal check from April of last year. I was like "April of last year? Absolultely not." So he said hold on and paused for a few minutes then he said "Oh no, I'm sorry this is from over ten years ago." I said "Yes sir, that's correct. When I was very young I went through some things but I haven't even had a traffic ticket in a looooooooooooong time since." He laughed and said "Well you're completed and we can go ahead and give you a start date."

Ok so at first he said next Monday but there was no way I could get my child care situation straight before then. I mean five days. So we agreed on the 14th of the month. Cool.

It's in ******** Pa which only appears to be an hour and twenty minutes away. My husband said he would take me next Wednesday so I could see where I'm going.

Coming Tonight

2005-11-02T08:58:00.000-05:00

Reviews of the Nextel Motorola i930 and i870. Just got my legit i870 yesterday and I have to say it is MUCH better than the Beta I had. Still fooling with it. Will be back tonight to write up.

So

2005-10-28T14:01:00.000-04:00

***************** is already starting to look into my background and such. They called B up and surprisingly he didn't say anything to screw me up. He said he would not try to stop me from getting something better for me and my children so he didn't hurt my cause. He said all they asked for was my employment dates and what position I had.

They called me up today and said they weren't able to verify that I graduated High School. That would be because my last name was different then so I gave them my maiden name and I assume they got their information. I also let them know that some of my jobs might be under a different name too from my first marriage. The woman said "We only called your last three employers. That's all we needed." Good. I resigned from my last three jobs. Anyway, so I went to take my drug test today and they said the results will be in in about 2-3 days. So...now all we do is wait. It's probably going to take at least a week for them to do whatever other background stuff they're doing. Then I'll get a call back for training and then I'll be happy.

Training is three weeks somewhere near Philadelphia so I'm going to have to make arrangements for child care and such.

Did I mention that this was NOT a sales position? Yeah, I forget the name of the actual position but I'd be doing everything AFTER the salesperson closes the deal. I'd be doing the contracts the activations the programming, etc. That's what I wanted. A job in my favorite field without the aggravation of having the sales quota pressure on me. I really hope this works out for me and everything goes smoothly. Hopefully I can get in here and won't ever have to change my job again...or at least for a long time.

Interview results

2005-10-27T14:14:00.000-04:00

I was offered a position at ***************** after my interview today. I'm still in shock. Not celebrating as of yet because they have to conduct a background, credit, and employment history check and I have to take a drug test. I won't be incredibly excited about this until I get another call in a week or two telling me when to come in to work. That's when I know I really have a job.

***************** Second Interview

2005-10-26T17:37:00.000-04:00

Today I was called up and invited to a second interview with ******* ********. I can't believe they even picked my resume out of the millions online let alone getting past the first interview and on to the second. Wow. Well it's tomorrow at 10 AM so I'll be writing after i get back from it.

Back with explanations

2005-10-24T12:38:00.000-04:00

Hi blog. The reason I had to take a hiatus was because I decided to leave my job and I was pretty upset I had to do that as we know I am totally into wireless phones and technology. The place I was working for was actually a hole in the wall establishment with an owner who had no management skills and there was so much going on there that I couldn't be a part of anymore. Not to mention they treated me like crap. Cut my pay, hired someone off the street and gave her my pay, disrespected me behind my back to this person who was a 19 year old kid. I had finally had enough so I walked out on him about a week ago. I feel much better but now I'm trying to get a job in wireless again. I will be posting frequently again so don't give up on me.

So far I've had three interviews with ******** and one with **************** last Friday. It gets frustrating because all these big companies want you to go to at least two interviews before they will actually hire you so it's not going to be easy. Today I'm just doing some housecleaning but I'll be back if anything comes up. I keep meaning to do those reviews of the Nextel i930 and i870. I had a chance to play with both of them. Perhaps I'll make that my post for tonight.

HIATUS

2005-10-19T21:35:00.000-04:00

Gotta take a week hiatus folks. PLEASE come back and see me on 24th. Some personal matters came up.

Slackass

2005-10-17T20:21:00.000-04:00

I'm still not posting. I know. Tomorrow I will be back to post a review of the Nextel i930. Just got it today so I'm busy tinkering. See you soon

If only we could wig

2005-10-14T19:23:00.000-04:00

Customer: Do you have a leather case for my phone?
Salesperson: Do you have the phone with you?
Customer: No.
Salesperson: Do you know what kind of phone you have?
Customer: Sprint
Salesperson: No, I mean who makes your phone? What model?
Customer: SPRINT!
Salesperson: Sprint is not the manufacturer or a model number you dumb fuck, it's the service provider. And who the fuck comes into a store for a leather case without the phone?! They aren't one size fits all, moron! Would you do that if you were here looking for condoms??!! Would you ask for ones that fit without bringing the penis in for reference?
[customer gives long stare of beffuddlement]
Salesperson: Yeah...uh maybe that wasn't a good example...but you're still stupid anyway. Get out of my store!

Ok I'm back

2005-10-12T19:51:00.000-04:00

I'm closing tonight. Earlier today I had two interviews with two different Cingular Corporate stores. I had applied online the day before yesterday and was called in yesterday and set up for interviews today. The interviews went well. I have a second interview at one of them tomorrow.

Here in hole in the wall land we actually are doing pretty good today. I got a T-Mobile activation when I came in and B got one too. Don't know what we're at on cash but I know it's at least $125. I would love to get another couple of acs and some more cash. Yeah so I've been busy but I'm off Friday. All I have to do is get through tomorrow's shift and my interview then I'm off hallelujah. I will probably sleep all Friday long. Yeah. I will try to keep up with this thing more frequently. I'll be settled down by tomorrow night.

Queen of Slackass

2005-10-11T16:39:00.000-04:00

I am so sorry I haven't been keeping up (yeah like anyone reads this, lol). I will be back later tonight with a few stories and some good news. Right now I have to clean my house. It's like I never have a minute to myself anymore. Grrrr!

It's about time

2005-10-06T22:15:00.000-04:00

Today Nextel finally released the i930 (The bottom phone). The phone we've all been waiting for. The phone that took them two years to finally let 'er rip. The phone that I've been checking their website for every five minutes for to see if it has come out. Well I gotta tell you, I was so let down when I finally looked at the specifications and saw that this phone didn't even have as many features as my i860. Sure it has three GSM bands and everything for International roaming, but I'm not going to Europe any time soon so it meant shit to me. And oooooh aaaaah it's got mobile windows software with internet explorer. I HATE internet explorer on my big computer let alone my cell phone. Can you say virus???!!! No bluetooth or anything. I can live without that but what really took the cake was that this phone was released without direct talk (off network walkie talkie) and group connect...two features that even the most basic newer phones have. I mean WTF?! It took so long and it appears that all they've come up with was a half ass i860 with internet explorer. HEH!?

I LOVE Motorola Nextel phones but I feel they shouldn't have even released this lame phone. The i870 has direct talk, group connect, camera, video, an mp3 player, and bluetooth. They should have canned the 930 because it's not going to sell since everyone knows something better is coming. I didn't even bother getting an i930. I bought a prototype i870 (the top phone) from a secret place, hehe. Passed right by the 930 for a bootleg 870.

Hopefully it will be in my hands tomorrow. Now THAT's a cell phone with some balls. I wish I had some pics of it lit up but hopefully there will be some soon.

The interview with Nextel went very well. He told me he'd let me know in about a week if I was hired. No sweat. I'm just going to keep working where I'm working and keep taking around my resume till I get into a real company. Not going to worry about a thing.

I sold two Motorola v188s today and a bunch of accessories so I made $480 altogether for the day. No activations though. Oh well. I'm sure more will come soon.

I figured it out

2005-10-05T08:19:00.000-04:00

I figured out what it was I had to do on FDT for the next time someone wants a fair and flex plan and I get stuck. Logged on to FDT at home last night (shhh) and figured it out myself. For some reason after you select their fair and flex plan you have to go into the package features list (a list with add ons like mobile to mobile, internet, etc) and add their monthly rate as an add on feature. It shows up as $0 when you pick it from the rate plan list. Ya gotta add the add on or you get an error message that's in pretty much chinese so you can't figure out what you did wrong. WTF?! It's stupid as shit but that's what you have to do. And if I worked for Sprint Nextel Corporate that information would have been given to me when the companies merged. FDT training update...HELLO!

Anyway, my interview with Nextel is today so I'll be back later to say what happened. Wish me luck.

What the fuck??!!

2005-10-04T21:52:00.000-04:00

B left shortly after his conference with S to go to his family's house in Linwood. It's a Jewish Holiday and that's why he asked me to switch with him. Anyway, I got in a man and his wife who were asking if we had Boost Mobile. I told them no but then asked them if they had ever tried applying for regular Nextel service. They said no because they had bankruptcy etc. I suggested they give it a shot because Nextel is "unpredictable". The husband got approved for 3 lines 0 deposit, but with a $125 spending limit which no one really cares about.

I even sold them on two of those WACK ass i275s. Made over $200 in cash along with getting the acs. Everything was going smoothly until I went to activate the phones. They wanted the fair and flexible 200 minute plans which were plans inherited from Sprint. Apparently when you choose fair and flex plans there's something you have to do on FDT to be able to pick those plans without getting a FUCKING ERROR MESSAGE! I tried activating these phones for an hour to no avail. I finally decided to pick the wrong plans and then get them to fix it when we made our final call to Nextel. Still had problems. When I went to choose their walkie talkie networks and phone numbers the shit was coming back with an "out of range" error message. WTF?! This whole time I was calling B and he was not answering his phone. I finally left a message that said "If you don't call me back you will lose two activations." When he called back he didn't know what the fuck to do either. He told me to call FDT support. Gee, thanks. I already figured that much out but they're CLOSED, cocksucker!!!!!

Finally I just cancelled the order, logged out of the system, logged back in, and started over. This time I made up some networks for them and it let me pass on that, but I still had to pick the wrong plans 'cause it wouldn't let me do the fair and flex 200s. Finally got the acs complete. Called Nextel and got their plans straightened out. Even the guy who fixed everything said to me "There's a tricky way you have to add these plans on", but I couldn't ask him what exactly he had to do because I was making the call disguised as the customer's wife (she said it was ok for me to do it) to get the last step done faster. I knew what to say. So yeah, I'm aggravated as fuck.

Everything comes out in the open

2005-10-04T21:48:00.000-04:00

Today when I got to work everything started coming out in the open. S was here and he was having a heart to heart with B. I just found out that S is a partial owner of this store. I thought he was just the cute guy that brought the phones. Anyway, as you know the store is doing very bad and me and B bumped heads a little last week. But it came out today after S left that G (B's older brother) is the one putting all this pressure on him. He appears to be a money hungry dick and if he doesn't see numbers he wigs. He does not care if it's slow, he does not care if we don't have the inventory. He doesn't care if there's 7 other cell phone shops here and people go to them because we don't have the products they want. If he doesn't see money he leans on B so B has to lean on me even if what he's asking for is damn near impossible.

I have never met G once since I've worked here. He can't even be bothered stopping by his own store to help out, meet the employees, see how things are going or anything. Yet he wants money. This was one of the things S was pointing out and flipping out about. He was saying he was really pissed at G for all that.

Another thing S pointed out was the B orders too much of the wrong inventory, especially for Nextel. Lol, I could have told him that. I know what all the hot phones are. He's got a ton of i265 and i275 and hardly any flips. No one wants that shit. They are bar shaped and WAY too big...and ugly. He could have asked me what was the most desirable shit and I could have told him: i860, i560, i850, i760, i730, i830, and a couple i530s and shit. There should only be two or three of the Nextel bar phones for sale. No one wants them shitz.

But anyway, another thing is that B has no training himself, so how could he have trained me? That's what S is there to help out with.

We need things to be more organized which is true. They need more employees so no one gets frustrated and leaves because I can't give all my attention to them. True. The problem is that G doesn't want to pay all these people so what's going to happen is that everyone is going to be part time. No good.

So anyway me and B talked and he said he did not mean to put the blame on me and that actually I got a lot of activations for a slow ass month last month (23 he says. I have no idea as I wasn't keeping track) and with me missing a week. The month before that was hot and I know I had to have done way more than that. We talked about the future plans and such. And we're alright. He asked me to open tomorrow because he has to go to N***** to pick up some phones. I told him I would do it but that I need to close up for about a half hour at 12:30. I didn't tell him I had an interview but I HAVE to go to it. Can't miss out and wonder what would have happened with Nextel like I did with T-Mobile. I have to see at least. The fact still remains that this is a hole in the wall store in which I have no job security or anything and pay scales and hours and such can change so quickly. Not to mention I just don't trust B or G so I have to look out for myself and if something comes up I'm taking it.

I'm back

2005-10-03T18:56:00.000-04:00

Just been a little tied up lately. Had a lot of crap going on. I got three Nextel activations today and made about $250. B seemed to be impressed for a minute but still came in with an attitude. Oh well. And he's changed my schedule again so now I have to close tomorrow night, Wednesday night, and Thursday night. Nice.

I took my resume to Nextel last week and got an interview for Wednesday afternoon. I'd really love to work for corporate Nextel or Sprint or whatever they're calling themselves these days. Nextel is where I'm strongest at and have the most knowledge. Plus I'm a die hard customer and fan so the change would be good for me.

Nothing much else to report today. Tomorrow will be another day.

The down side of a sales job

2005-09-29T22:28:00.000-04:00

I love cell phones, I love the different technologies, and I love talking to people and helping people with this stuff. I even love doing paperwork and those long activations. But days like this just make me say to myself "See, that's exactly why I didn't want a sales job." We're having a bad month. Only at about $7700 with one day left in the month and lord knows how many activations. Maybe 50-60. G (B's brother) wants $10,000 and 80 activations so he's riding B's ass so guess who B is riding? Little old me. He forgets about how sweet last month was, or how I did five activations in one day and did a complete SAVE on two activations and a phone this past week. It's all about the numbers right now and I'm not producing them so he's looking at me like WTF? Dude he's not even here half the time. Like I'm expected to pull all this shit by myself?

I am not a magician. If anyone comes in here and is even remotely interested I can work them. If they don't come I can't really pull them out of my ass now can I? Shit, I even listed phones on ebay for these people to make sales. Still not enough.

When you work at a stand alone cell phone shop it's a little different. YOU KNOW those people are coming there for cell phone service or a phone. When you work in the mall half of the mother fuckers that drop in are dicking around just wanting to touch the displays and shit. It is hard getting business at a mall when most of the people aren't really there for cell phone service. And on top of that there are about five other places in the mall where they can get phones from.

He says this is the worst month he has ever had since the store has been there. Well gee thanks, I guess that means it's because I'm here? I dunno but I'm bummed out now and nervous about losing my job. I can't imagine having to leave this field now that I've finally gotten into it. Having to start working at McDonalds or some shit because I can't even get unemployment if I get fired from here being that I quit retail store number one to be here

To make it even worse he just hired a part timer last night. Some guy named M. M has experience so guess what...if M starts kicking ass where will I be?

But that's sales I guess. When you rock you get maybe a nod of acknowledgement. When you don't rock they tell you you suck.

Yesterday

2005-09-28T07:36:00.000-04:00

I made a NEGATIVE $100. AAAAAH! Old man Vince came in and almost threw the Sprint phones at me and told me to take my job and shove it. Lol, he's very old and cranky and after we got to talking I found out that it wasn't the service at all. He just didn't like the phones. He said he had never heard of any Sanyo, it was too complicated to use, and it wasn't like his Motorola. He had previously owned a Motorola T720 for Cingular (one of the WORST Motorolas ever made. Hey, I never said all Motos were good) Problem: The only Motorola that was available for Sprint was the V60. Not sure if they're still offering it but it wasn't ready link capable anyway. I ended up showing him a Nextel i205 which is the most basic Moto for Nextel. He liked it and he LOVED the walkie talkie on that much better. So I ended up getting a save on the activations because we switched him over to Nextel (no termination fee for Sprint because they are merged), but I lost the $120 he paid for the Sprint phones. The i205s were free. Ug. I pray he gets service in Somers Point where he lives. He should.

And the old lady from last week and talked me to death about how her phone works great on the digital roam that I told her about even in the bad part of her street, but that in fine print it says Sprint may deactivate your service if you roam more than fifty percent of the time. True but I've never known it to have been done yet. Yeah, they're cheap. They don't charge the customer for roaming so they want to make sure they don't roam ALL the time. No big deal. Only roam when you're in the problem area then. But anyway she decided to stay with Sprint anyway and can her T-Mobile but she came in asked me to put all her phone book entris on her phone. She said she had 15. She had more like 50. WTF?!
Oh well. Time to get the kids ready for school. Later.

What a day

2005-09-24T23:39:00.000-04:00

I was about two minutes into a phone conversation with my husband when I got completely overwhelmed here. I did three T-Mobile activations and one Nextel. In between all that I was having to show the old guy Vince how to set up his voicemail for both his phones and try to get him two cases that fit his phones. About half a dozen other people were walking in and I had to try to spread my attention amongst all these folks. Vince was getting mad 'cause I couldn't just focus on him. I had to make my sales too but I tried not to ignore anyone. It's not easy multi tasking in this job. I was all tied up till about ten minutes ago. But I did four activations and brought in about $400 again. Can't say that I didn't do my job today. Whew, but I'm beat.

Doing good so far

2005-09-23T15:23:00.000-04:00

*wrote this earlier today*I've only made one sale here but I think at least one of the phones I'm selling for B on the internet is going to sell today. As soon as I got in a man walked in and asked if "the other guy" was here (as if I was the first guy, lol). I told him no but asked him if I could help him. He pulled out an i730 in the box that B had sold him yesterday and said he wasn't happy with it and wanted to return it. Ug, that's all we needed was a return. Damn, I tried to stall him and tell him to come back when B was here and he started getting upset. I asked him out of curiosity what was wrong with the phone. "It just doesn't work right", he answered. I asked him if I could see it so he gave it to me. I made a test call to my cell then one back. It worked just fine. He said he couldn't get his charger in because of that annoying flap over it (they ARE a pain in the ass to take off) so I showed him how to dig his fingernail in there and told him he could actually take it off completely if he wanted. Then we moved on to his contact list. He didn't know how to remove people's names from his contact list so I showed him that. We deleted quite a few folk off his sim, lol. Then he asked how to access his voicemail so we went through that. Said he couldn't hear anybody so I adjusted his earpiece volume. Then he asked me what the heck a net alert was and I told him that that was something you receive when you get a text message and showed him how to read the texts. I actually had a good time tinkering with the phone and watching his face light up when he began to understand some of these functions. After he was all turned around to the point where he wanted to keep his phone I cut the rubber thing off for him so he could stick his charger in there easier. I hate my rubber flap too. I think I'm going to do away with mine also, lol.

Ok so then I noticed his old phone was an i60c so I asked him what he was going to do with it. I told him that I occasionally buy old phones. Told him I'd take it off his hands for $20 if he wanted. Instead he gave me the i60c and the car and home charger for it in exchange for a car charger for the i730 (they have different chargers). Same difference. I just gotta put twenty bucks in the pot for B from my own money. Cool. Another Nextel phone. Weee! Gave him a business card and told him if he had ANY more Nextel phone questions he could call me. He thanked me for all my help and I told him that it was a pleasure for me to tinker with Nextel phones, lol.

*writing this presently* I ended up having a very good day. Made about $400 and did one T-Mobile prepaid and one T-Mobile post paid activation. Not bad at all. If I can continue to bring in $400 for the rest of the month we may be ok.

Stroker Night

2005-09-22T23:08:00.000-04:00

Tonight I made twenty bucks all night long. No activations whatsoever. It was stroker night. Strokers are people who come in and look at a phone and want to open the box and stroke the phone and ask a million questions and then say "I'll be back on pay day" or "I have to go get some money from my husband" or "I'll see if I can borrow the cash from my friends." Not kidding, I got three people that did this to me today. Ug. The one guy stayed in my store for a straight hour trying to get me to sell him a Samsung e635 for $150. B made up a new price list and told me not to deviate from it because we were doing bad this month. The price he had set for that phone was $224. There was no way. So he stroked the hell out of me and the phone then left. *Sigh* Normally I don't get upset when I don't make sales but it's the end of the month and we're $4500 behind and it's only me and B working. The weight is mostly falling on me 'cause if I don't make sales I'll be the one without a job, not B. His brother owns the store. He'll always have a job. Better luck tomorrow I hope.

Gotta love those technical issues

2005-09-21T19:45:00.000-04:00

I am beat! But I've been having some interesting issues to keep me busy. Firstly, I called to check up on old lady Susan from yesterday. She was happy I called to check and said she was getting bad reception inside her house. I told her to let me call her on her house phone so I could walk her through setting her cell phone to digital roam only which FORCES the phone to find something when it has nothing. We did that and then she said things were improving a lot. I told her to keep it set on that for a day and see how it functions in her house and in that bad part of the street she was telling me about. So...we'll see.

Then I called the older Italian man Vincent from earlier today to check on him. He said his phones were still on the chargers but he'd get back to me when they were done. When he called me back the call was so crystal clear I thought he was on a house phone. Wow. And that was inside his house. So he's cool, but he needs to come back here Saturday morning so we can set up his voicemail and do some other things. People just don't understand the manuals.

I had a woman come in from a deal I did last month. She wanted to exchange her i205 for an i530 at the sign up price ($50). Problem was she didn't have the original box from the i205. We cannot do exchanges without the box because the warehouse will not accept them like that. So she was all bent out of shape but my hands were tied. I had no choice. I called B and he said NO. So either she had to find the box for us to take the phone back and let her get the i530 for the $50 or keep her 205 and buy the i530 outright at our cost which was $140. She pissed and moaned and I told her if she liked she could go upstairs and ask the Nextel reps up there if they would accept a return with no box. It's a guaranteed hell no. Anyway, I did notify her that she could still get the i530 for $50 if she wanted to go upstairs and do an upgrade. She'd have to sign a new contract and pay a $35 upgrade fee. We don't do upgrades here. Only new activations or selling phones outright.

A nice cheery interracial couple just came in. Black guy. White girl. They were both nice and cheery. It was cute. Anyway the guy said he bought a phone and activated a Nextel with us last week and his phone (i530) didn't work. A surprised me: "It doesn't work?" "No. I can't make calls with it. I've been on the phone with customer service ALL DAY LONG.", he replied. "Can I see your phone?", I asked. So he handed me his phone and I opened the flip up. Before I even touched it I knew immediately what the problem was. In the upper right middle of his screen was a tiny little number 2. Someone had been dickering with his settings and had set his phone to line 2. He doesn't have a line 2, therefore I guess he wouldn't have been able to make any calls, lol. I fixed it and showed him that it was now able to make calls. He laughed and asked why customer service couldn't figure this out. Honestly without physically seeing the phone one wouldn't easily guess that. But anyway they left happy so I'm happy.

I am so tired. I can't wait to get out of here.

Not a good start but getting better

2005-09-21T13:35:00.000-04:00

I got to work bright and early but as soon as I emptied my pockets I discovered that I had taken my husband's keys with me. Ug. Had to do an emergency close up to go home and take him his keys. Was pissed off about that.

Just got a double Sprint activation. This old guy that I consulted about a week ago came back and wanted to do a deal. We had originally decided to go with Nextel because he said he really liked the walkie talkie feature, but I ended up getting him on Sprint because I was concerned with reception in his area. I told him that the map was showing that he may not have reception in that little spot where he lived and with Nextel there is no roaming. If you're not covered you're just not covered, lol. Plus Nextel still has high ass "team share" plans and I told the man that the Sprint version of the family plan was much cheaper and much better for him and his brother. I explained that Nextel DOES have the superior walkie talkie feature, but that Sprint did offer ready link and he should go with that to cut down costs, beef up the minutes, and feel safe about the ability to roam when he's not covered. He kept going back and forth and then he asked me what I really thought. I told him I was a die hard Nextel fan and customer but that I wanted what was best for him and I thought that Sprint would serve him better. So we did it. Fair and Flexible for families 800 minute plan and ready link for both phones. Sold him two Sanyo 2300s for sixty bucks each. Spent about an hour and a half with this man. He was old as shit and needed me to show him how to put all his phone book entries in. He had cingular previously GSM (sim) and Sprint is CDMA (no sim) so we had to manually copy all of his numbers onto his Sprint phone. AHHHH! After doing that for a half hour I finally got a chance to experiment with Sprint's walkie talkie service...the big bad ready link.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA! You've got to be fucking kidding! First of all there's no chirp sound or anything. They play this gay ass twinkle tinkle music shit when you press the button. It takes 15-20 seconds for what you're saying to get to the other person. Anyone who has Nextel knows that shit is IMMEDIATE! There was a terrible echo in the speaker and this cheesy "floor is open" animation that came on to let us know that we could speak. I like the way Nextel just gives you that ear busting BEMP! when you're pressing your dc button too soon, lol. So anyway, yeah Sprint might have a few advantages but their walkie talkie service sucks balls. You could get your point across faster with two cups and a string. WTF?! No wonder they merged with Nextel. Who wouldn't? Done.

Aggravating end of shift

2005-09-20T18:04:00.000-04:00

For the first half of my shift the store was dead. At about 2 an old woman walked in with the crusiest Samsung for T-Mobile ever asking me why she couldn't hear and what the tape icon on her phone meant. She told me T-Mobile wanted to extend her contract but she didn't get good service with them (duh, T-Mobile sucks). So I went into my sprint spiel and ended up getting her signed up...after about two hours of talking and explaining everything from roaming to analog roaming to ringtones to nights and weekends. It was pure hell explaining to this woman what free nights and weekends meant. She kept yelling at me that "My 300 minutes are supposed to be for ANYTIME!" ANYTIME! And she'd stretch her arms everytime she said ANYTIME! I tried to explain that they are but that at certain times during the night no minutes would be deducted. Nights and weekends was like an unlimited supply of extra minutes during a certain time span that had nothing to do with the anytime minutes.

It was hard as hell getting the point across. She thought nights and weekends was a stipulation rather than a bonus positive feature. I had to whip out a pen and get real technical and draw it out so she'd get it. WTF?! I almost fried her brain and mine trying to explain 6pm starts. It was the deal from hell but I did it. I got her hooked up with Sprint and I feel she will be happier because of the way those phones can roam whenever there is no Sprint coverage. Grandma should be able to hear now.

C was supposed to be there at 2:30 and he didn't show up till almost five. If hubby wasn't off I would have had to close the shop to go get my kids. Asshole.
And just when I was about to leave this woman I activated a month ago came in with a shitload of problems with her first Sprint bill. The obvious shit: proration, activation fees, taxes "Why is it so high?" like I didn't already explain it to her. So I had to call sprint and dicker with them for twenty minutes. Actually Sprint did screw up and charge her an activation fee on the second line which wasn't supposed to happen. Got that straightened out and was finally able to leave. Now I'm drained and I'm not looking forward to the double tomorrow. Ug,,,why can't these people ever call customer service themselves. 611 bitches. 6-1-1!!!

Back to work

2005-09-19T22:05:00.000-04:00

Well I had a very nice vacation but as soon as I got back i got a call from B. He wanted to know about my availability and whatnot. He said he had to work two doubles because C never showed up on two of the days he was supposed to work while I was gone. So basically C is done for real this time, but that means I have to work a double on Wednesday...ug. Good news is that he has hired a new person and I will now have Fridays and Sundays off, hopefully if she stays. And I'll have some good cell phone adventure stories for you from here on in.

Going on vacation

2005-09-14T21:55:00.000-04:00

Be back on September 20th!

Slackassing again

2005-09-13T13:28:00.000-04:00

I'll be back later today with some stories. Yesterday the store was so dead that I really have nothing to report. Today I work night shift so hopefully I can get some action. See you soon.

Today so far

2005-09-10T11:38:00.000-04:00

As soon as I stepped foot in the door there was a note from B: "Hey WTF, I need you to call FDT and get this phone turned on and push through FDT. Call me and I will give you more details". I guess he was in the middle of activating this man's Nextel last night and came across a problem so he pushed it off to me. FDT kept giving error messages "an acct cannot share an SSN with another BAN" "Cannot Submit order. Must requery credit and remove reserved subscriber" or some shit. I was on the fucking phone for an hour trying to figure this out. Finally I was able to complete the activation. Then I had to call "IBNOU" with this new Nextel phone number and walkie talkie number. I also told him that before his phone would actually work he had to call the 866 number and talk to a rep for about five minutes. That's the last step of the activation process and it's a pain in the balls. Ibnou couldn't even speak English so I doubt very seriously if he's going to be able to do this. I told him if he had any problems to come back in and bring his phone and I'd do it.

Whilst I was all frazzled in FDT hell a guy came in with a SMASHED UP i860 and he wanted to buy an i560. I mean his i860 was SMASHED. Ouside display...smashed. Inside display... smashed. I asked him if he wanted the phone anymore. He said no and he gave it to me. I've acquired yet another "tinkering toy" and I also made the store $250. Yay. Having a good day so far. Just need an activation of my own now.

Slackass

2005-09-10T08:19:00.000-04:00

I know, I deserve a whipping with a hanger. I'm lazy. I'll be back to post tonight. I'll post for the past three days. Oh and Ted, if you come by, please send me those links and stuff again. I lost them during e-mail cleaning.

Ready for a smoke

2005-09-07T18:49:00.000-04:00

{6:49PM}I'm about ready for a smoke. I just got finished doing three T-Mobile activations. In the midst of all that I got an angry woman who I had no rememberance of come in with one page of a Sprint bill wigging out because her bill was for over $300. I told her we would get Sprint on the phone just as soon as I was finished the completion of my activations. And a lady walked in with the crustiest Nokia ever looking for a car charger. Grrrr. I was able to keep calm today actually and the gentleman I did the three T-Mobile acs for thanked me very much for getting his phones working and all that. Lol, that's my job

The irate woman was a whole different story. First off she wasn't someone that I had personally done business with because I would have remembered. B must have done that deal and he probably never notified her of the activation fees and that the first bill is ALWAYS high because of prorations and such. I looked over her bill and called Sprint up. $150 of it was a security deposit error so they removed that. They also forgot to waive the activation fee for the second line which I mentioned, so they took that off. She STILL wanted to know why her bill was so high and I explained to her that it was actually a month in advance plus the amount of days she had the phone before the new billing period started. Ug. After that she wanted to make her payment and I couldn't do it for her. Wasn't her fault and wasn't my fault. I didn't have the user id and password to the precash machine. Stupid B threw away my stick it I had with the information on it, he doesn't have it written anywhere here, and he's not answering his phone which means if I get a Sprint activation with a deposit tonight we won't be able to do it. WTF????!!

So now I'm ready for a cigarette and a meal. Will be back later.

A good start

2005-09-07T16:24:00.000-04:00

Just got to work twenty minutes ago and made a sale already. A father and son walked in and the father said to me "I need a phone. Don't care what kind, just need a phone. Don't care if it's used or not." So...I sold him a Nokia 6010 that was used for a few days. Not used to much but enough to bring down the price to $70. I even got the son's broken Motorola v180 out of the deal. He had broken the display screen Lord knows how so I asked him if he was going to just chuck it would he mind giving it to me. He didn't. Yay, I have a phone to tinker with now, lol.

C opened up the store this morning. B wanted a day off so he had C come in. He's supposed to work tomorrow too but I don't know about that. He just told me he couldn't open because he had to work at Ruby Tuesday's. I told him I would switch with him for tomorrow because I'd rather open so I can spend some time with my spouse tomorrow night. I don't know about C though. He's kind of shaky. Might not even show up at all.

Be back later if anything exciting happens.

Labor Day Sales

2005-09-05T16:10:00.000-04:00

[monday 12:47 PM] It's Labor Day and I've been here since 9AM. So far I've made $498 and got two T-Mobile activations. I am mentally drained already though. Just got done with the Italian couple from hell. It was just the biggest pain in the ass ever. The guy had some sort of funky lisp and he kept trying to swindle me on all the phone prices. I do not deviate from prices unless Brian says so. I can deviate up without asking, but not down, lol. Then I couldn't do the credit check over the computer because his wife had an account a long time ago and it kept coming up "existing account found. I had to call up T-Mobile, do a manual credit check on them, then fill out a paper contract, then call acivations back to get the phones working. A real pain. In the meantime I'm looking for two Motorola V330 rebate forms in pdf files to print out for them because they were sweating me about that. His wife wanted to pay me by personal check for the phones or in mall gift certificates and got an attitude when I refused and told her cash or credit card. "You're killin' me" she barked. WTF? No one likes taking personal checks (for the obvious reasons) and I know my boss likes cash, not mall gift certificates. But then again, knowing B, he may have been interested in eating $212 worth of mall ice cream. They also wanted free leather cases. Oh it was freaking nightmare. The worst was listening to the husband's voice. Yuck. They were really beating me up over here, lol. But at the end we all said thanks to each other and they walked away happy. BTW, I ordered an expensive $13 Friendly's steak/egg/pancake/potatos meal and didn't get to eat any of it before it froze because of this transaction. I threw it away. Bummer.

[4:04 PM]B came in at about 3 and was pleased with the action on my shift today. He asked me to go to the convenience store and get two sodas and some paper towels. Then he said I could leave when I got back so I'm home early.

A huge tip

2005-09-03T14:31:00.000-04:00

Wow, this guy Francisco's wife just came in and handed me a thirty dollar tip for hooking them up with Nextel a few days ago and helping them get all activated. I ran his wife through credit and she got approved but with a $250 deposit. So I asked Francisco if he wanted to try his credit. He immediately started to say "Oh no my credit is horrible", etc. I told him he suggest try it anyway as Nextel is unpredictable and I've had many people who thought their credit was bad get approved with zero deposit. He agreed and I ran his credit. Five lines. Zero deposit.

I had to put their order in through VAD because they wanted an i860 and we didn't have any so I told them their phone would arrive by Fedex the next day and when it came in they could bring it to me and I would do the last step of activation for them. So we did their contract and I just chilled out and conversed with them. They came back when they got the phone and I got it all up and running for them and showed Francisco how to take pictures and video and such. He told me I was very nice and thanked me for all my help and he said he would come back with "a little something" when he got paid. I pretty much paid that no mind but appreciated him thanking me. Sur enough his wife just walked in here and handed me thirty bucks. Wow! That's enough to pay my babysitter for today and I'm completely blown away.

Other than that nothing much going on here today. Made about forty bucks and no acs yet. Wanted to do something before B got here but chances are looking kinda slim but you never know.

Nothing much right now

2005-09-03T13:45:00.000-04:00

Nothing much going on right now. Only sold $40 worth of accessories. It's a pretty dead Saturday. Just had a man come in who wanted to apply for Nextel but said that Verizon asked him for a $1000 deposit because he had filed for Bankruptcy last year. Nextel approved him with a $150 deposit. That was cool but he didn't have the money for his deposit anyway and couldn't do it today. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. Maybe something will happen in the next two and a half hours I'm here.

Yesterday and today

2005-09-02T17:07:00.000-04:00

Nothing much happened over the past two days so I didn't post. Neither me or B sold dick yesterday and today I only sold one Motorola v188. The good news is that now we have a crap load of phones to sell because B went and picked the shipment up today. I'm kind of excited about seeing what kind of damage I can do tomorrow. So...wish me luck and peace be with you all.

Yesterday at work

2005-08-31T07:18:00.000-04:00

*Wrote this all yesterday* Ok so B let C work today because he HAD to be off to take care of some DMV stuff. I guess he's going to hook him up every now and then. I got in at about three. B2 and E came through for me on watching the children. Thank GOD they did because having two kids here would have been so not cool. J (B's baby) is SOOOO cute and I was making him smile and stuff by tickling his little feet and talking to him. I'm going to get some pics of him when I go to pick the kids up.

B was cracking me up on the phone bitching about C 'cause Carson didn't open the store till after eleven ($50 fine from the mall) AND he lied about it. B said he called C on his cell phone and C said he was at the store but there was no answer at the store. LOL.

I also noticed that there are NO Nextel phones left here so B must have kicked some ass over the past two days. Now if I have someone come in interested in Nextel I'll have to do the activation through VAD (ordering from the warehouse), but actually that's easier and means I don't have to fuck with any phones. However, we can't give any deals on the phones. They have to be the same price Nextel gives. We just fill out the contracts and the phones get sent straight to their house. Cool.

So he said we were doing really well this month but we needed about $300 and two or three more activations before the first of the month. Well, as far as the money, I've surpassed the $300 already since I've been here (not even two hours yet). Sold two phones and three accessories. No acs yet but the night is still young.

*Later that night*I made about $380 in cash and got one Nextel activation and one T-Mobile activation. B was happier than a pig in shit, especially since I put him over the $9000 mark for the month and got the activations that he requested. When I was all done with the T-Mobile ac my day was done. I can honestly say that I'm finally doing something that I'm really interested in doing. Not the most prominent job in the world but it's what I really desired so I'm happy.

Yesterday at work (wrote it yesterday)

2005-08-28T16:41:00.000-04:00

When I came in B showed me how much he had made in cash today. Over $800. He sold mad i560s today. Those phones are hot as shit. I thought it was funny because when we got them in I said they were ugly and looked like ordinary Nextels. I wasn't impressed with them because they basically look like more contoured i530s with outside caller ids. Anyway, apparently other folks find them hot looking because they were all gone when I came in except for one.

We had a nice talk about his expectations for me today. He told me he didn't give a shit if I made one penny in cash, but to try for two activations because he hadn't done any today. I DID get two Nextel activations and I made about sixty bucks in accessories and a hundred on one of the phones. Night's still young. One more hour. Maybe something will happen between now and then. I met my goal regardless so it's cool.

We also talked about C. I had wanted to know if C was still employed because I was supposed to have off this Monday to take care of some business and also I'm supposed to be going away from Sept. 15- Sept. 20. It's my wedding anniversary (and the baby's birthday) so it's something that I HAVE to do so i was worried how he would be covered if he fired C. Anyway, he said that he did get rid of C yesterday but that he would work Monday by himself if he had to. Told me to go ahead and take the day off and not to worry about Sept. 15-20 because he will borrow Darren from his brother for those days. He was so nice about it like "WTF. Calm down. Don't worry about it."

Oh and he stated the things he didn't like about C just for my information. He said C was a kid and he wasn't passionate about the job. He also had a negative outlook on things that I sometimes have myself but that I had no experience so he forgave me for that. Also he said C was unreliable, never texted him when he came in, changed his availability all the time, etc. He said he needed someone like me who he never has to worry about showing up ON TIME and when they're supposed to. He said I was very dependable and that I have showed a great deal of imporvement since I started. So I guess I'm good to go.

*Later last night* At about quarter to nine two older folks came in inquiring about a cheap family plan with two basic cell phones. They were interested in T-Mobile but I knew T-Mobile sucked in G Town so I swayed them toward Sprint. Sprint works in G Town, we had two
free basic Nokia phones to offer, and I knew that Sprint had the flexible minutes thingy and they also have a promotion going on of the first two months half price for the family plan ($35). So that got them really interested and I talked them to death about how the flexible minutes worked and they really liked that. See it starts out with you having 0-800 minutes to use. If you go over your minutes, Sprint only charges $5 per 100 extra minutes you use unlike all the rest that will whop you for $.40-$.45 a minute on overages. So I basically had them. Problem was the woman had a Cingular phone and she NEEDED to go find out if she was still in contract with them before she could make a move. I tried to call Cingular customer service to find out for her so she wouldn't leave the store, but they were closed. Why the hell does
Cingular and Nextel CS close on Saturday night into Sunday? WTF. So they had to go to the actual Cingular store to find out. Plus it was near closing time. Not really enough time to do two Sprint activations but I would have kept the store open if need be. They were probably still dicking around with Cingular when I closed but I feel confident that they'll be back if they don't have long left on their contract. Cingular can not beat Sprint's deal on the overages and the family plan cost. So if they come back tomorrow B will get the deal but I don't really care. What's good
for the business...

Technical issues and sales and such

2005-08-26T21:50:00.000-04:00

[11:15 AM] At about 10:45 a French dude came in here with his receipt and wanted a refund for a Motorola V188 because his phone was blocked and said "Please enter subsidy code." I knew right away that that meant he put some other company's sim in there. So I'm like "Where's the sim you got with this phone?" He pulls out a Fido sim. "Uh, no, that's not the sim you got with this phone. That's a T-Mobile phone and
that's why you're blocked." So he made like he couldn't understand and all that. Then he said that when B sold him the phone he said that the phone would be ok for Fido. I don't know how B said that when he knows all the phones come locked to the Service Provider anymore. Maybe he did lie to the man to make a quick buck. That's not nice but there wasn't anything I could do for him. I don't even have any money in the drawer yet and B needs to approve a refund. I told the man to come back after two and that in the meantime I would see if I could find an unlock code for this phone. Unfortunately I don't think the V188 is one you can do with the keypad. It might require a data cable. If so he's shit out of luck.

Two minutes ago an older black man came in here with a Sprint phone freaking out because "My phone wont ring! It just won't ring! I told him to leave it alone! Now it won't ring." So I took his phone and turned his ringer setting back to on, lol. He was all happy and shit like "Oh, you're the best. I love you. Are you married?" WTF? "Yes." "What are you about
nineteen?" "LOLOLOLOLOL, I wish. I'll be thirty one next month." "Thirty one?! You're still a baby. I could get in trouble for talking to you." I think it's safe to say that dude was probably over fifty or something. Well that's it for now. Will be back later if anything interesting happens.

[1:45PM] I just banged out three Nextel
activations. It was sort of like a slow hard fuck by someone with an insanely hugh cock. Woah. First of all I had to go into FDT and do the credit check myself because the credit department had me on hold for twenty minutes. I said fuck it and figured out how to do it myself. The man was approved for up to five lines zero deposit. He bought an i730 for himself and then he wanted to get his buddy and his girlfriend
phones so I gave him two free i530s for that. The activation was a pain. There was no way to activate the three of them in one shot so of course I had to go back into the system twice. After all that bullshit was done he had to sign about ninety papers then we had to call Nextel and do the final step of the activation process...thrice.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I do need a cigarette, but B is going to love me today.

[2:52PM] B Just got pulled over and won't be in till about three, lol. Some Jamaican guy came in to make a Sprint payment. He bitched about his phone not ringing loud enough. I asked him for the phone and went in to see if his settings were low. They weren't. It was just a shitty Samsung. I told him if he wanted to hear his ringtones he needed a MOTOROLA! Unfortunately Sprint doesn't really carry Motorolas and the one they do have is crap. Sounds like dude needs NEXTEL AND A MOTOROLA. Those shits are
earbleeding loud. I love my Nexy Moto. Anyway, Jamaican guy just asked me how old I was. "How old do I look?", I asked. "Er...21." "Yeah that's it", I laughed. Then I said "Plus ten in about a month." What's with all these people thinking I'm young as
shit today? Must be the Supergirl shirt and the piercing. On his way out, Jamaican guy asked me if I wanted a soda. I said "Sure, I accept beverage donations." Instead he gave me five dollars to buy whatever I wanted. Cool.

[5:09PM] Finally done and home but I have a splitting headache. Could have gotten more activations and sales but Sprint was doing some bullshit upgrade to their system so nothing could be done with them. This guy was going to buy a phone outright but we couldn't get Sprint to make his new phone work because of the upgrading bullshit, so he had to pass till
tomorrow which will probably end up being never. A girl applied for Nextel and got approved with a $250 deposit which she thought was low because everyone else asked her for $1000. Unfortunately she didn't have the money till she caught up with her husband but she said she'd come back only when I was working. B tried to jump the deal but she said on the down low she was only coming back for me. Makes no difference to me. I'm sure I haven't done more than 40 acs in a month so there isn't any money in it for me. It would just be good for the business. When I told B I had gotten 3 activations he was on the phone like "Did you say 3?" "Uh..yeah." So he was pleased with that and the fact that I thought fast and got the credit check done myself but he said "Um...don't do that again." We're not really supposed to do that.
We're supposed to let the company do that. I'm like "Ohmegod, I didn't mean to do anything detrimental." He said it was no big deal but we really aren't supposed to do that. He was happy I got the deals though. It's the end of the month and it's crunch time so I think I did good for today. Tomorrow I close.

Multi Tasking is a bee-otch!

2005-08-25T15:52:00.000-04:00

Rough day and I'm still not out of here for an hour. I sold about $127 worth of accessories and I got one Nextel activation. Need I explain again how complicated a Nextel activation is? It's something that requires complete and utter concentration to be able to do it without screwing up everything or getting booted out of the system and having to start all over which happened to me once. The jacked up part is that once you get booted out and try to start all over again, you get a nifty little error message telling you that the customer's social security number has already been used and you CAN'T finish. So then you have to call up sales support and find out what the account number is for an account that you haven't even set up yet. WTF? Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. So...in the midst of all this I've got an Indian guy wanting me to break down the Nextel rate plan and phone knowledge on him, three other people needing accessories, AND two people trying to do a return on Sprint phones without the boxes. WTF again? Ok, there's a 14 day trial period for everything. Doing the return was no problem, BUT when you return the phone or phones they MUST be in the same condition you got them in. That means with the box, charger, manuals, etc. ESPECIALLY the box. If the box is ripped it's not acceptable, let alone no box at all. WTF? Ok so I had to explain to these people that I didn't have the authority to do a return on these items and that my boss had to be present to check the condition. They refused to come back, they left the phones here on the floor, and they're expecting a refund. Not gonna happen and I also notified them that they had better call Sprint and cancel their service ASAP or they'd be getting a $200 cancellation fee for each phone. When I called B he said he would not issue a refund without the boxes and he definitely wasn't doing it over the phone. Can't do a credit card refund over the phone. Anyway, so it's been a real hectic day. I was losing it for a minute but I'm alright. Sometimes multi tasking is a bee-otch.

Some good news. I thought I was going to have a problem when the kids went back to school being that the baby is only 4 and he can't walk to the babysitter. They also have no afterschool program for his age group so I was wondering how I would be able to pick him up after school. B said he would adjust my schedule to allow me to leave at 2:30 to get him. The down side is that I will have to go back on six days. That's cool though. He aslo said his brother who actually owns the store told him that there was no need for three people working there. He said to me "I agreed that there's no need for three people. Then Greg asked me who was more dependable. I told him you were." So basically he's going to be getting rid of C because "He keeps changing his availability and he hasn't showed me anything." True. I had to close the night before last because Carson changed his availability at the last minute. I had to pay the babysitter extra money to do such and wasn't happy about it but I did it so B could take that day off. C is an ok kid, but I don't feel sorry for him because 1. He's 19 and has no kids to take care of, 2. He has another job right in the mall, and 3. He really doesn't care. So see, I didn't have to snitch on him about showing up 2 1/2 hours late on his second day. He assed himself out.

About to go soon

2005-08-25T08:38:00.000-04:00

I'm on my way to work in about a half hour. Today's goal is $350 cash and two activations, with cash being the more needed of the two right now. I hope I can get something working today. Day shift is hard as hell to make money on. Maybe I'll just get lucky.

I saw Four Brothers last night. It was a really good flick. Better than I expected and I had wanted to see it a long time ago. Lots of action. Yahoo users are calling it an urban western. Now that I think about it, it WAS kind of like a Western. Sort of like "Young Gunz in da hood" or something. I loved everything about it except for the fact that cutie Garret Hedlund didn't make it (oops, did I ruin the movie?) Anyway, I'll be back later tonight after work. Till then peace be with you.

Tonight

2005-08-23T18:33:00.000-04:00

Tonight I'm doing pretty well so far. I did one T-Mobile activation and brought in $79 cash. I think my partner made $143 and no acts. But that means together we did $222 and one activation. The goal is around two activations and $350 in cash a night, so it looks like I have $128 to go. Hope I can do it. In three more hours I hope so.

I'm thinking of changing the name of this blog being that I work in the cell phone business now. I mean it's stil retail but retail hell just doesn't fit anymore. So what should I change the name too? All suggestions will be considered.

My piercing is doing fine. No more pain but the flatback is starting to indent a little circle into the inside of my lip. I've read on the internet that this is normal though and I saw a girl with a labret piercing today and asked her and she said hers did the same thing. I guess I'm alright. Oh well. Tim to get back to work I guess. Later.

Saturday

2005-08-22T07:45:00.000-04:00

Saturday was such a short day at work I didn't even bother writing. I made no sales and I only stayed till 2. Yesterday I was off. Anyway, I'm on my way to work soon so I'll be writing later today. BTW, the piercing is doing remarkably well and I love it. My husband who is totally NOT into piercings said he found it cute. I was really surprised because he didn't like my eyebrow piercing so I thought he would definitely not like this one. I guess I was wrong. Oh well. Later world.

Sales and Piercings

2005-08-19T21:49:00.000-04:00

*Wrote all of this stuff earlier today*

This morning I called Francis' cell phone to see if it was working for him ok. He answered and said the reception was great and he thanked me for checking up on him. That made me feel good.

Today I did three Sprint activations with the smootheness. The last two were a husband and wife that lived in Hammonton in the boondocks. They wanted to dump Verizon. They said the reception was good there, but they just didn't like the company. They wanted T-Mobile. I refused to sell them T-Mobile because I checked and saw that the service was only fair there. I also knew that T-Mobile only operated on 1900mhz GSM and wouldn't be able to roam well where they lived. What I did was suggest Sprint to them because they use the same technology as Verizon and if need be the Sprint phones could roam onto Verizon's towers. I picked two phones for them that were dual band and tri mode so I knew the phones could switch over to analog mode if necessary which I thought might be. Ok so I got them activated and all that and about three hours later the wife called me and was flipping out. "This phone keeps asking me if I want to roam and I have to answer yes or no before I can complete a call or answer a call! I have only one bar of service and my husband has none! I don't like these phones! I can't have this etc" So...I had to think for a minute. It sounded like number one there was some kind of roaming alert that was coming up to warn her that her calls were roaming calls so she would be aware. So I first had her go into her menu and change the setting for the roam alert to off. After that was the reception problem. Knew that was going to happen in her house in the boondocks so I had her go into her menu again and change her settings from Sprint Pcs only to roam only. After she did that she said her husband's phone immediately got three more bars. Good. So, now they have reception, their annoying roam alerts are off, and they also won't be paying any roaming charges because I insisted they get the "America" plan (no roaming charges) for five more bucks a month because I knew where they lived that their phones would be roaming a lot inside their house. When we were all done the lady thanked me so much for all my hard work and efforts. And that, my friends is my favorite part of this job. When the customers thanks me and says they are happy with their service.

Oh well, that's it for now. In a few minutes I will be mutilating my face. Will be back later...or not.

*Later tonight*

Well obviously I didn't die because I'm writing this. And I didn't wimp out either. I went through with it although there was two times that I considered going to my car for something and never coming back,
lol. Anyway, it looks like I got myself all worked up over a pinch. The pain factor was about the same as the eyebrow piercing. Almost none. I am really surprised. I thought I was going to be in that bitch screaming but it was nothing. As a matter of fact I don't feel a damn thing right now. Maybe 'cause I'm high as shit. Maybe 'cause half my face is nerve damaged anyway. Maybe 'cause I'm drunk. It only hurts when I laugh or otherwise stretch my face. I haven't even attempted eating. I bought four cups of apple sauce for tonight, and some biotene to rinse with, and some bactine for the outside. I dunno, but anyway, the labret piercing turned out to be some punk ass shit. Poke. Done. Thank you for doing business, lol. As far as the look of it...well...I like it. BUT of course I was only allowed to have your standard butt ugly silver looking surgical steel for jewelry and the ball is a little too big for my liking. But, I think it's going to be damned cute once I change to a smaller 14kt gold bar.

__________________________________________________

A pretty good day

2005-08-18T17:38:00.000-04:00

*wrote this part from work* OMG I'm about ready for another cigarette. I just completed two entire Sprint activations by myself and it was the biggest pain in the ass ever. First I had to do the credit check and get the approval numbers. After that I had to fill out the entire paper contract. That was the easy part. Next I had to go into Sprint's system and make up payment credit card type thingies for each line which had a deposit which was 2. Then I had to call activations. This involved giving them the credit card numbers that I had made up, the ESN numbers on the phones, dictating what plans and features each line would have, and so forth. After that the activations lady gave me four numbers that I had to then program into each of these phones. A lock code, an MSID number, a phone number, and an ICEC number. Programming the phones was a great big pain in the balls. I HATE CDMA technology. GSM technology is a whole lot less complicated. Pop your sim in and you're programmed. This CDMA stuff is a pain. So after that big pain in the ass and getting the customers to sign off on their contracts, I then had to go back into Sprint's system and make actual payments of their deposits with the credit card numbers that I had made up. HEH?! Yeah, it was long and hard but now there's no question marks for me as to how to complete a Sprint activation. I called the customers after a while to check up on them and make sure they were up and running (I was told it would take two hours after the programming for the phones to work) and they were fine. I guess I did alright then.

*wrote this just now* Well it was a pretty good day except For the fact that our phone got cut off near the end of my shift. WTF? How you gonna get a business line cut off? That fool probably didn't pay that bill. Lol, B****** said she stopped by my job and saw B. Said he looked like a big greasy shady ass white man. That he is. Extra greasy and super shady. As long as he gives me my money I have nothing to do with it. I am getting three companies worth of experience from this job so I'm going to stay as long as I can. This will serve as a stepping stone for me
to go somewhere else in this business (a reputable company) and be able to do bigger and better things.Can't stay at a job that pays cash forever. It'll become bad for me when I need to apply for something that involves credit (a new car, house, etc) Can't produce a paystub. That's not good. Also while I'm dicking around there I won't be building up unemployment funds or disability funds or anything. Anyway, I got one more activation before I left work today. T-Mobile. The guy was forty something,
half crippled, half blind, and sort of retarded. I almost felt bad doing the deal but he said he needed a phone and he wasn't so retarded that he didn't have good credit. He got approved for one line 0 deposit. I gave him the Nokia 6010 because I felt it had a nice big screen and big buttons for him. I think he'll be alright. I explained everything thoroughly to him and he seemed to understand me just fine. When we were all done I did a test call and then asked him if he had any more questions for me. "Not right now", he answered. "Did you want to try to call me to see how well the buttons work for you?" "Not right now", he answered again. So he limped off with his new phone and I guess I did a good honest day's work.

Tomorrow is the big Labret piercing day. If I don't post tomorrow night that means I probably died during the procedure.

Work Tonight

2005-08-16T22:40:00.000-04:00

*Wrote this from work in my other diary so I'm posting it here* Work today is going well. When I first came in C was trying to activate two lines for this woman and her husband and he immediately called me over for help. It wasn't even 4:00 yet so technically I should have told him to shove it, lol. (WTF does not play well with others, lol) Help? Mr. Wonderful needed help? Why on earth would Mr. Nineteen year old I know everything plus I've got sales experience need help? Lol, just screwing around but what happened was he was trying to run this lady's credit through T-Mobile's system and the app kept getting rejected. He called the wrong number to get help on that and the cs person had No fucking idea what he was talking about. He called customer care. He needed to call Credit Review so THEY could figure out what the problem was. So I did that and we figured out that the app was getting rejected because the woman had changed her last name. After that got straightened out she got approved for the two lines 0 deposit and we finished the process together. This fool didn't know how to do anything. Didn't know to get the payment for the phones BEFORE he did everything, didn't know how to put the payment into the system, didn't know how to put the sim cards in the phone. So basically WTF did all the work and he gets the credit. But that's ok because I just finished up on an activation of my own. Hopefully I can get another one going on tonight. I'm about to take my 8 PM smoke break and then try to work some magic.

Update: I didn't get any more activations but the one was good enough plus I got about seventy bucks cash in the drawer. I sold a pouch at exactly 9:30 PM. Wee diddly!