a case of the Mondays (or lack thereof)

Last night I fell asleep to "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." I was watching it with my dear friend Esther, who has informed me that I snore. She ended up leaving shortly before midnight, which is when I finally climbed into bed - pretty late for a girl who has to be at work by 8:30 am. When I go to bed late, I usually end up with a case of the Mondays. I find it necessary to mention that today is an exception.

This morning, I was making my usual round of UltraTax renewal calls. Spoke with one user who definitely wanted to renew his software, but told me that he would have to wait to speak with his wife about it first. He shared with me that she recently had surgery to remove a cancerous mass, but that she was home today and cancer-free - not the purpose of my call, but I was thrilled to hear the news. Ended up getting thrown on incoming calls shortly after that call, and decided at 11:58 am - two minutes before my lunch - to pick up a call from the UltraTax cue. I figured I could wrap the call up in about 2-3 minutes.

Two and one-half hours later, I had walked the user through updating his yahoo account password so he could check his e-mail for the password to our website so that he could renew and download his software. He also said that I had an accent, which I explained was the Michigan "e-yac-cent." (I also wanted to say, "Same to you!" because he was from New York). He said that he felt bad for making me skip my lunch, and that I could charge a sandwich to the credit card that he had given me during our conversation. I let him know that it wasn't necessary because Jimmy John's came today with free samples, and I had gotten a sandwich already. He said that they didn't have Jimmy John's in New York, but they called sprinkles - like the kind with which to top ice cream - "jimmies." That inspired me to share with him about how here in the Midwest, we affectionatly call carbonated beverages "pop" - and the user thought that that was "old-fashioned," compared to East Coast "soda." This led to another nice tangential conversation about sociolinguistics: he said that it was easy to tell the people from the Bronx because while saying "soda," it comes out sounding like "soder." And yes, we really did go over everything. While helping him to download the licenses for his software, I told him to go to the "help" menu, but he said that it should say "call Iris" there, which was sweet.

When I finally took my lunch break, my boss asked me to step into his office for a project for me to think about, since I was so "creative." And the way that came about was from spearheading the effort to decorate the department for our Harvest Fest (I don't think I ended up writing about that on this blog - we turned our department into CandyLand a couple of months ago...) In any case, the new project at hand has to do with designing labels for custom keyboard shortcuts - so I have something new to think about.

After that, I sat and ate lunch next to my co-worker Katie's cube. We ended up having a conversation about what we do. Both of us agreed that our initial impressions of working in customer service were very different from what we actually do. Almost everyday, we have to transfer licenses from software license holders who are deceased to living individuals at the firm. But the point of the conversation was that what we do isn't just monthly billing and software renewals - it really is listening to the bits and pieces of what go on in people's everyday lives, and seeing how change is ever constant. For example, the user that I was on the phone with for two hours changed his e-mail address because his wife had passed away and he had been using her e-mail address. And the answer to his secret question to reset his password was his pet, "Jade," who incidentally was also deceased. The user said, "as you can see, a lot has changed in my life."

After all of that, I still don't have a case of the Mondays - despite the exposure to extremes (celebrating over free Jimmy John's/empathizing with users in their personal losses). I find it extremely exhilarating to hang up the phone and know that I have helped someone to resolve their issue, in a relatively efficient manner. And now that I have said all of that...on to more phone calls!