Do you know what escalation means mother fucker?

S

Shawn L.

New member
Ok, most of you know I do tech support via the phone for a company. I'm the second teir guy so if the guys that actually answer the calls can't fix it, they're supposed to escalate it to me. Above me is the senior developer so if I can't fix it I take it to him. But pretty much, the shit stops with me.

So I get a phone call today from a tech dipshit we'll call Bob. He wants me to deal with a critical issue but wants me to call him. Fuck calling, I'll PM him and get what I need. He says it's too complicated to explain via PM and that I need to call him. I call bullshit and tell him to give me the basics. Core of the problem.

He won't tell me, it's too complicated. I guess.

Me - "Is it that guy who can't unlock?"

Him - "Yes"

So right there we haev fucking PROOF it wasn't too complicated, this git just wants to tell me what to do.

He goes on to ignore me when I say "There isn't anything I can do till the boss gets back on Monday." We'll call my boss "MyBoss" for this little narative.

Bob tells me what he's done to fix it and that nothing has worked. No shit, because I've already been involved and I couldn't fix it. So a fucking dumbass like you thought you'd try the same thing I already tried and wow... it didn't work. Imagine that?

Did you do the other... wait, let me count them all.. 35 things I tried? You didn't? Is that because you're a first teir support asshole who's basically a glorified operator? Or is that because a fucking drunk monkey could do as good of a job as you're capable of? Yes on all accounts? K, gotcha.

So then Bob tells me "This customer is an important customer, and he's local. I want you to go out there."

1. I don't give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut what the hell you want. You're not my boss so eat my ass.

2. He bought the basic software package... without any of the extras like SUPPORT. That in no way qualifies him as "an important customer" He could get fucked and I wouldn't care, I'll get to him when I can.

3. My going out there won't magically fix the fucking problem. I already said I can't fix it and that I need my boss to take a look you jackass.

This goes on for a bit until I just say "Look, it's been escalated to me. I'll take care of it as fast as I can. I don't need you to babysit it. I know how to do my job, I know how to do your job. I trained you to do your job. Now get him off the damn phone and move on. There is NOTHING I can do today."

I guess I should mention this guy works for a different company that we've partnered with. His boss calls me, and we have this conversation:

His Boss: "I need you to fix this problem."

Me: "I know that. But I can't fix it. I need to talk to MyBoss."

His Boss: "No. You can go out there and deal with this."

Me: "No I can't. My going out there won't solve anything. I don't know where the problem is and without MyBoss's input there isn't anything I can do. It's his subsystem that's eating the unlock so there isn't anything I can do until he identifies the problem."

His Boss "That's not an acceptable answer."

No shit? Really? Wow! Thanks for clarifying!

I know that answer sucks. But sometimes reality sucks. But I say "I know that. But there isn't anything I can do until MyBoss gets back. Look, the issue has been escalated. It's on my plate, it's my problem. I'll deal with it as best as I can. You guys need to move on to other problems. I'll solve this as fast as I can but you have to LET me do my job."

His Boss: "I guess I'll be having a talk with MyBoss about you attitude."

Fuck off! My Attitude sucks because you assholes won't listen. I'm not trying to screw this dude over. I CAN NOT FIX THE FUCKING PROBLEM. It's OUTSIDE of my control! I'd love to fix it because it's otherwise it's just a pain in the ass. Personally I think the unlock server fucked up his account and we need to generate a new one, but I don't have the authority to make that call. Only MyBoss does. MyBoss is out of town till Monday. So what exactly am I supposed to fucking do here? We've done everything in our power to fix this problem and evry step has been a non-starter.

And what REALLY pisses me off is MyBoss will listen to these assholes rather than me. So Monday I'm going to spend 90 minutes on this issue, 60 of wich will be my ass in a sling.

Fuck this job.
 
damn! Sorry to hear that Uber. Some people just don't know when to assert their authority and when to just let the ones that know what their doing do their job...even if it means waiting or not getting tha answer they want.

Sounds liek a corporate baby if you ask me. the I WANT I WANT I WANT attitude and NO is never an acceptable answer. Meanwhile he can't do shit without your help and you can't do shit without your own boss' help. I'm sorry your boss wasn't around to help you during that time so he'd know that you were harassed and you don't just have an attitude. Sounds liek the first time you said you couldn't do the job without your boss, as nicely as I'm sure you said it, to the guy of the phone...that becomes attitude just because he didn't like the attitude.

I've work tech support before and gotten a few bossy bodies on the phone. The 'help me or you're incompetant attitude' would occasionally come up and all I could do was grit my teeth. Sometimes I'd send the phone call to my co-worker, but if they are really rude, I'd put them on hold for an extended period of time. Not that that woudl help but I would at least get a breather from the bitchiness on the phone. Thankfully the guy I was working with often knew the answers. He had been in the company for a long time and I was only there for about 3 months.

Well, I can certainly understand where you are coming from...even though I was only a newbie there, I know how frustrating it is to get customer attitude and there's not much you can do about it.
 
Uber, you just make me glad I told dell to fuck off.

I would get the same bullshit from customers and lower end managers

"Hey look, if I can't fix it, no on can, so fuck off." I always wanted to say that. Not that I worked in tech, just sales. But customers would want to know why they could not get thier rebate from 1982 back, or why they can't have the price advertised in thier 1990 catalog. And I'm so not joking.
 
The problem is that it wasn't a customer I was talking too. It was one of the other employees... HE should get it. But the type to lose a game of chess to a stump so I guess I should expect no less.
 
Exactly. Why don't people understand this? Same goes for customers, if they don't get what they want they just keep asking you the same question. If it wasn't yes the first time, then it's not going to be yes the @##$^&#$-billionth time!

Anyway, Uber, sorry to hear of your troubles with the coworkers. In this situation, I would say just give 'em a big fuck off, but thats not really plausible. :happysad:
 
Uber, I'm sorry you have to put up with that shit. I have an idea of what it's like, but not exactly. I remember calling in about a problem with my router or something like that. I did everything I knew I could, gave up and called in. The techie suggested I do everything I already had. I asked to be bumped up a tier, but you know what the asshole did? He said no and suggested THE EXACT SAME THINGS. I asked to be sent through to another person and they said all the same things. I gave up on them and just bought a new router or other thing it was I was fretting about. So don't worry, I know about low level assholes who think they know how to fix everything, and I feel for you.
 
Thats nothing better than having to say the same damn thing over and over again. :rolleyes: I know what ya mean. (B&T haha) not exactly serious though

there's nothing worse than having to say the same thing over and over again except for having to do and say the same thing over and over again.

life sucks. yep.
 
Ugh, I went to my grandparents last weekend, with my dad, just me, my father, and my grandparents, well dad explains that my uncle, is a jackass, because what he does, is be a jackass to store employees, to get a cheaper product. What he does, is annoy, harrass, and throw a fit, and the employees at the store give him a cheaper product, just to get my uncle out of there! Dad says: "My uncle thinks its funny, because he got it cheap."


I think my family has a history of temper problems, because I know my father has a temper problem, as do I, although I try to control it now, and try to maintain the upmost mature and intelligent attitude, also to refrain from swearing. I am not a good arguer, I admit it, I can't just make up a good insult, I still enjoy arguing, but I don't like to get into arguements with jackasses, on xbox live. Today, I got the low score (for once!), and the guys on my team start picking on me for it, I tell them: "I just got up, I need a couple warmup games, I usually get top kills on my team, so please shut our face.", which is true, and the idiot on the other end repeats what I say in a mocking tone, it seems that he could not come up with a good retort, other than to mock me like an immature 4 year old, my confidence, and will to pursue arguing destroyed (I know no good retorts to pure animalisitic brute force), I muted myself, and proceeded to teamkill, I killed them twice (the game was really close, 45 to 43, we were 45, and once it became apparent that teamkilling in halo 2 is not easy, I just suicided myself, to make us lose, and punish these jackasses. Undoubtabley, they probably left feedback on me, but I am sure any administrator who reviews the game, will side with me.

I was persuaded to send him a message later, stating that: "I play for fun, not to feed your ego, and not for your approval.", but couldn't quite get the message to sound right, so I left it, and continued playing. The whole team laughed at me when that guy started acting so childish. Hello, I do NOT make fun of my team, or it's players, if they have a low score, I tell them to pick it up, and keep trying, not to quit. However, if there is a teamkiller/deranker, I tell them they are garbage/losers, and we don't need people like them on Xbox live.


If I have to swear, I mute myself. If there are standbyers/bridgers on my team, I leave feedback, and quit, as you can be banned for modding/playing on a game with modders. There was a game recently, a guy on my team was standying, but we could not tell who it was, we thought it was the other team, me and the guy on my team, we won, I felt so bad for telling those guys on the other team that they were trash, when really, my teams guy was cheating.

Now, back on topic, my father, after getting through the explanation about my uncle, he tells my grandparents, how he was at the base, and some phone was not working, so he yells and screams at the phone operator, to get it working. The phone operator tells him that her company cannot do that to the base, unless the government givesthem permission, I am not sure if my father realised this. He says: "If you guys don't come over here and fix this, I'm going to rip the fucking cables out of the wall!". My father and I fall into the same trap, we're not good at insults. I used to do those kinds of insults, as if the phone operator actually cared if my father ripped the chords out of the wall (but she might have, she would have to listen to him bitch about it later on).


I suppose it is hard to not be a jackass on tech support, for either side, my ISP, I called them because my xbox was lagging, turns out my xbox chord was a little bit damaged, and my computer has a high ping, it was annoying sitting there for 30 minutes, listening to a stupid pseudo AI, that the ISP has to take care of the influx of customers with problems. It is a phone operated, voice activated AI, that is not very helpful, apparently there are outages every day in my ISP, who has a monopoly on our area, and is not even qualified to do the job.


We used to get outages, we don't anymore, I call it the chaos theory effect, where if you pay enough money to a certain company, they will make better products, and have better service. By continually buying their product, they notice this, and try to influence you to buy more.
 
Hate that frustrated feeling. In a perfect utopia, we could say what we felt, and not worry about it. Ha!

OK, as far as the talk with MyBoss on Monday, is there anyway you can leave a note or message before he reads/hears from the Manager at the other company? Something along the lines of, "We had a call about (insert situation here). Since I couldn't do anything to help them at the time, could we set up a process where I can (insert suggestion for improvement here)."

If MyBoss is typical of most bureaucrats, you're still going to have to listen to 1/2 hour or so of how he would have handled it better, but at least he might actually hear your ideas for fixing the problem if/when it happens again.
 
Ha ha ha, this reminds me of the lady I made cry on the phone when I told her I couldn't shut her water meter off immediately, and was going to have to send someone out... her faucet was stuck open, and she was "dumping thousands of dollars of water down the drain."

Of course, she hung up on me, so I didn't have to deal with her anymore...

Sucks to be you I suppose.
 
When you have to escalate a problem, do you call your boss with the escalated problem or do you PM or what? I'm wondering how/why there isn't a time stamp on when the problem was escalated to your boss and that would be that. You had obviously handled this guy with the unlock already, escalated the problem from you up to your boss before this conversation with the underling and his boss even occured. Or don't you escalate in a situation where your boss is out of town or unavailable until he returns? In that case it isn't your fault either, because you have no way to escalate and no proof that you escalated because you just have to wait till he is in to do so.

It's fucked, but my suggestion would be to just listen to the rant calmly if it comes. Then calmly explain that the situation was already escalated from you to him when they called you. The key is to stay calm on Monday, then calmly explain the situation by saying that you had already escalated it up to him, your boss, by the time this tech and his boss called you.
 
Oh no, we don't live in that world Vezza. We live in our own special little world were escalating calls means they either call me, email me, or PM it to me but it doesn't get marked down anywhere because they're such cheap fucks they won't even pay for a real CRM solution so instead they log things into a cheap, busted, MS Access Database that only sort of works. But I can't see that database.

So yes, it's all fucked, and my boss is quite unhappy with me for yelling at some other employee who wasn't doing his job and then not backing down when someone else who isn't MY boss called to tell me to do something that was impossible.

Because that's how we roll here!

Again: Fuck this job.
 
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