And So It Begins

Today is the third day of our real-life, on-the-phones training upstairs in the special training area, with our trainer, her boss, and two "experienced" call center representatives wandering around to help us with whatever problems we may encounter.

I was looking forward to this week after Hour One of classroom training, after coming to the realization that being read to by a 61-year-old woman out of a seemingly endless training manual in a dark and noisy basement, a half-assed storage room for IT equipment turned temporary training room, for two weeks straight was going to prove to be less than fascinating.

Admittedly, I had a bit too much to drink the Thursday night before the final classroom training day, during which we were to take our "final test," and called in sick Friday. Aside from waking up at 5:30am still drunk and quite belligerent, I also didn’t think I could sit through one more day in that classroom, so I utilized the company’s fairly liberal attendance policy and left two messages, one on the attendance hotline voicemail and one on the trainer’s, feigning illness. Turns out I didn't miss much, just more speakerphone calls and three hours of a test. When I came back Monday to choruses of "Are you feeling better?" I got to take the test alone, at Karen's desk.

It took me 2 hours, and this was after I went over and over each answer. When I finally turned it into Karen, she looked at my like I was loony and reminded me that I still had an hour left to take the test, and to please go back and check over my answers. I didn't tell her I already had, and decided to use the extra time to sit around, not taking calls, because even though I was excited to be done with classroom training, I also knew enough to understand that I would long for the days of sitting idly in a cube, staring at a computer screen without a phone attached to my head.

I scored 94% on the test. Apparently this was quite a feat, and I was one of only a few trainees to achieve this high a score.

Our on-the-phones training, thus far, has proven to be, dare I say, enjoyable? I don't loathe the minute that I have to log into the phones, and I have discovered that simply being incredibly kind and using a very quiet, yet clear voice in a very calm tone actually makes my customers happy, and makes me feel really good about helping them understand what's going on.

I also realized today that if I allow myself to be such a nice person on the phones during the week that Aunt Flow comes to visit and wreak havoc on my hormones, I must try desperately not to bawl when a nice-sounding recent college graduate and hopeful entreprenuer needs $80 worth of overdraft fees reversed to pay his bills that are due tomorrow, and I am only allowed to give him $50 back. Since the customers at Big Bank were self-righteous, entitled business owners with too much money and too many Southern California McMansions, I didn't care about being nice to them because 9 times out of 10, they were mean to me for no reason other than I was the unfortunate soul on the other end of the 800 number, and I didn’t give a crap if I got to reverse overdraft fees for them or not. I'd be indifferent no matter what timeof the month it was. At SBLB, customers may have significantly lower IQs than those at Big Bank, but that means that they are a thousand times happier to have a "banker" explain the ins and outs of how a check card works without being condescending, and they hang up wanting to birth your firstborn.

I can’t help but think that my current elation at the apparent simplicity and relative ease of this job will quickly diminish once I am out of training mode, but so far, so good. Only 5 more months until I am eligible for a promotion.