Shit Finally Goes Sour, and The War of Pretension on the Morning Commute

My most recent description of SBLB as a great place to work thus far, with nicer customers and an overall better work environment has proven to be exactly what I feared it would as I typed the words: A terrible jinx I knowingly put on myself.

Today started like any other, spending the first half hour in our office chairs in a lazy and distracted circle around our new trainer (Karen’s boss) while she droned on about something I fail to recall, and then telling us to “go get ‘em!” on the phones. I took call after call, and around call number 22, I finally got a customer who said what I was wondering if anyone would say:

”This is just unacceptable. I’ve started banking with Big Bank, and they are just so much better. SBLB doesn’t know the first thing about customer service. Big Bank would do this for me. I can’t believe you won’t Fed Ex a replacement debit card for my daughter in Ireland. What is wrong with you people?! And Big Bank would never charge me for using a different bank’s ATM. This is absurd. I’m closing all my accounts. What, you can’t close it over the phone?! I HATE SBLB!!”

To her credit, Big Bank would Fed Ex a replacement debit card to a foreign country, if the banker had a sympathetic supervisor to approve it. And I could close accounts over the phone if certain requirements were met… but ATM fees? Come on now.

Anyway.

The worst part of the day was when I raised my hand for a “helper” to come over and look over some paperwork I had filled out regarding some account maintenance I had completed. Every question I asked was met with, “We do not need to explain this to the customer.” “It doesn’t matter.” “I don’t know the answer. Just tell them this, again.” “I don’t train that up here.” Then the incredibly frustrating incident where I had left required notes on an account after reversing an overdraft fee, manually typing in the customer’s account number into the appropriate system, and Alicia, the helper who saw me first, told me to go back and check if the notes had posted correctly. Assuming I had copied the account number I was notating, I pasted the number into the field and hit enter. A different account came up, showing no notes. I immediately realized the problem and was about to go in and type in the correct account number that I had notated, but Alicia freaked.

“No! Don’t do that! Just type in the account number over here, and delete the notes you left in the wrong account!” She grabbed for my mouse, which for some reason makes my skin crawl and starts a bubble of irrational fury well up in my chest, ready to attack the offending hand of Alicia. Luckily, I refrained. I hate when people try to takeover my damned mouse.

“No, Alicia, I left notes in the correct account. I typed it in, and didn’t realize when I went to check—“

”Just do this for me PLEASE.”

I do as she asks, and am proven right. She still doesn’t trust what I say (or rather, didn’t say, since she wouldn’t let me explain what happened) and tells me to type in the other account number. I say no, I type in the accidental one showing no notes, and then the correct one, showing the correct notes that I placed. She doesn’t even offer an apology.

This reminds me of several incidents at Big Bank where, upon being presented with a particularly difficult or challenging customer issue, I would call the Help Desk. 4 out of the 6 Help Desk bankers would often tell me that I ask too many questions that are insignificant, that the customer would never ask, anyway. This was usually their way of telling me that they didn’t know the answer to my question and were too lazy to use their resources (that I was told I wasn’t allowed to know about) to find out what needed to be done.

I ended up secretly accumulating several pieces of vital information during my year and a half at Big Bank that enabled me to avoid calling the Help Desk whenever possible when the issue required a system or phone number that only they had access to. With careful watching of keyboard strokes to see a password to a forbidden-to-lowly-phone-bankers system or web addresses of the “supervisor/helpdesk only” intranet site that detailed untold explanations of various policy and procedure, or utilizing my curious ability to quickly and accurately memorize random sequences of numbers to acquire more forbidden phone numbers to areas within the bank we were told didn’t actually exist, I amassed lists and lists of treasure, which I eventually spread out among my favorite coworkers upon my departure from Big Bank.

My view is that this should not have been necessary. I understand the need to provide customer service representatives with a basic role and not give too much responsibility or trust everyone with information that requires discretion, but to lie to me and the rest o the phone bankers about the existence of such things seems unethical.

I am beginning to realize that I am not a person cut out for convential employment. It's apparent that I want to know too many details about apparently irrelevant topics, that I am too quick to determine my superiors to be incompetent morons, and a bit too predispositioned have a bad attitude about whatever it is that I am paid to do, deeming me unfit for promotion.

I must quickly acquire the necessary motivation to beome my own employer.

As I went outside to have a cigarette on my first 15-minute break of the day, fuming over how I was fuming about something I expected to happen when I should keep a positive attitude about it all and just suck it up for a while, a 30-something woman smoking next to me started discussing the weather. There is a digital clock and temperature display on the outside of our tower, which is reflected in the building across the street, and the current temperature displayed backward seems to be the main source of conversation among the smokers, who otherwise would stand next to each other, puffing away in awkward silence.

“Looks like we finally hit a warm spell!” (The digital display read 1 degree.)

I agree, because it’s true, it feels much warmer today than it has the previous few days. She says that without the wind, it’s not so bad at all. On a whim, I tell her about a passage in a book I was reading on the bus this morning, where the author, living in Chicago, describes a summer day where the humidity and warmth seem to reach the rare Midwestern agreement, creating a beautifully comfortable day. I say this is similar to winters here, where the cold isn’t nearly as bad if the wind didn’t have to sneak up on you and freeze your face off.

Unfortunately, my attempt at conversation outside of the socially acceptable Weather Box that is the topic of nearly all conversations with strangers or acquaintances in this state falls on deaf and perplexed ears. She looks at me, surprised for a short moment, and starts a story that you can tell she was dying to share about her recent family reunion up North, where it was so cold that they weren’t allowed to hold their annual tubing activities outdoors as they always had.

I realize I have heard this story before, almost verbatim, as though she had rehearsed it or told it too many times throughout the week, because she was the random woman who told it to me on my smoke break yesterday morning, only she obviously doesn’t realize that I am the same person. I act and respond as though I did not already know that, upon being told there was no tubing that night, the family traipsed into the resort bar to warm up by way of root beer liqueur shots.

I wonder if she’ll tell me the same story, after breaking the ice with observations about the expected “heat wave” that is said to be occurring tomorrow, when I see her on my first break. Maybe by then she’ll realize that she’s already told all of the employees in the building and must move on down to Big Bank’s tower a few blocks down to share her too-cold-to-tube story with new ears.

The thing about where I work is that it's directly downtown, where I commute via bus caught at the local park and ride location, surrounded by sleepy working professionals with iPods and books and forbidden cups of gas station coffee that the bus driver graciously turns a blind eye to as we board. Although attempting to observe proper bus etiquette and avoid staring at fellow passengers, I can't help but steal quick glances at random people: their book titles, their newspaper of choice, their facial expressions, the way their heads jerk around as they accidentally fall asleep in the early-morning darkness. Most are wearing wedding rings, many women engagement rings, and most look patiently accepting of the long workday ahead of them. Their books are often fiction novels written by John Grisham or, in the case of a bold woman I noticed, Danielle Steel. The back of the bus is where you will usually find the more pretentious readers, in requisite Buddy Holly glasses, paging through worn-looking copies of books whose author is unfamiliar to me, occasionally glancing around to see who is paying attention to their choice of reading material.

On my third or fourth day riding the bus, I had a conversation with somebody about acceptable books to take with me. In the spirit of poking fun at the snobbery that runs amok in the back of the bus, we looked at the bookshelf, trying to find the most pretentious (and more than likely as of yet unread) book on the shelf. War and Peace? Nah, too obvious. Complete Idiot's Guide to Paganism? Got a good laugh, but deemed too likely to cause potential physical harm. Same goes for Complete Idiot's Guide to the Koran. How about The Jewish Mystique? No, no books about religion. Too controversial, likely to cause stares and provoke feelings of discomfort among the assumed sheltered suburbanites and soccer moms.

Simply bring along my iPod as an understandable copout was out of the question, as the stupid thing just broke, so I opted to just buy the paper every morning, as I had been doing already, to do the Times crossword. That is pretentious enough in itself; if it's a Monday or Tuesday, I'm like to complete the puzzle, which would make me look bookish and intelligent in a quiet, modest sort of way to the pretentious book snobs.

I win.