weird weird life
Aug. 7th, 2007 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7Been manning the phones a lot today in a customer service capacity. They count calls simply by numbers, so I don't look very impressive today, but in terms of hours spent on the phone...
Have just had a run of three or four calls literally right in a row, I hang up one, push my chair back, sigh, rub my aching ear, and the phone rings again, and I'm talking to the next person for another 45 minutes. They've been telling me their life's histories in odors, allergies, sensitivities, and difficulties, all afternoon now, two hours' worth of calls. One told a sad tale of fleeing her apartment because of the dueling cuisines and air fresheners-- "The Koreans would cook something so then the Hindus [sic] would spray air freshener down the hall, burn incense and spray perfume, and then I'm Polish so I'd make my sauerkraut, and the Koreans would spray air freshener, and then the Hindus got their curry going and I've opened the windows and guess what? They've sprayed outside the building for bugs! It was like, nonstop chemical warfare. We bought a place just to get me out of there, and now we've had to throw away everything we own because the smell came with us and I have asthma, I couldn't breathe, I can't breathe now..."
Another old lady traced the strange odor in her apartment to her air conditioners. "I turned them off and opened the windows," she said, "and I could breathe, but it's North Carolina, honey, I can't sleep like that."
The man wanted to know about our product lines, ostensibly-- at least, unlike the others, he had a question, rather than just wanting to tell me his story-- but he really just wanted me to explain to him that he was doing the right thing in using our products to help his allergies, and it really was helping after all.
The last woman didn't have a question either, she just wanted to ask why it was that she didn't feel our product was helping her with the odors in her studio. It's not the sort of question I can answer-- I don't know why she felt that way, as from her description it was working fine-- but I tried.
None of them really had questions I could answer. I feel like I'm doing what I can, and most of them hung up happy, but what did I do really?
I don't know-- several hours have gone by, so I guess that's something.
Every job I get, it's all people wanting to tell me stories. Is it any wonder I just wish I could tell stories for a living? We all seem to want to.
Have just had a run of three or four calls literally right in a row, I hang up one, push my chair back, sigh, rub my aching ear, and the phone rings again, and I'm talking to the next person for another 45 minutes. They've been telling me their life's histories in odors, allergies, sensitivities, and difficulties, all afternoon now, two hours' worth of calls. One told a sad tale of fleeing her apartment because of the dueling cuisines and air fresheners-- "The Koreans would cook something so then the Hindus [sic] would spray air freshener down the hall, burn incense and spray perfume, and then I'm Polish so I'd make my sauerkraut, and the Koreans would spray air freshener, and then the Hindus got their curry going and I've opened the windows and guess what? They've sprayed outside the building for bugs! It was like, nonstop chemical warfare. We bought a place just to get me out of there, and now we've had to throw away everything we own because the smell came with us and I have asthma, I couldn't breathe, I can't breathe now..."
Another old lady traced the strange odor in her apartment to her air conditioners. "I turned them off and opened the windows," she said, "and I could breathe, but it's North Carolina, honey, I can't sleep like that."
The man wanted to know about our product lines, ostensibly-- at least, unlike the others, he had a question, rather than just wanting to tell me his story-- but he really just wanted me to explain to him that he was doing the right thing in using our products to help his allergies, and it really was helping after all.
The last woman didn't have a question either, she just wanted to ask why it was that she didn't feel our product was helping her with the odors in her studio. It's not the sort of question I can answer-- I don't know why she felt that way, as from her description it was working fine-- but I tried.
None of them really had questions I could answer. I feel like I'm doing what I can, and most of them hung up happy, but what did I do really?
I don't know-- several hours have gone by, so I guess that's something.
Every job I get, it's all people wanting to tell me stories. Is it any wonder I just wish I could tell stories for a living? We all seem to want to.
