BootsnAll Travel Community

I work in a call center/helpdesk environment full-time:
-I say my greeting about 100 times a day
-I tell people how to open netmeeting probably 20 times a day... I'm pretty sure Brian can quote me word for word and probably take over my job when necessary now.

I score ISAT tests for my part-time job:
-They give me one problem to grade on a gazillion different papers... the same problem over and over and over again. Probably about 600 papers in one session.


How 'bout you guys? What repetitive tasks does your job have you doing over and over and over...... and over?!

I also work in helpdesk environment. I reassure people when they have (what seems to them to be) dumb questions, and answer countless obscure questions about outdoorsy products.
(kind of like what I do here).

I help provide technical support for financial software, so I answer a lot of how-to and why questions over and over. I don't mind as long as the user isn't accusing our software of being junk.

I'm pretty surprised at how often I find myself explaining to a user that whatever it is they are asking about is not a bug just because they disagree with it. Usually the software was actually requested and designed to work that way.

well, my old job used to include fielding classic tourist questions such as,

"when do they turn the river off at night?" (apparently disneyland turns the river off at night?... well alaska ain't disneyland...)

"have you ever seen a bear? will i see a bear?"
(i actually saw one right about where you were standing five minutes ago, but i'm not going to tell you, because then you'd go off in the woods looking for it...)

ah, tourists were fun. now i clean up after messy kids...

quote:

Originally posted by static:
and answer countless obscure questions about outdoorsy products.
(kind of like what I do here).

what are the best questions you've been asked? i'm sure you've got some great ones!

Best? Hard to say. Probably the calls that I get from Antarctica, because then it is someone who actually needs our product, not just a "wanna-be". The worst is when people ask me, a total stranger, how something is going to fit them. ("Can you stand closer to the telephone so that I can get a better look?")

Luckily, I represent a pretty good product line, we have intelligent customers and haven't really hit the mass market. I don't know how I would be trying to say nice things about a product line that I didn't believe in...

Meetings, meeting, meetings. And status reports. And minutes. And more meetings!!

I used to work in a callcenter for a travel company. Technically, my title was a "Travel Consultant" But really I was a glorified telemarketer.

I called about 100 folks a day.
Left about 45 messages a day- saying bs like "Theres never been a better time to reserve your next tour to Malta! Reserve before December 10th and your companion flies for free." Bla Bla Bla.

When I wasnt making outbound calls, I fielded endless questions about our tours. Some quite normal. (Whats the weather like in June in Paris?) Some were a bit amusing (Can you check the other reservations to see if there are any single men on my trip?) And some rather stupid. (What language do they speak in Paris?) Um.. I kid you not.

My whole life was repetition.

quote:

What language do they speak in Paris?

Parmesan, of course.

I'm a concierge for some of the richest people in the U.S., and several times a day, I type out, "If there's anything else I can do for you, please don't hesitate to let me know. I'd be happy to [several creative options]. I hope you have a wonderful time!

I am a battery technician. I install and maintain backup battery systems that power uninteruptable power systems for hospitals, insurance companies, phone companies, etc. When doing a monthly preventative maintenance on a battery system I have to take voltages, add water to, and take several other readings on anywhere from 60-2000 batteries depending on the job and size of the battery system. It is very repetitive, monotonous, and boring. It does however pay pretty well and is nicely funding my upcoming RTW trip.

Firing people. Man, I thought I'd never get bored with revelling in the tearful wreckage of someone's career, but after a while it just loses its zestiness.

Keppie, Edward Abbey records some great tourist questions in "Desert Solitaire," written during his Park Service days.

Now that I am in administration, I don't get really good questions anymore. But my favorite from my reference librarian days was, "How does a worm get in an apple if there's no hole?" I reassured the patron that there really was a hole on that apple somewhere. On another day, an inebriated artist asked me for everything we had on yams. I didn't ask why.

My most repetitive task: the town requires that every bill submitted for payment have a 6-character alphanumeric code and an 11-digit account number written on it. Because that insults my sense of efficiency, I figured out which parts of the code/account numbers didn't change, and bought a rubber stamp with replaceable characters on it... my master's degree at work.

quote:

Originally posted by Totleigh-in-the-Wold:
I figured out which parts of the code/account numbers didn't change, and bought a rubber stamp with replaceable characters on it... my master's degree at work.

Beautifully done!

I act interested....almost every day

Ha! Amen to that.

My most-repeated task probably is dragging my mouse to "Favorites," going down to "Boots n All" and clicking. I do that way too much.

I send out very repetitive emails about once a week. "Your gas detectors need to be recalibrated...please sent it in."

And this week, anyway, discussing lightning strikes has become more commonplace than it ought to be. We're up to 2 within the company in the past week, plus someone unrelated to my employer was killed by a strike not far away, so we learned what we could about what happenned, so we could pass on advice to our crews.

OK, it's still not the 40-50 times a day I had to say a greeting and explain how to reset a router (unplug, plug back in, wait 30 seconds) when I was doing call centre work, but it's still repetitive.

Ok, so how long can people last working at a call center?

I've been at my job for about a year and a half now and it is seriously taking its toll. I know I'm a key player in the team now with more responsibility, but the repetitiveness (and often unthankfulness of the customers) has been wearing me down.

How long have others lasted in this environment???

quote:

Originally posted by Brooke vs. the World:


How long have others lasted in this environment???

I made it 2.5 months. And when I put in my two weeks, I just stopped showing up. It's inhumane. That you've made it this long is worthy of a bronze star or something