I had the worst call at work last night I've had in a very long time. The worst, perhaps, since the time I first started working there and EVERY call seemed worse than it was cause I didn't know how to handle the customers yet.

I've heard the definition of crazy is someone doing the same thing over and over again--and expecting a totally different outcome from their previous efforts. And boy oh boy, was this lady crazy. Now, I don't know why, but I frequently will have people ask me the same question 3 or 4 times and expect me to suddenly change my tune. But I've never had someone who asks me the same 2 or 3 questions over and over for a solid half hour (my average call handle time is about 5 minutes if that gives you a picture on how long I had to deal with this woman). You know, if she doesn't believe my answers, which is the only reason I can see that she might've been doing this, I'm not sure why she didn't just go and ask someone else at a certain point.

Anyway, the other really, really annoying thing about this lady is that she kept interupting me, and then getting mad when I wouldn't stop so that she could ask me the same question for the 80th time. I keep resisting the urge to use the term "pet peeve," since this would annoy anyone, but I get insane with rage when this happens. I don't get mad at interuptions so much--everyone does it. It's when the person actually gets mad at me for finishing my goddamn sentence despite their interuption so that they can get the fucking information they're badgering me about in the first place. If I wait for them (especially this lady) to finish their thought after they interupt me, I will only have to start the sentence over again and have them interupt me again, and NEVER get to the goddamn point.

But I also had one of the best calls too. Now my favorite call ever is still the guy who called in thinking we were publisher's clearing house and wouldn't believe me that we were not. But this is up there. I answer the phone, and I don't know if this person is saying it to me or someone in the background (cause I hung up right away) but their response was, "I'm going to fuck your ass, you fuck ass nigger." I don't know why, but random profanity possibly directed at me, including a slur meant for a race I'm not even a part of, made me laugh. We were having an exeptionally slow day so I turned to a couple of coworkers.

"I just got called an F-word, A-word, N-word."
"What?"
"F-word, A-word, N-word. I'm pretty sure I'll get fired if I tell you straight out, especially the last one."
"That's weird."
"Yeah, especially since, to the best of my knowledge, I don't sound particularly ethnically diverse."
"Yes you do."
"What?"
"You sound like a robot."
"I don't think people use racial slurs on robots."
"Of course they do! I use racial slurs on robots all the time! They plan to overthrow us."

So there are funny people at work--the rare times I actually am able to speak to them.

But in general, I got off work in a really good mood. I'm set to hang out with this chick from work today. We get along really well but for whatever reason have not made the transition to "hang out outside work" very often before this and it has never stuck. But I'm hoping this time!

I'm also going to start working on this new project that I'm very excited about. It's basically creating a folder in outlook for stuff for my team. I'm excited about it because 1) it is time off the phones, invaluable for someone in my position 2) it requires organizing things, which I have a nerdy love of, so I think I'll actually like DOING the project*, and 3) part of it is going to be picking a rep on my team each month to write about and let everyone get to know. Which... I don't think it will be as cool as the employee of the month posters I used to do for everyone at Borders, but I bet I can get a little creativity into it, and I'll really like that as well 4) It looks awesome to anyone who might be willing to promote me that I took the initiative to suggest this, then create it and maintain it, even give presentations on it to the team.

_____
* Anyone who knows me knows I'm not an organized person, I have crap all over my house. But, I really DO have a weird love of going through my CD's and alphabetizing them, or going through my books and organizing them, or even trying to organize things in my computer files (though that last is a losing battle).