[ On Wednesday, October 6, 1999 at 13:30:48 (-0700), Derek J. Balling wrote: ]
Subject: Re: MCI WorldCom fiber cut - Syracuse, NY
[1] Idiot Overflow -- when people can't get through to one department, or they don't like the hold time, so they call a completely unrelated department on a different 800 number hoping that somehow we can perform feats of black magic to do what the other department does.
Sometimes the idiots are the ones in the other department that are supposed to be answering the phones. I've more than once encountered help desks that refuse to answer the phone when there's something bad happening in their department, but will answer inside transfers. Other times the only way I've been able to get a supervisor is by asking some other poor helpless soul in a different department to transfer me to one. Sometimes though it's just that the hold music is so bad that if I didn't hang up and try the inside transfer trick one more second of it would force me to try to crawl through the wires and do unspeakable things to the first person I find on the other end! ;-) -- Greg A. Woods +1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <gwoods@acm.org> <robohack!woods> Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>