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Harminoff posted:I'm pretty happy that we are getting commision now. I was wrong with my numbers before though, we get $1.02 per call and .04 cents to the dollar. You really think it's stupid to pay based on hours? I take your point that you get a dollar a call now and you can work faster, but you know there'll be people there that'll try and game the system, right? Someone always finds a way that'll work for a little while, then management will stop it and you'll loose a little bit of the freedom you had to deal with your calls. Or maybe they lower the commission rate because they figure people are doing too many discounts. Either way, you'll find yourself having both your wage and your autonomy whittled away until you've got none left.
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Jul 1, 2010 20:11
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Aerofallosov posted:Nope. It's surprisingly common. I had one woman go 'can you transfer me to a tech? I want my husband to do this, but he can't talk to other women'. Buh. because I totally want to steal your husband. Lemme tell ya. Or even just 'I want a male tech please'. > I'm constantly surprised at how many blatant loving racists are out there too. I remember dealing with an escalated call once, calming the customer down and getting ready to return him to the original agent (black guy with a noticeable but not impenetrable Jamaican twang) to deal with the outcome: "Now I'm just going to transfer you back to Agent X and he'll get all this noted on your account." "<significant pause> Could you transfer me to someone else instead?" "<even more significant pause> And why would that be, Mr Y?" "Well... I... I couldn't really understand him very well. You know what I mean?" "Really? Oh, well in that case I'll be sure and tell him to explain things very carefully then." "That's not what I..." "I know. Now, the only agent free at the moment is Agent X; should I pass you back to him to get this resolved or should we leave your account in it's present state?" "<sullen> Pass me back." "Thank you, I'll just transfer you." It may have been my imagination, but I think the agent turned his accent up a couple of notches for the duration of his call with that guy. I'm thankful that I was in an environment where we were allowed to shut people's accounts down for being abusive towards staff so we never felt utterly powerless.
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Jul 12, 2010 07:22
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Built 4 Cuban Linux posted:That doesn't sound racist. He probably just had difficulty with that guy's accent. I'm terrible with other people's accents sometimes but I'm pretty sure I'm not racist. Fair enough, I've not related it well then - there was definitely something off about the call, and like I said, the guy is perfectly understandable.
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Jul 13, 2010 06:17
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Good luck to any RBS goons in the thread - I'm assuming that the 3500 job losses announced today are going to include call centre staff. Probably a lot.
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Sep 2, 2010 18:34
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alreadybeen posted:Does it matter / do you guys appreciate if I hang around at the end of the call and answer the four question survey? I know I used to be targeted on how many people I put through - completing it didn't seem to get me any more benefit than you agreeing to go through to it and then hanging up.
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Sep 9, 2010 07:38
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JackRabbitStorm posted:Yeah, we are only blocked by firewall from going to social sites or game sites. I even browse sa while at work. As for the music, ear bud in left ear on really quiet to drown out the asshats around me and the annoying elevator music from the overhead speakers. I like to think of it as a way to stay destressed as I can listen to my music and have to be bothered by my surroundings allowing me to better focus on my callers. I just have been spoiled with how it was the the first three years I worked there. I cannot imagine what sort of twisted exec thinks it's a good idea to have music piped into a call centre.
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Dec 10, 2010 14:11
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ellasue posted:I missed the old thread but was wondering if anyone could recommend any books/resources on how to deal with angry customers, specifically in a call center environment. I'm up for a Tier 2-like promotion and, while I'm confident in my knowledge, I don't have much experience with call control and/or people who are irate. Not got any books I could name but a few tips from dealing with escalated complaints calls: 1. Let them talk. That customer is not going to listen to anything you've got to say until they've spewed out every last thing in their head that they're angry with your company for. It is utterly pointless to intervene in a lot of cases and best to just "Mmm hmm", "Ok..." and "I see." along with them until they run out of steam. However: 2. I've also seen advocated that in some cases if you've got a customer that's like a broken record you need to stop placating and say something moderately inflammatory just to break them out of it. Once you've got their needle out of their groove you can then steer them back away from the topic they're stuck on and get on to trying to actually resolve it. 3. Actually, this is pretty good: http://www.businessballs.com/empathy.htm Obviously you'll need to ignore anything about non verbal communication and remember that a massive chunk of how the customer will interpret your conversation will be based on your tone rather than what you're actually saying. 4. I worked in debt collection so this may not apply to you, however: don't be afraid to say no or tell the customer that they're wrong about something. Don't be rude about it, don't be smug about it, but don't cave on something you're emphatically sure you're right about and they're wrong. 5. Don't be afraid to tell the customer you don't know the answer to something but that you'll go away and find out. If it's appropriate, that is. If they're asking you to find out something that will do naff all to resolve their issue then don't be afraid to tell them you'll get to that once you've sorted the issue out. I'll see if I can think of anything else. Other call centre types please feel free to demolish any of those points at will, I'm not precious about it. Oh, and full disclosure: when one of my staff was asking me about a customer account, I would frequently have a look, give a full explanation to them as to why the mess was the customer's fault and close with "So tell them to piss off or pay up... only use tact and diplomacy and stuff," which may not qualify me to talk about excellent customer service.
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Jan 12, 2011 22:29
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Loving Life Partner posted:I just got my first call center job with Progressive Insurance about 3 months ago. The atmosphere and training are actually really great, and 95% of callers are easy to deal with and I even have fun on some calls, but man, there's that minority that can just ruin your day. Oh yeah, it's impressive how few letters get through to this sort of customer - except final demand/default notices. And god yes, the ones that complain when funds are taken out later than they were expecting. Look at your sodding bank account! You can do it online, at an ATM (where you happily hit the "withdraw" button four times a day) or over the phone, and if it doesn't look right, question it. If you want someone to babysit your account you need to pay for that, your bank doesn't have people monitoring every account every day.
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Jan 13, 2011 10:14
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:I sometimes end up at the end of an escalation process when it starts getting technical, out of hand, no one knows what the gently caress or its a key customer. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with point 4. Paraphrasing what the customer's said and feeding it right back to them does wonders because they feel like you really get it. Entirely off this topic, is a customer bellowing "COMPUTA SAYS NO" still de rigeur in the UK? I used to like that because I was always able to reply that the computer didn't get a say in anything and that it was ME saying no.
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Jan 14, 2011 23:00
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:Haha I love that trick as well. When I listen in to some of the account managers calls at our place they are always using it and it never fails to make me laugh. Ha - I've been one of the "OR I'LL CANCEL" guys before, but I go and do the research beforehand so I know that I actually CAN get a better deal somewhere else. With my phone/cable/internet company I usually just quote two or three other deals I've seen somewhere else that are better and I get a better deal. And I try not to be a dick about it too, which probably helps.
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Feb 10, 2011 13:24
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BigDave posted:I just finished a interview at the Bureau of Collection Recovery call center in Eden Prairie. It's collections work, but it's $11.00 and 40 a week, so it would get me out of retail. Any advice for a first-timer? Echoing what others have said as well as this: stick to the facts. If you can see that a customer has promised to pay four times before and hasn't, so you don't think they're going to meet a deadline this time, tell them so. Tell them why you think so as well. If you're trying to figure out if they can afford a repayment plan and they give you an earful of "My income is none of your business!" then remind them that whether or not they get a plan rather than a default notice is down to how this conversation goes. Same for if they're abusive. All of this can be done without being rude, abrasive or raising your voice. The only phone environment I've ever taken calls in was collections and if I had to go back to taking calls that's where I'd do it. I've heard calls for bank customer services, credit card calls, mortgage calls, utility company ones, etc., and out of them all, collections is still the only one that appeals to me. At least where I worked, you had some authority to go with your responsibility, there was more to it than just hitting a button and moving on, and something like 90% of the time I felt like I'd improved someone's day by helping them sort out their money. Of the remainder, 9% of the calls were harmless enough and only 1% were wankers that had no intention of paying or doing anything other than calling up and making whoever they spoke to miserable.
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Feb 10, 2011 21:01
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man thats gross posted:Depends on management. Most won't mind if you show and leave early, since it will probably be pay-minus rather than paid sick time. Some are dicks either way. Check what the policies are as well. My company has a policy of moving to disciplinary procedures if you have more that four occasions OR 20 sick days total in a rolling 12 months. If the workplace is like that, make drat sure you're better before you come back or you could wind up with two occasions instead of one occasion lasting 3 days.
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Feb 23, 2011 20:01
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man thats gross posted:I got a write-up for taking four days off in a row. Four days count as short-term disability. The short-term disability stooges called me, I told them the doctor I saw, the prescription they gave me, the dosage, what was wrong, what my average day was like, etc., and they said based on our conversation and history, my STD claim was good. Well that's pretty lovely.
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Feb 23, 2011 22:59
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Semprini posted:This is perfectly common, strict islamic banking does not allow receiving or paying of interest. This is entirely true, but I think the "what the Christ" was more aimed at the fact that this person took out a credit card and was then saying she shouldn't pay interest, rather than that her religion forbade it.
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Mar 2, 2011 12:22
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oribiasi posted:Then she probably should have signed up with an Islamic Credit Card instead of a "western" one. Oh yes, I agree. Sounds like a fairly standard case of "I don't like it so it shouldn't apply to me"-itis. My favourite calls used to be the ones where someone knew drat well they'd deliberately done something to overdraw their account (this was back in about 2005) - and please bear in mind that I have skipped to the end of a round and round discussion: "These charges are excessive! Don't you think they're excessive?" "I think they're very high, certainly - I do my best to avoid them myself." "Thirty five pounds is excessive!" "Well the £35 was caused by you issuing a cheque to... let's see here, "The Money Shop". Now you've already told me that you knew the money wasn't there, so are you now saying you'd prefer to be prosecuted for theft than be charged £35?" "WHAT?! HOW DARE YOU!" "Well, under the 1968 theft act, "A person shall be guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it". It says that on the letter we sent you when we demanded the return of your cheque guarantee card. I would say that spending money that isn't yours fits that definition." "I... <very long pause>" "I don't really wan't to take the conversation this way, Mr Customer - what I *want* to do is talk about getting your account back in order in a way you can afford..." And then the conversation goes back to a normal "let's fix this poo poo" call. We stopped putting the theft act stuff on the card misuse letters after a while (and I think the act was superseded anyway), so I stopped using it, but it was a good ride while it lasted.
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Mar 2, 2011 19:34
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Loving Life Partner posted:I'm really getting into rate change battles with customers, especially piddling amounts of rate change. I was arguing with a customer for about 25 minutes about why his rate went up $18 for 6 months. No, not $18 PER month, over 6 MONTHS. Oh man, the recent EU ruling that insurance companies can't use gender as a basis for insurance premiums is really going to gently caress a lot of people up. Good luck anyone in an insurance call centre when that comes in...
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Mar 2, 2011 20:27
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Solkanar512 posted:This one in particular is rather lovely. I don't suddenly become a more dangerous driver or my house is more likely to be set on fire simply because my credit score changes. Yeah, that one was always fun to argue with people in a collections centre as well. "My credit score is really bad and I can't get credit because of YOU!" "You're four payments down on your loan and you're £500 over your overdraft. You're SUPPOSED to have a bad credit score if that's how you act!" "RAAAAAAA MANAGER!"
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Mar 2, 2011 23:44
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Loving Life Partner posted:Depends on your ability to depersonalize what's going on within the calls. People are going to say "You", "You people" and etc. and blame you very angrily for things at times. As long as you remember that "you" are a multimillion dollar company and be a conduit for the guidelines and regulations and let it go as soon as you hang up, you'll be fine. Ha, I did exactly that when I phoned British Gas about my boiler insurance a few months back. Now I feel bad.
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Mar 10, 2011 07:36
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Lord Windy posted:I did my final interview today for a place at IBM. I think they were trying to scare me off by saying how repetitive the work is. That was certainly a standard thing to say when I was conducting interviews for call centre jobs. It IS repetitive - I don't know what your job will specifically involve, but here's a few examples: Technical support: 1. "Hello customer!" 2. "Let's try power cycling it" 3. "It works? Ok, have a great day!" Collections: 1. "Hello customer." 2. "Full repayment now please." 3. "Ok, when CAN you pay?" 4. "Ok, thanks, bye!" This is not to demean either of those, but the vast majority of calls will be along exactly the same lines. Then again, if you work in a shop the vast majority of your days will be the same as well. Basically they're asking you now so you can back out if you're wanting something more creative - and also so that if you start goofing off and daydreaming they've got the interview question to point at and say "We TOLD you."
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Mar 10, 2011 13:30
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A New Name posted:Working at a call center for a bank has its moments, but it's mostly this: I used to enjoy the follow up being "But why did you let me spend more than I had?" Which, on the face of it, is a fair question. So then you have to explain about stores having floor limits for credit and debit cards that everything just gets approved if you're under, about direct debits (which some people simply cannot understand) about guaranteed cheques, etc. I swear, some people were massively better off in the UK when they got a pay packet in their hands and when that ran out, they knew they had no money. Give the same people a bank account and they'll set up direct debits all over it and then take all the money out and not understand when they get unpaid direct debit fees.
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Mar 10, 2011 19:55
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Loving Life Partner posted:We have an automatic withdrawal dealie at my job (with a discount!), which gets people into all kinds of poo poo, which bugs the gently caress out of me. Again, always a winner that argument. "You took it out a day late so I'd already spent the money!" Oh, you're right - our bad, you don't have to pay your loan this month. This goes hand in hand with people that didn't understand that the start and end of the month are different by just a single day. The number of times I'd get this exchange was absurd: "I get paid the last day of the month." "Ok, well I'll set your loan payment up for the first of the month then, that'll give you a day's gra-" "NO I CANT AFFORD TO HAVE IT GO OUT ON THE FIRST, I DONT GET PAID UNTIL THE LAST DAY OF THE MONTH." Also, people that get paid weekly and can't understand monthly budgeting. No, we don't offer loans with weekly payments. I can help you figure out a way to deal with it using standing orders and a savings account, but if you're being a huge dick the chances are I'll tell you to sort it out by yourself.
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Mar 10, 2011 20:38
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:On the other hand, you also might not be employed. These annoying dolts keep you at your job in a way. Meh, not entirely true - there's plenty of people that fall behind on loans and get overdrafts because of reasons other than their own ignorance and refusal to understand things. I'd always bend over backwards to help someone who life had screwed over (got made redundant, got sick, that sort of thing) and probably made less effort for people who just plain wouldn't change anything about their lifestyle in the face of overwhelming evidence. I can remember talking to one guy who was on disability living allowance as well as a couple of other benefits - he was two payments down on his £50 a month loan and was paying £75 a month to Sky TV, about £30 a month on magazine subscriptions and was a heavy smoker. I mean poo poo, cut down the sky, lose some of the magazines and cut down on the cigarettes and you can clear that right up - but no, each of these were "The only pleasure [he] gets", so I was forced into the absurd position of having to default the guy. Bear in mind I was offering to give him 6 months to clear up the outstanding £100, but he was adamant he couldn't find less than £20 per month somewhere in his finances. Nuts.
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Mar 11, 2011 21:37
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man thats gross posted:Yeah they would absolutely cut staff if call volume went down and stayed down. Particularly if you work in a zero-revenue department like tech support. Like, on some level they all understand that without tech support other telecoms will leave you in the dust because your service sucks, but on the other hand, when push comes to shove they still see you as nothing but a big red number. Yeah, management likes to point fingers wildly elsewhere in the event of a problem. I do call forecasting now and have seen my colleagues get the brunt of this occasionally. "We abandoned too many calls, it's your fault!" "Actually, we don't forecast based on abandon rate but on speed of answer and..." "Raaaa, it's your fault we didn't have enough staff raaa!" "You didn't even deploy as many as I said you needed though. And your handle time was 30% higher than it normally is..." "Raaaaaa!" I'm fortunate not to get this sort of crap - in fact my favourite manager comment recently was: "Well, it wouldn't have mattered if you HAD forecast that many calls - we didn't have enough staff for what you'd predicted in the first place so we were screwed anyway."
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Mar 13, 2011 12:43
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VanishXZone posted:Better to risk overdressing than underdressing. If you get there and the suit is entirely too much (not likely), take off the jacket. Agreed - I can't think of any situation where turning up for an interview in a suit will get you points knocked off - all it should do is let the interviewer know you're taking it seriously.
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Mar 20, 2011 14:23
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:OK, I'll wear a suit, but I still wonder if anyone could share their experiences. Of the interview process? I think there's a separate interviewing thread around somewhere, but essentially expect to get asked for examples of when you've demonstrated particular behaviours. Take your time, give the example and answer any follow ups in as much detail as possible. You haven't said what country you're in, but I'm going to hazard a guess that Japanese proficiency isnt that commonplace, so hopefully as long as you can demonstrate that you'll be fine.
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Mar 20, 2011 20:01
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Loving Life Partner posted:I'm working a 4x10 schedule, so I work Mon/Tues, get Wed/Thu off, then work Fri/Sat and get Sunday off. It's actually loving great. Yeah, if you can stomach it and they'll let you do it, compressed hours is the way to go. 'course some places won't offer it because it screws with their schedule flexibility.
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Mar 21, 2011 20:57
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Kitsch! posted:Thank goodness there's only e-mails on the weekends: Wow. There's a dude with his priorities in order.
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Mar 27, 2011 09:49
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BigDave posted:But, I don't DO anything! I just sit there, dial phone numbers, get voice mail, hang up and repeat. My cube neighbors ignore me, and sometimes hours will go by without me saying anything. So basically they've got you being an autodialler? Man, that sucks.
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Mar 29, 2011 06:24
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Null Set posted:Take the paycheck, keep looking for a job. Our relationship with our dialler provider is hilarious - they also provide our scheduling/forecasting software. Basically guys at my level that are reasonably techy and use their software regularly get on fine with the support people. However, someone somewhere has deemed that we're not allowed to talk to the provider directly. We must instead log whatever question or issue we have as an incident with our tech support function. This is then escalated to the second level tech support function which is in India. Once they realise they haven't got a damned clue what to do with an autodialler or a workforce management bit of kit they call the provider, who calls the person who initiated the whole thing back straight away. Basically 30 second long calls have been extended into a series of phone calls over the course of a couple of hours. Yaaaaay.
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Apr 2, 2011 17:27
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rolleyes posted:My employer (not even a call centre) instigated a similar policy a while back with the justification that it would allow them to get a clearer picture of common faults so they could take appropriate action with the vendor. Nice idea in principal but when a 5 minute period of being unable to work turns into a 2 hour period of being unable to work, which costs the company more? Yeah, think that was the logic behind the change for us, however we don't ever bother calling the provider for simple things. The last fault I had to call them for was something up with the datafeed between the call distributor and the forecasting/scheduling software. I had to explain to two separate tech support people what both of those things were, wait for a DAY as it got logged at the wrong incident level, then spent about fifteen seconds talking to the vendor who fixed it during that call. Utterly pointless.
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Apr 2, 2011 17:41
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mllaneza posted:It rapidly became obvious that she'd already told her bosses she'd get it done and promised to meet a deadline. There were hints that a big print job was just waiting for the number to be put in. That poo poo makes me angry. People that have literally no clue who think that sufficient "blue sky thinking" can overcome real technological restrictions on what is possible.
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Apr 2, 2011 18:31
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mllaneza posted:She didn't yell. I'm happy. Moving from the operational side of a call centre to a forecasting/planning function where I'm on a team full of people who know what they're doing, talk straight and don't gently caress each other over was like a breath of fresh air.
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Apr 2, 2011 19:04
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ProfessorDandypants posted:I have an interview for a non-cold calling office position on Monday! I've only been cold-calling for a week and my anxiety/depression is making every shift a living nightmare. If I have to listen to one more person bitching about how I'm wasting their minutes or how much of a scumbag I am, I'm going to dive into a shotglass and never leave. You've honestly got to let that stuff slide off or you WILL go mad. They're not really pissed off at you, they're pissed off at the company that's cold calling them and you just happen to be the representative. Once you get that mindset nailed you'll find it less terrible. I was the same on outbound dialling at first and one day when someone was in the middle of some rant about how dare we call them at an inconvenient time it just clicked and I stopped being bothered by the vitriol.
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Apr 9, 2011 17:12
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JackRabbitStorm posted:We have some fancy pants program that projects call volume weeks in advance and schedules people, that cost us god only knows how much to implement, but we had 4 people quit on Thursday. Well, one got fired, one handed in their 2 weeks notice and was told to pack their poo poo, and the other 2 just got up and left. They were all loans reps so we went from 15% of our reps being able to handle loans to about 7%, but I don't give a poo poo. My schooling comes first, and they know this Even the fancy pants software should be able to cope with stuff like "I cannot do mondays". What it SHOULD do is generate a bunch of template schedules which your rostering guys assign people to. They should a) make sure they have at least one template set with no mondays in it and b) assign that set to you. Excel's ok until you start getting into multiskilled agent groups, off phone activity requirements, etc etc - as soon as you're taking thousands of calls a day and you're open something other than 9-5 you probably want some workforce management software AND some decent training on it.
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Apr 17, 2011 18:43
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JackRabbitStorm posted:Haha, our software is called Workforce Management! Thats funny, and yeah, I agree 100%. Luckily my direct manager (who pleaded with me to stay when I was musing over quitting to focus on school full time) stepped up to the plate and is actually going to *gasp* live the day of a rep tomorrow and work at least 4 hours of core loans calls to help out. If it's the one made by Aspect then it's the one I use - it's insanely powerful and clever but requires a real training investment across a long time - there's too much in it to get your head around right away and so many parameters you can gently caress around with that it's easy to get lost. I've been using it for two years and I'm nearly getting the hang of it. It's really really easy, though, to just set it all on autopilot and have it build schedules with no regard for preferences. Frankly, where I am we could do with a bit more of that sort of thing though; so many people have compressed hours, "can't" work sundays, etc that it's become a bit of a joke. Work/life balance, sure, but if you say in the interview you can work literally any shift, gently caress off coming to the rostering guys two days into training to try and get Monday off every week.
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Apr 17, 2011 19:19
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froglet posted:At my call centre, I tend to get a lot of shifts because I have a very broad set of availabilities (nobody else seems to want to work weekends/evenings). However, this has lead to situations where I've asked for only 2-3 shifts per week due to study, to find the boss has put me down for four or five because there's nobody else to cover. Most of the time I can handball the shifts off onto somebody else, but it annoys me that I get placed in that position. I just wouldn't do any more shift swaps with him if I were you. "Sorry, you left me high and dry because you couldn't be bothered to come in; go ask someone else." He does this to people often enough and eventually no-one will switch with him.
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Apr 20, 2011 06:27
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Lord Windy posted:Finished my training yesterday, full fledged iOS tier one adviser now. Started on the phones without a mentor for the first time today. There's lots of different ways, depends on the customer's particular form of enragement. What was the problem, exactly?
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Apr 21, 2011 13:49
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Lord Windy posted:She set up an iPhone exchange via her Carrier, a long slow tedious process that took a month and a half to complete. She got a refurbished phone back (standard practice when they are available) and the battery for the phone was running out of juice far to quickly in her mind. Loving Life Partner's given a good answer here; some you just have to let run down and some you're not going to win with. Although, the "filling balloon" type customers do have another option available once you're confident enough to try it. Sometimes if someone's just angry and not calming down, you can control the call by actually topping the anger out instead of letting it simmer. Having worked in debt collection, a way I had of doing this was say things to the customer like: "What you're doing here, in borrowing money and failing to repay it, could be considered theft." This results in a minor explosion from the customer instead of the slow simmer you had before, and the explosion is actually easier to manage than the relentlessness of someone that is quietly fuming at you/your company. Once they've exploded, you can back off, clarify that you were explaining that your earlier statement was simply one possible interpretation of the facts and get on to actually resolving the situation. It doesn't always work, and it takes a while before you can judge which customers to employ it on, but I've often found the calls I have that start off that way end up being some of the most pleasant ones. Partly because I think people realise how douchey they're being if they actually erupt. On a related note, there used to be a guy in our centre that acquired the nickname "The Volcano" because of his habit of going off at customers. His manager had a little sign on the wall with "Days since last eruption" on it.
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Apr 21, 2011 15:04
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gomababe posted:Speaking of accents, I swear some people have gone half deaf in this stupid country. I am from Scotland a part of the United Kingdom, not Australia, not Canada and most certainly not India or Paksitan {yeah I don't know about those last two either. Must be the microphone or the fact that when I've been home I speak rather quickly}, so stop clearly being annoyed that I don't have a neutral English accent from the South {for some reason this little fact pisses off more people from Manchester and Liverpool}. Still, getting people from Glasgow on the phone means I can talk at my normal speed and get through what would otherwise be a 40 minute call in less than 20 minutes without cutting any corners to get there. When we first started taking calls from Scotland, my first call was from a Glaswegian, and I literally couldn't understand a word. It was the pace, the completely different slang, etc. It may as well have been a completely different language, frankly. After a couple of calls I got the hang of it but just the fact there's such a massive difference in accent between Glasgow and Edinburgh still staggers me. Edit: Also briefly worked with a guy who used to work in bars in Glasgow; someone asked him which team he supported and he went utterly stoney faced and said "I don't follow football". We had to remind him that he wasn't in Glasgow any more and no one was going to bottle him for saying the wrong one.
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May 7, 2011 08:38
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gomababe posted:No worries at all, Glasweigan is a brutal accent to get around even in person never mind on the phone. I guess I'm used to it because it's the unofficial NED language/accent and we have a lot of them in my home town. I actually have more problems with people from Aberdeen and the North West myself because their A's and E's sound even more alike to my ears. I actually rather like a few of the Indian and Pakistani accents myself, along with several European ones; they're easier on the ears than some of the UK ones I get to deal with 90% of the time {even if it does sound like some of them are perputually pissed off or shouting}. It scares me how much the football thing is tied in to religion as well. I suppose that's what really gets you the kicking, not really the team. On an interviewing skills course I was told that up until reasonably recently companies hiring in scotland would ask "Are you a left footer or a right footer?" (apparently slang for catholic or protestant) and would grant or deny the application based on the response. Also, to rolleyes, I know we can and have not only terminated calls for customers being racist douches, but also on at least one occasion terminated all their services with our company. I was so loving proud of my employer that day.
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May 7, 2011 19:10
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