More call center stories! It's just like Christmas, isn't it?

One day I came into work to see this guy Mark being wheeled out on a stretcher. He had a migrane so intense it pinched some nerve to his back and actually made his body go limp. The guy has had a stroke at some point in his life. He claims to have a Master's degree but the stroke must have knocked his brain a little sideways because he's sorta fucked up, but a nice guy just the same.

So one day Mark is on a call and his cell phone rings. He put the customer on hold and got his cell phone. Granted he's not supposed to do that, but again consider his extreme medical history. It's not unbelievable that his wife might like to call from time to time and make sure he's still upright, or has taken whatever medication he has to take.

Well he answers his phone and it's not his wife, it's the area manager. He says he has the area manager's number in his address book so it would have shown her name if she called from her office phone, so she had to go to a different phone just to place this call incognito. She claims to have had the wrong number, but then the next thing he knows his immediate supervisor, Chucky, is at his cubicle, "Mark! What are you doing answering your phone at your desk?!"

Again, granted the guy shouldn't be putting customers on hold to answer his cell phone, but at the same time can't the managers find anything better to do than try to snag people with childish tricks? For example the little books we send out with the Fitzsimmons phones give you a number to call to get your mail-in rebate. The number is wrong. It takes you to a billing center, where they have to give you the right number. You're calling three different numbers for one item, so these phone lines are getting jammed, customers are on hold forever only to be told no, it's still the wrong number. Shouldn't a real manager be fixing elementary shit like that instead of trying to trip people up on their cell phones? But no, the wrong number has been sent out for weeks, but Mark had to sign some form, "I understand not to use my cell phone at my desk." And this guy is in his 40's!

A co-worker had the very good theory that it's because Mark uses the FEMLA time so much (Family Emergency Medical Leave Act), due to his health problems, they've got it in for him. Indeed another girl in my group was out with cancer for a few months, and when she got back it was, "Glad to hear you got over your cancer! Now enjoy spending your next six or eight Saturdays here in the call center living a cancer-free life to the fullest!"

Thankfully due to free market capitalism such a den of dimwits could never be the number one cell company. Could it?