Ah Canned Responses how I adore thee!

A good Tech Support agent that frequently communicates via email or a chat program will have what is called “Canned Repsonses” which are well written answers to frequently asked questions or comments.

I pride myself on making my canned responses as humanly and empathtic as I can. No one wants a response that sounds like a computer is talking to them. I get a kick when I use a canned response and the customer replies back “Oh thank you so much for taking the time to help me understand with such a personal response!”

At my company we frequently trade canned responses to help each other out. Its not uncommon to quickly IM someone and say “Do you have a canned response for X situation?”

Today was a very busy day and I heard a co-worker exclaim exsapertly “Do we have a canned response for when a person is an IDIOT?!”

I guess she was going to add on more such as “and they forgot to put the CD in their computer?” but she never got that far. The whole office burst out laughing and started shouting ideas on how to respond explaining to the customer they were just too stupid to help.

I’m sorry, I’m not a trained psychologist so I cannot analyize and figure out why you are too stupid to use our website. Please consult a doctor for a CAT or MRI scan to see if there any brainwaves functioning.

I love working for start ups and internet companies.  The company culture is so open and fun. People get along with each other better, and things are laid back. (Our CEO outlaws suits unless it is for a very very important client. He often likes to go to important meetings dressed down just to mess with people’s heads.)

My company would never be featured in one of the 10 coolest workspaces, nor do we have any awesome ball pits like last.fm. But we do have a small mini basketball court between the cubicals and frequently have cube warfare. (On a side note I always loved the commercial of people in the “Promotion Pit” fighting each other with office supplies. Somehow that just seems so much fun.)

Our cube warfare started out innocently enough. Two years ago some employees were given various nerf guns to let off some steam during our busy season. Then there was a short foray into marshmallow guns. Soon others joined into the fray with even more destructive guns. It is now all out war with interesting combat tactics to the high tech menace that I want to buy for my cube.

After loosing a lot of the nerf darts we then moved on to the most fun and distracting cube toy we have fund. The almighty FINGER ROCKETS! These things are so addicting. However, due to people being hit in the head while on the phone, we have now all been instructed to always have a hand on the MUTE button on our phone, so when getting hit by one of these we don’t shout “Oh Shit” to the customer. These things wiz by my head quite frequently.

Now company culture is incredibly important. If the culture doesn’t fit you, you may not fit in with your colleagues. A few weeks ago I was helping doing interviews for two new tech support people. I asked the usual questions (How many WPM?). I then realized that many of the people were new to the area and had never worked for an internet company. I then asked what type of company culture they were looking for and described our area and company culture to them.

One potential was like “Well I like talking with my co-workers and getting to know them at company events.” It was going nicely until he said “I like conversing with others but I don’t want to be distracted at work by idel talk. Its like…I don’t want things just wizing by me as I work.” I think he was meaning wizing as a metaphoricly, not literally. Well already things weren’t going in his favor (he just wasn’t a good fit for the position) when just then 5 nerf darts hit the conference window and stuck there.

Ah well. Now who wants to slip in slide in the parking lot?

So for some reason my company reproduces a lot. We have had 7 baby showers in the last few months and are gearing up for the next one. We bought a couple of cakes and got everything ready, and then found out the party had to be cancelled because the VP in question and the rest of the upper management had an important meeting to attend. So we decided we would have the party next week instead.

But we still had 3 cakes in the fridge. We only have cakes for Brithdays and Baby Showers…so we needed to get rid of the evidence.

We all started eating the cake when the father to be VP walked in. Quickly everyone said “We are having cake because of the high commission.” as the excuse since the party next week is a surprise, and because the last few days have been record sales/commissions. We figured this would be a good excuse but then the VP looked around and was like “High Commission?” “Yes, for High Commission.” He was so confused and we were confused as to why he was confused. After a little bit he was like “High Commission as in a group meeting…? Of Jedi or something?”

We all had a good laugh at that. Once he figured out it was for high sales we had done in the last few days he then went to go thank our main accountant, (whom he had assumed had purchased the cake.) The accountant was then completely confused, as he hadn’t known about the cake. Through the window behind the VP the real organizer kept motioning franticly for the accountant to go with the flow of what the VP said. We then hear “Yes most definitely did I get us cake for High Commissions day…yes…that was me…”

The whole company, besides the VP all had a good laugh about it.

So Back in January when the MacBook Air was released I listed my concerns about the product.

I’m not the only one apparently as shown in this hillariously true mockumercial.

We have a shopping list on the refrigerator. Just happened to take a look at it. Along with the usual items of which soda to restock on was:

Root Beer, which is then scratched out and underneath it says “Just Beer please, hold the root“

A few other normal items like silverware (where the hell did it go?), tissues, juice, etc then:

A strapping Hunk of Man. Underneath this is a scrawled note that says: “I already work here and I’m taken“

I love my co-workers

We live in an age where information is just a moment away.  Google has become a verb. Wikipedia is more popular than Britannica and what was it called…oh yeah Encarta.

In 3.5 years of college I went to and checked a book from the university library once. And that was a few days before my final paper of college was due. The class? Italian Fairy Tales.  The only reason I needed to get the book is because the Google Book Search scan stopped a few pages short of the section I needed and there wasn’t much information on the subject online.

Adults have feared children will loose valuable skills, such as being able to spell due to spell check, to calculate due to calculators and Excel spreadsheets,  to do research and decifer key points when it is all laid out for them when searching.

Shopping has become easier. Find it, buy it, and even then go pick it up at a local store. (As little as 1 hour for photo prints!)

Reading books is even becoming an instantaneous thing.  I’m thinking of reading some Jane Austen, delivered in my RSS reader directly from Daily Lit.

Why spend time trying to decide what to have for lunch when the Wheel of Lunch can decide for you?

And today I had someone come into my companies Log Me In Remote Help. This is how the session went:

[12:49 PM] Connecting…
[12:49 PM] Jade says: Hello how can I help you today?
[12:49 PM] Andrew says: Hi.
[12:50 PM] Andrew says: I have a question with regards to customer credits.
[12:50 PM] Andrew says: let me bring up the customer accoutna dn paste the info here, once second please.
[12:50 PM] Jade says: Certainly
[12:51 PM] Andrew says: Nevermind actually, i just figured it out myself, but thanks !
[12:51 PM] Andrew says: That’s all for today
[12:51 PM] Jade says: Oh good. Well hope you have a lovely day then!
[12:52 PM] Andrew says: thanks and bye for now
[12:52 PM] The customer ended the session.

When help is just a click away why think for yourself?

Not that I’m complaining that he figured it out himself. I was at my desk eating lunch (another instance affair) and was the only one on help so was glad to be rid of him so I could finish inhaling lunch. But is all this Instant Gratification leading us to be reliant on others?

The list could go on and on. But then that would take the

thinking out of coming up with your own examples.

Melanie:

Thanks. One more thing. It appears this process won’t work with Netscape. That’s my default browser. What do I need?

Jade:

You will need to use either Internet Explorer or FireFox.

Melanie:

What version IE?

Jade:

Its up to you, version 6 or 7. 7 has tabs like FireFox, however I don’t like IE7 so if you want tabs I’d go with the new FireFox. Its more of a personal preference however.

Melanie:

Thanks for your help. My problem is I am loyal to Netscape. I don’t like IE. Firefox might be good but I understand I cant’ carry over my bookmarks and preferences and I would need certain plugins

Jade:

Yes I understand. However, Netscape is no longer being supported by the creators of Netscape as of March 1, 2008 so eventually you will have to change as there will be no updates to Netscape anymore.

Melanie:

Oh really? Guess I will have to bite the bullet. Thanks again. I know my options now

Visitor Melanie has ended the chat.

Ah well. Netscape sucked anyway. Happy to see it go.

Laggards scare me.

I hope I’m not the only one who had to google “Rickrolling”.

If you are as lost as I was, here is an informational video on this phenomenon here.

Now if you are even more confused here is what WikiAnswers says.

I hope you have enjoyed this public service announcement to explain this xkcd.com webcomic.

Ah darn. xkcd just rickrolled me!

Customers Name: God
God’s Email address: jesus@hotmail.com
God’s Question: Do you have photos of this years team?
Lucy: Hello. You’ll need to contact the photographer directly to get an event code to view these photos.
Lucy: (as god, you should know that already)
Lucy: [Contact for Photographer is removed]
God has ended chat.

Either being God means you don’t have to say “Thank You” or God just doesn’t have a sense of humor.

And the team he was looking for photos from? NJ Devils.

Alvina’s Question: How can I order prints to my closest Walmart?

Jade: Well, I’m sorry I wouldn’t be able to help you with that, as we are Walmart’s competitors

Alvina has ended the chat.

And darn. I was going to tell her she could order to one of our many locations instead but she left to quickly.

And sadly, we get a lot of people thinking we are Walmart. I have no idea why.

Maybe people just can’t read?