The Personality Assessments

The job search has begun in a flurry. You've sent your resume to like 50 or so potential employers.

You've already done like ten of those fucking "personality assessments". Those suck serious ass. You've basically come up with a system to get through them. You only answer strongly when it's obvious they want the question answered strongly.

For example, if the statement is:

"Sometimes customers are not satisfied."

You answer either: "Disagree" or "Agree".

But, if the statement is:

"I pretty much hate everyone I work with, and someday I will come through the front door with a sawed-off shotgun and kill the whole lot of them, and then fuck their gaping head wounds before blowing my own brains out."

You answer: "Strongly Disagree" or "Strongly Agree".

The You Can't Handle the Castcom Bullshit Any Longer

Yesterday was a turning point with your job at Castcom. You can't handle it anymore. When you sat down and logged into your phone at 10:30 AM, there were 65 calls waiting in queue. The wait time on hold was over an hour. Every customer you spoke with was wildly PISSED. After 5 hours of that, you had to leave. You actually left "sick" in the middle of your shift. And today, you called in "sick." And you have vacation scheduled for the next 10 days.

The vacation was actually planned a while back, because you have a family reunion to travel to this weekend, and Sweetie is coming with, but now you'll be using "sick days" to search for a new job.

Castcom call center has become a complete sweatshop. It's been call after call of really pissed off people for over six weeks now. Castcom doesn't have the staff to handle the current call volume. Management keeps telling you that, for some reason, the call volume is way up from last year. You see, they staff based on the call volumes they had the previous year, and they tell us we are getting 8,000 calls a month more this year than last year FOR SOME REASON. So, of course, it's not management's fault that things suck at work, because they didn't know there would be 8,000 more complaints about Castcom's crappy service this year than last year. DUH!

Idiots.

No, they only forced everyone in the Metro who had the old Castcom/ATT telephone service to switch over to Castcom Digital Voice a few months ago, and CDV is junk (see previous blog), so every asshole and their dog is calling in to report their shit don't work. Uhg!

You wish these idiot "customers" would call the newspapers and the television stations and complain about the fucking hold times. Maybe they could get Castcom fined for not fullfilling their service agreements.

Until yesterday, you had faith that Castcom management would pull their heads from their asses and get things fixed, but six weeks is long enough to give them your faith. Now, you'll be getting a new job.

The CDV is Junk

It's time you started blowing the whistle about Castcom Digital Voice.

You have this rule about selling stuff. You ask yourself, "Would you sell this to your mother?" And, when you ask that question about Castcom Digital Voice, the answer is a very passionate "NO!"

CDV is JUNK.

The REAL market for the CDV product is very small. It's a good product for douchebags like yourself who are engaged by a lot of goofy technical crap, and don't mind (and perhaps even thrive on) the occasional glitch to get the benefit of free long distance. However, even a guy like yourself wouldn't want CDV, because you don't use the phone enough to make it worthwhile.

So, who should actually subscribe to this product? Any person who enjoys dinking around with new technology for the sake of cheap long distance.

Here's the kicker: because you are an employee, you could have CDV for $15 a month...and you STILL refuse to have that shit in your home. Seriously people. In your opinion, it isn't even worth $15 a month. You probably wouldn't even get it IF IT WERE FREE, because it's such a pain in the ass to install.

Here's the problem: Castcom markets their Digital Voice product as if it's a land-line telephone service. Well, it is NOT a land-line telephone service. It's VOIP!

Now, you realize all the techy types reading this are going to be all, "DUH!" But, think about it a minute...every douchebag in all the Castcom service areas are being brainwashed to think that installing CDV (VOIP) service is the same as Ma Bell (telephone) service.



So, now you've got all these old people, and housewives, and other miscellaneous douchebags installing CDV in their homes, and replacing their old-reliable-pick-it-up-and-get-dial-tone telephone service with the same finicky works-until-a-random-server-in-Hackensack-fails system that the internet is based on.

Are you the only one who sees a problem with that?

You probably are, because you're the idiot who still has a job taking call after call from every douchebag who doesn't realize that their phone modem has lost synch and needs to acquire a new IP adress in order to get dial tone, which involves powercycling and/or reseting that phone modem.

Or they don't realize that the phone modem needs to be plugged in for the phone to have dial tone. Do you know how many douchebags turn everything in the house off at night before they go to bed, and then call on their cell phone in panic going, "My phone is DEAD! I have no DIALTONE!" The sad thing is that there are probably thousands of people out there who unplug the power to their phone modem at night and have yet to realize that, by doing so, they are also DISCONNECTING THEIR PHONE SERVICE every night.

Uhg! Get a clue people. If you want phone service, then don't buy CDV from Castcom. Castcom sells VOIP service. And VOIP service requires constant attention and upkeep in order to work. If you want a phone that works all the time...even during a power outage...even if the server is down...or if you want phone service that does not require a modem, then subscribe to regular old-fashioned switch phone from your local TELEPHONE COMPANY.

If you live in Minneapolis or St. Paul, then you should get phone service from Qwest. Or Frontier. Does it cost a little more? Yes. Is it reliable. Of course it is. It's copper wire buried under the ground, for god's sake. Unless you push a backhoe through it, IT FUCKING WORKS. Will it work during a power outage? DUH! The phone company has a basement bunker full of giant batteries that will ensures you'll still have dialtone EVEN IF THERE'S A NUCLEAR WAR. Sheesh! Take a tour of your local phone company's facilities, and they'll show you both the bunker and the batteries. They make a loud buzzing sound. If you get too close, your hair will stand up.

To sum up: Please don't subscribe to Castcom Digital Voice unless you're willing to put with all it's glitches and unreliability. If you subscribe to Castcom Digital Voice, do it with the understanding that what you are paying for ISN'T TELEPHONE SERVICE.

You are watching the Twins play the Red Sox in Boston on Fox Sports North in the middle of a perfectly beatiful afternoon on your day off.

Sheesh. How the hell did you become a fan of pro baseball? A year ago, you would have considered this a complete waste of time. Of course, a year ago you weren't living in the Twin Cities, and this is the first city you've lived in with a pro baseball team, and people here love their Twinkies.

In fact, you've already attended two games at the Metrodome this season. And you dragged Sweetie along with you for both of them.

On June 18th, you watched the Twins crush the Washington Nationals 11 - 2. When you got to the dome, a scalper offered you two seats on the upper deck right behind the plate. Those seats are usually $21 a pop, but you got them for $10. Plus, Wednesday is Dollar Dome Dog night, so we drank beers and ate hot dogs (covered with mustard and onions) through the game.

On July 2nd, both you and Sweetie had the day off, so Sweetie and you drove down to the MOA. You bought 6-hour passes for you and Sweetie and then rode the train downtown where you watched the Twins destroy the Detroit Tigers 7 - 0. This was your first time riding the Minneapolis light rail.

You even considered buying a Twins baseball cap. In fact, when you got back to the MOA, you shopped for one.

Uhg. When did you start wearing baseball caps?

Sweet! Kubel just crushed one over the Green Monster.

The Actual Details Soon

You should probably start puking up actual details of your shitty life pretty soon. That might actually make this blog interesting maybe.

For now, let's just say you have no discipline and no direction. You were given no guidance when you were young and impressionable, and you're lucky you made it this far.

The Starting Over

Starting over. You've decided to start over. Not only now, but in the future as well. You'll be doing a lot of starting over from here on out.

You like starting over. It makes you feel nice and clean. Like a newly freshly diapered baby.

See, that's what starting over is all about. It's all about nonsense and bad metaphors...or similes...or whatever, and using the adverb forms of words for absolutely no fucking reason whatsoever.

Plus, you have today off from your shit job, so starting over is easier today. You had yesterday off too. So, starting over has pretty much spanned two days already.

Sweet.

You know that phrase, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life"? Yeah, well, starting over is a lot like that phrase except not so fucking lame. A phrase like "titfdotroyl" (that's what you'll call that phrase from now on) is something a douchebag would pull from his or her ass while catching a bus home from his or her AA meeting and/or massage parlor, so it's not really like that, but it's on the right track.

You see, starting over involves a lot less "give a shit" than "titfdotroyl". And it involves a lot more "fuck this shit" than "titfdotroyl".

Is that clear?

OK, so it's settled. I'm starting over.

The Socializing At Work

This morning, you realized one of the major reasons you hate your job and the company you work for:

There is absolutely no socializing where you work…at least not for you…or your peers. You know nothing about the people you work with. Well, other than the one douchebag who sits next to you and talks constantly about Star Wars between calls.

The manager and supervisors seem to have endless time to gab, and make bland, humorless, pseudo-work-related comments to each other, and then endlessly fake laugh with a lot of volume to let everyone know how fun they are to work with. However, you can tell that the second they walk out the front door, they forget that the people at Castcom even exists.

Anyone at work that you actually had a rapport with (Luke, Blong, Chuck, Riz, etc.) has either quit, been fired, or (in the case of Annette, and your friend heavy-metal Rick) has been moved to the other side of the building where you never see them.

Your previous jobs were far from perfect (boy, is that an understatement), but at least you met people there that you actually knew OUTSIDE OF WORK, and that you actually enjoyed socializing with. In fact, you're still friends with many of the people you met at other jobs.

But, at your current job, it’s just: walk in the door; talk to douchebags all day about things that are either their own damn fault, or something you can’t really do anything about; eat lunch; talk to more douchebags; go home.

Castcom is a sterile, impotent, ugly, and depressing place.