frankles

Yep. I would if asked. Maybe I should contact Al Franken.

I may have to come back to this one to answer this fully, but let me touch on how Comcast handles unions.

Every once in a while, there would be reps at various call centers talking about forming a union, or joining an existing one. This kind of talk scared the living shit out of management. At our team meetings, an HR rep would show up and talk about how well we were treated, and how unions are only necessary when working conditions are really bad. And our working conditions were really good, what with the pay and the benefits and so many days off per year, etc.

Then they'd rag on unions, saying the few at the top take all the money and the everybody people like us don't really see any benefits, and here's a handout outlining how you should respond to somebody who approaches you about starting a union. Tell them no. They did not take questions at those meetings.

I worked one Christmas, and received a call from a woman with Internet connectivity problems. For whatever reason, her modem had taken a crap and wouldn't lock on to the signal. Her neighborhood was fine, her apartment building was fine, and she only had a single coax jack.

She was upset because she was trying to get onto eHarmony to find a date for the night. She admitted that she was lonely and everybody she knew was out of town, and just wanted somebody to talk to. I knew exactly where the conversation was going, but I let it run its course. She kept asking if there was anybody in the neighborhood, if there was anything else we could try or test and did not want to let me off the phone.

Eventually, she asked what I was doing later that day, and if I'd like to keep her company on the lonely holiday. I tried to let her down easy, and she took it pretty well, but was still audibly let down. I don't know why, but that one hit me pretty hard, imagining this woman sitting alone in her apartment with nobody to call and nothing to do.

Not my most difficult, necessarily, but definitely one of the most memorable.

I didn't have to outright lie about speed very much. Most of the problems people called in for were with wireless connectivity, which we did not support.

It's a shady, shady game, though. We'd just have them plug the modem direct into their computer and test it. That way, it would have just gotten a reboot and any line condition issues wouldn't have enough time to start affecting the service. I'd ask people to keep it plugged in to the modem for a day to test it because I knew they wouldn't be able to keep it plugged in. The modem always connected and always resulted in speeds above what they were paying for.

This is kind of like an ideal setting, where there would be enough reps to cover the volume of calls, provided all the calls are below a certain threshold and there haven't been any significant changes in channel line-ups, bi-annual bill increases, outages or full moons.

So never.