Lot of things to get done next week. At least one major deadline got moved up on what I’m calling “the ‘Our World Is Changing’ project.” We recently went through a tech upgrade that, frankly, doesn’t benefit line agents much. In the interests of security, we’re now unable to download files or make changes to certain directories. Which is good. Unfortunately, our workhorse “programmable” key files now reside in the directory we can’t touch, meaning that whatever we had for programmables on the day tech services upgraded us is what we’re stuck with for keys, forever. Can’t update them permanently,…

My world is getting ready to change. I’m sitting in “mute” as a web-based conference is beginning to learn a completely new way of pricing records. The conference is designed as a fairly standard looking chat window with private message capability, and it’s got an integrated Power Point presentation window. The usual fol-de-rol at the beginning, along with lots of people unsure as to why they’re there, and later someone will put the entire conference on hold and we’ll have to listen to their hold music. Happens every time. And there we are, someone has put us on hold and…

Okay, men will not want to read this post. It will squick you out. So just go read HULK’S DIARY THAT IS ON THE INTERNET and whistle the theme song to “the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” for a few minutes.

I’ve been troubled by something I heard in conversation yesterday. It’s really bothering me, and I’m wondering if I had an obligation to register my discomfort or disapproval of the comment. Or not, as this was at work, and a complaint might be raised about me. Here’s the deal: I was talking to a client about hotel accomodations for that night, somewhere in the southeastern US in an area not far from where Katrina and Rita raised a little hell a few weeks back. Hotel availability in the area is really, really hard to come by, and every time I…

People who wear vile scents to work. People who keep breaking their computers. People who use speakerphones, at either end of the conversation. People who are remorselessly chipper far too early in the morning. People who must say “Hi! Hi! Hi! every time they walk past your area. People whose every conversation is broadcast AT ELEVEN. IT GOES TO ELEVEN. People who act in real life like they’d bloviate endlessly online.

My travel client has heard from his son in a roundabout fashion – the son and some other people with him were rescued and are being transported to a shelter. My guy got the word via one of the many online forums that’s been set up for people to leave word on missing family and friends. This particular happy ending was made possible by the heroic efforts of the Times-Picayune, which is somehow publishing online, reporting the news, and providing neighborhood and parish community forums for people to get in touch… all after being evacuated from their newspaper offices the…

It always amuses me no end when I’m going through the error queues and come across a record where someone is carrying on an argument in the quality control remarks. In this case, someone was trying to get the quality control program to package up some paper tickets and send them to the address in the reservation. As the packaging people are known to read the quality control remarks, the agent thought they had to send the record to the QC program for the packagers to “see” the updated remarks. This is not the case, however. Only the faithful computer…

A co-worker who’s trying to fly United today is stuck at O’Hare because she was told she’d checked in juuuuust a couple of minutes too late to check baggage and was bumped from her flight. Then she was told that the next flight she was standing by for was oversold, but the airline is putting 20 flight attendants and pilots on in full uniform so they can go to Denver (her destination). A UA res person I spoke to just now was extremely tactful and careful about how she worded it, but the flight ops record is tagged that employees…

An entire month of festivities has begun in an annual festival designed to remind the humble employees that we are a valuable part of the company. It’s fairly innocuous, rah-rah stuff, with treats and events most days. And special dress-up fun, too. It’s all in good fun and only coincidentally it runs the entire month before the company-wide employee survey, which is important in our world because some management ratings are based on it. Today we were supposed to show up in company logowear. We’ve been given a variety of freebie shirts over the years, so I dragged the first…