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This true story originally appeared in Temp Slave magazine. It
has also
appeared in two books, The Best of Temp Slave and The Factsheet Five Zine
Reader.
Thank You for Calling Sega
by
Brendan
There are twelve year old boys who would suck your @#%$ to have the temp
assignment I just completed. For the last three months, I went behind the
scenes of what most kids consider the coolest company in the world. I worked
for Sega of America's Consumer Service Department. I spent eight hours a day
answering the phone and getting berated by angry parents whose children's
videogames weren't working.
The department was staffed by about a hundred phone reps, most of whom were
temporary. Our primary function was to talk people through the installation
of Sega's home videogame system, the Genesis. If somebody's Genesis wasn't
working, we would troubleshoot it over the phone, and if that didn't work,
we would have them send it in for repairs.
If you consider the demographic you're dealing with, you'll understand that
this job was a prescription for misery: videogamers tend to be losers. They
have no friends. They sit in their dark little rooms with the curtains
closed, playing Mortal Kombat while the rest of us are out there having
lives. From this demographic, there is a special sub-class: those who are
too stupid to connect a Genesis to a television. These are the ones I dealt
with.
The stupidity of our callers was usually a function of age: I often found
myself talking to ten year old pieces of @#%$ who could barely tie their
shoelaces, but somehow had mustered the brain-power to dial our 800 number.
Kids are passionate about the industry. They would sometimes ask me, "How do
you get a job at Sega?" I worked for the company that had created Sonic the
Hedgehog and Altered Beast. In their eyes, I was the luckiest guy in the
world. I was part of the inner circle, and they wanted to talk to me for an
hour.
Our callers' passion for videogames had a dark side. It was damned easy for
them to become irate. Adolescent boys would call just to harass us: "Why do
you guys make such crappy games, man? I think Nintendo really kicked your
ass with Donkey Kong Country. You guys don't have anything to compare with
that game! I've got over a thousand dollars invested in Sega products, and
all you give us is crap! I guess Sega just doesn't care about their
customers. I think Sega fuckin' sucks, man." Blah, blah, blah. Like I care.
I felt like saying, "Listen, you little punk, let me get you alone in a jail
cell for two minutes and I'll beat you until blood comes out of your ears."
But I couldn't say that, because our calls were randomly monitored.
Once a week, my supervisor would listen in on two of my calls and then grade
my performance. He used a scorecard of Standards and Expectations, which was
a list of things we were supposed to do and say in every call. "Thank you
for calling Sega" was supposed to be the first thing a customer heard when
we answered the phone, and the last thing they heard before we hung up.
Before we ended a call, we were also expected to say, "Is there anything
else I can help you with?" This is not a good thing if you've got an idiot
on the line who just called to chat, or worse yet, a complainer. That offer
of additional assistance could turn what should have been a five minute call
into a twenty five minute ordeal: "Oh, yeah, actually, there is something
else. Can you tell me why it's so hard to get through to you people? I've
been trying to call since Christmas, and the lines are always busy, and when
I finally did get through, I had to wait on hold for twenty minutes....."
Blah, blah, blah.
You didn't want a call to stretch on like that, because a computer kept
track of your average call lengths. If you weren't careful, you'd get a
voice message from your boss saying something like, "Hi, I was just looking
at your stats for this week, and you did well on the monitoring scores, but
you really need to work on reducing your talk time."
The worst thing about the job was that it was an endless grind. Day after
day, you had to listen to one irate parent after another, all with the same
complaint. Because the complaints were totally predictable, you would find
yourself having the same exact conversation over and over:
"We sent away for the free game promotion over three months ago, and it
still hasn't arrived! I've got a very impatient five year old who asks me
where his game is every day. I've called you people twice already, and both
times you've assured me it's been shipped, and I'd like to know where it
is....." Blah, blah, blah. I listened to that complaint hundreds of times.
If the customers weren't getting what they wanted, they would fly off the
handle. The stupider people would threaten legal action: "The store told me
I could get a free game if I bought the Sega, and now you're telling me I
bought the wrong system? This is bullshit, and if you don't do something to
make me happy, I'm going to the State Attorney General and the Better
Business Bureau!" There's somebody with a keen understanding of our legal
system. One bitch threatened to take her story to "some big radio station".
Yeah, right. I'm sure the news director will devote at least an hour of air
time to your complaint.
In almost every case, Sega had done nothing wrong. The more baseless the
customer's complaint, the more likely they were to scream, ask to speak with
my supervisor, or claim they were going to the authorities.
It was grueling to take this abuse, and I dealt with it by using my favorite
stress reliever: Sabotage and theft! Here's a brief overview of my
activities:
Masturbating at work: The computer kept track of every minute you were
logged on to the phone system. You were expected to be logged on for a
minimum of seven hours and fifteen minutes a day. This made it especially
thrilling to run into the bathroom and furiously pump my erection, knowing
my time was limited. Having beat off in a wide variety of work environments,
I've mastered the art of the quick jerk. I could usually have a satisfying
fantasy and reach orgasm within two or three minutes.
Drinking on the job: One day, during lunch, I decided to get bottles of
orange juice and load them up with vodka. I gave one to the guy I shared my
cubicle with, and we were pleasantly buzzed for the rest of the afternoon.
On that day, we had a "stress buster", which meant we got to log off the
phones early and have a pot-luck party. I still had plenty of vodka, so I
turned a few of my co-worker's beverages into cocktails.
Antagonizing customers: In spite of the possibility that the call was being
monitored, sometimes I just had to make these people unhappy: "You want to
talk to a manager? Well, I hate to say it, but my manager's not gonna tell
you anything different from what I'm telling you. There's just no way Sega's
going to do what you're asking....."
Free subscriptions: If a customer was irate, we could set them up with a
free subscription to Sega Visions, the company's magazine. This subscription
normally costs $14.95. Needless to say, every friend I have now has this
magazine coming to their house.
Adding customers to my @#%$ List: The @#%$ List is something I've been
compiling for several years. Having worked in the service industry all my
life, I've been abused by all sorts of customers. I've often had access to
my customer's phone numbers, addresses, and credit card numbers. If somebody
was very nasty to me, I would record said information, with the intention of
tormenting them until they die.
The easiest way of doing this is to fill out those little postage paid
magazine subscription cards and check the box marked "Bill me later." The
customer then gets magazines they didn't order and bills they weren't
expecting. For this very reason, the raunchier porno magazines don't have
"Bill me later" cards, but Playboy and Penthouse do. Some of those
subscription cards even give you the option of sending gift subscriptions to
other people. This makes it possible to have one @#%$ customer get billed
for magazines being sent to some other @#%$ he's never even met.
Of course, subscription cards are for amateurs. The next level is credit
card fraud: You call a mail order catalog and, posing as your customer, use
his credit card to have crap sent to his house. I do feel sorry for the
phone rep from the catalog who will eventually have to deal with someone
screaming and yelling because merchandise he never ordered is arriving at
his house and being charged to his credit card.
Mail order catalogs are happy to send gift orders, so, as with the
subscription cards, you can have one schmuck sending products to some other
@#%$ he's never met. If you're lucky enough to know the name of your
customer's wife, you can have him send her expensive flowers or other
presents. Most catalog companies will include a gift card that says, "From
your adoring husband" or whatever. Imagine the predicament of your @#%$
customer when he comes home from work to find his wife creaming all over
herself, thanking him for the beautiful jewelry. He can't very well say "I
didn't send you that!"
Unfortunately, catalogs dealing in pornography usually send out disclaimer
letters telling your victim that he's about to receive smut in the mail. The
recipient must send a little card back to the company stating that he does,
in fact, wish to receive smut. This makes it difficult to have Butt Pirates
Abroad and The Unbearable Rightness of Peeing unexpectedly appear in
someone's mailbox.
A word of caution: credit card fraud is serious business. If you get caught,
the authorities will bury your ass in a hole so deep, you'll never get out.
Another great thing about my @#%$-List is that I can make it look like my
customers are harassing people. A friend of mine had this boss, who we'll
call "Ann". Ann was a bitch, and she was making my friend's life unbearable.
I had this customer, who we'll call "Jim". Jim made my life unpleasant for a
few minutes. I wrote Ann a letter on Jim's behalf. The letter started out by
saying "Hello. I got your name off the Internet. I understand you're
interested in "YOUNG LOVE" and raunchysafe piss-play. You sound like one hot
little number!"
I had Jim go on to describe the things he'd like to do to Ann. Jim happened
to live in a town close by, so I made it clear that he traveled to Ann's
city often, and that he and his wife would love to be involved in "a variety
of hot and horny scenes" with her. I made sure Jim's spelling and grammar
were erratic and haphazard, in order to convey a sense of dangerous
insanity.
Misuse of company mail: We were provided with all the envelopes we could
use, because customers were always requesting instruction manuals,
promotional materials, and game-play hints. Nobody thought anything of it if
I sent out twenty large envelopes a day. Naturally, I felt the need to steal
things from the office and mail them to my friends. All of my friends. Every
day.
Sega knew we were a bunch of temp scum. They made sure there was hardly
anything in the office we could steal, so I had to get creative. I would
send people confidential documents, memos on how to dispose of confidential
documents, memos on awful, hidden flaws that had surfaced in our products,
and so forth.
In my desperation to steal something, anything, I stole packets of tea from
the employee kitchen. Sega provided us with all the tea bags we could use,
in various flavors. One friend received twenty packs of flavored tea every
day for a month straight. He was able to host wonderful afternoon tea
parties as a result.
Sega also provided packets of instant soup, so I sent a lot of those out as
well. Towards the end of my assignment, it occurred to me to snoop through
the emergency medical kit. It was a cornucopia of over-the-counter pain
killers and PMS medications, as well as lewd rubber gloves! Needless to say,
I stuffed countless envelopes with these things.
I wanted to find new and interesting items to put in the daily care packages
from Sega, but there just wasn't much for me to pilfer. I started bringing
garbage from home and mailing it; ten year old copies of People, dirty
cartoons, unknown pills, used Kleenex, I didn't care. I just had to send
@#%$!
So there it is. Life at Sega. You'll notice I spent a lot of time
complaining about my customers, and not much time talking about Sega's
faults. As temp jobs go, Sega wasn't all bad: I got eight bucks an hour,
forty hours a week. I could park my ass in my cubicle all day without seeing
the boss, so shaving and showering were optional. We could play all the
latest games in the lunch room, and our immediate supervisors were cool. So
why was I dishonest and subversive? Well, I've been sabotaging employers for
so long, it's become second nature. It's in my blood. I couldn't stop if I
wanted to. |
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