Stupid People

I spent half this morning so far trying to get a copy of my unofficial transcript from the lovely idiots running the Student Services office at the U of I College of Engineering. Seriously, I don't know how a department that is ranked top 3 in the nation can hire such incompetence to take care of their business matters in their offices.

So before I even got to talk to a person that could actually help me, I had to go through some stupid touch-tone menu system, then my call was forwarded three separate times by three different people. Each time, the person would listen to me say "Hi, I graduated in May and I need to get an unofficial copy of my transcript for an interview," pause for a few moments, then decide that they didn't feel like helping me and dump me on someone else by transferring my call. That's if I was lucky, one braindead lady first chose to waste my time by asking me a whole bunch of questions like "What is the transcript for?" and other info which I ended up repeating anyways to the last person. What a waste of time, if you're gonna transfer me, just do it right away instead of pretending like you know how to fix my problem.

Finally, I got to a lady who seemed like she was at least gonna try to help me out. Unfortunately, she was pretty incompetent too. Somehow, she managed to pull up my transcript on her computer, but when I asked if she could just cut and paste the text and email it to me, she said "ummm... I don't know how to do that." What followed was about a solid minute of stunned silence, as I tried to imagine how you could work in an office with computers, and not know how to cut and paste.

Pretty ridiculous, but I decided screw the email idea, asking her if she could fax me a copy instead. She had to pause awhile for this one, then told me "I don't know if I can do that, but why don't you just give me your fax number, I'll ask someone here if that's possible?" @#*&$%(@&$* Ummm ok here's an idea - why don't you give me your fax number, so I can send you some working brain cells? How hard is it to send a freaking fax?!! I so wanted to throw my phone at the wall. Still, that was probably gonna be my best option, so I decided to just go with it.

Since it was kind of important that I get the transcript soon, I told her to write down my voice (cell) number along with my fax number, and if she ended up not being able to fax it, to call me back so I could find some other solution. Then for 20 minutes or so, I held my breath hoping that somehow this low-IQ lady would come through for me. Finally, I hear a ringer go off. Except it's my cell phone ("you drive me crazy I just can't sleep... I'm so excited, I'm in too deep..."), not my fax machine. Oh my gosh, you gotta be kidding me. So I pick it up, and sure enough, I hear the beeping of an incoming fax.

By this time, I was ready to drive down to Champaign myself and lay the smackdown at Engineering Hall. At least I wanted to call back and tell her that she was sending to the wrong phone number, too bad I didn't know what number to call her at. The last thing I wanted to do was to go through their stupid menu system, then say to three different people "Hi, I called earlier about the transcript, can you transfer me to whoever you did last time?" because who knows where that would take me? I would probably end up speaking to a tribal leader in Africa or something.

Thankfully, within another two minutes or so, she must have figured out her boo-boo and I finally got my transcript through the correct fax number. Big sigh of relief.

The other half of my morning was spent on the phone with the lovely folks at Cingular Wireless Customer Service. Those people are actually a little better, but still, I don't know if it is part of the job description of people who answer phones to not be able to help you. It's like they are paid to put you on hold and take as much time as possible before solving your problem. If their computer isn't working quite right, you gotta wait 5 minutes for them to reboot. If you ask them any question besides "How are you?", they have to check with their supervisor to make sure.

The dumb thing is that for the past three months, they have been messing up my bill every which way. I'm supposed to get nationwide long distance, but they ended up billing me for long distance charges on calls to my own cell phone when I was checking voicemail. I'm supposed to have unlimited nights/weekends too, but they found a way to mess that up as well. I don't know how or why, but they gave me 321 night/wknd minutes for free, and then started charging extra fees after that. Makes no sense, but whatever.

After about half an hour on the phone with this girl (who sounded like she was about 16 years old, but I won't rip on her too much because she was polite and at least tried to help), I ended up just changing my plan so I won't have to deal with this crap every month for the rest of my life. Now I am gonna be paying $39.99 a month (instead of $35) but I get 600 anytime minutes a month that rollover. By the way, rollover minutes seem like such an awesome thing, but I say that's how they should have done it to begin with. What's with all the advertising as if it is some new genious idea? As for the rest of my plan, it won't be unlimited night/weekends anymore, it's 3500 minutes. I don't think it will matter, I don't use anything close to 3500 anyways, but just the fact that I am paying 5 bucks more per month to avoid having to deal with my Cingular buddies all the time is pretty dumb. It's one thing for people to be stupid, but now their stupidity is costing me in the form of a $5 monthly fee. That's what should show up on my bill, a $30 plan, plus $2 for caller ID, plus $3 for Nationwide Long Distance, and finally, $4.99 for Cingular Idiot Charges.

I'm too tired to fight. Make love, not war, they say. If I really wanted to get back at these people, I'd tell my mom to call them up, and within minutes they would be at their knees begging me for mercy. If you ever meet my mother, she is a sweet lady but when it comes to dealing with people on the phone, she's ruthless. She will fight for every last penny as if it was her dying breath when it comes to mistakes on credit card bills, bank statements, etc. Not only this, but she is so painfully fobby to deal with so that after a couple minutes of trying to understand her English or trying to explain something to her, most people give up and just agree to all demands. It's also not uncommon for them to throw in a free gift certificate or something, just to get Mrs. Chen off their case. Haha gotta love my momma. You can't stop her, you can only hope to contain her.

Oh yeah, I have an interview tomorrow with Northrop Grumman, which is what started this whole thing. Wish me luck please.

More on My Mom and Computers

I wrote about this before, but my mom is too funny when it comes to computers. She came running to my room earlier asking me for help, all stressed out and scared that she messed up the computer badly. It turns out that she couldn't figure out how to close one of those banner ads that look like a small warning/dialog box window. You know, the ones that say something like "Your Internet is not optimized for speed! Click OK to fix" and have a the minimize/restore/close buttons in the top right corner. So she must have spent like 10 minutes trying to close a banner ad that only looked like a window, before turning desperate and coming to me for help.

Then she was all freaked out because she opened a program, and then all of the programs disappeared on the taskbar. This time, it was because Windows XP starts a new row on the taskbar when you have too much stuff open, and adds a scroll button on the side. She didn't notice the scroll thing so she was all in panic thinking that she closed all my programs without saving or something. Ahhh... it's cute right now but maybe if she starts finding new ways to be dumb about computers every day, I will not be as amused.