Old 03-08-18, 08:02 PM
  #2672  
Flatballer
No matches
 
Flatballer's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Eastern PA
Posts: 11,647

Bikes: two wheeled ones

Mentioned: 15 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 1398 Post(s)
Liked 444 Times in 250 Posts
Originally Posted by carpediemracing
tl;dr I got in massive trouble but I'm just looking out for the store's best interests.

Wrong Hours

So...

Our store hours are wrong on one of the websites maintained by corporate - it says we're open an hour later, so 8 pm instead of the correct 7 pm. I've literally had crying women on the phone, thinking they'd be okay getting their car here, and then I tell them we close at 7. In some situations I've waited (like for that crying woman), but it's not really fair to the store to publish the incorrect closing times, and it's just wrong. Kicker is that they just have to change 4 characters on the website and it'll be fine, simple enough.

Kicker is that it's been wrong for 15 months now. I called the "contact us" number on the site maybe in May/June 2017, also submitted a "contact us" form (which should generate a help desk ticket). No response, no action. Did the same in maybe Aug/Sept 2017. Same non-result. Then again in Nov/Dec 2017. Same non-result. During one of the calls the person said "I really don't know who supports that site, we're technically here to support the other (same company) site". So my calls and "contact us" submissions are going into some dead letter office.

So to summarize, zero responses, zero acknowledgments, wrong info on website for well over a year. And people calling up at 6:57 PM asking if they can get a flat tire fixed, because, you know, we're open until 8. And then getting mad because we can't do it. Plus it just plain sucks because *we're* telling them we're open until 8, but we're not.

So I got fed up the other day/night (actually, ironically, it was probably after 8 pm). I spammed the "contact us" form, filled one out, submit, filled it out again (slightly different words), submit, filled it out again, submit. I knew each one would generate a ticket that someone had to close, and if I had a bunch of them then they'd get the message that something wasn't quite right. Used my name, store email, store phone, etc, and requested the store hours be corrected each time. Maybe 8-10 submissions. I even made a copy/paste email so I could copy/paste all the fields. I planned on doing a submission every morning, every evening, until the hours were corrected. Heck, I'd be happy to stop if someone just emailed us or called us, since in the past we got zero calls, zero emails, zero acknowledgments.

While I was doing the online forms I also called on 3 phone lines (store was closed so I used 3 of the 4 lines, leaving one open for alarms, police, etc), hit buttons until someone picked up (and hung up the other two lines), and opened a call. Ended up getting the help desk for credit stuff, which is legally a different company because credit cards are issued by banks, not retailers. However, that person was very helpful, asked around, and basically had her manager escalate, contacting some other manager (of the folks I work for, the correct company). I think this was the difference, before I followed the rules, this time the credit card folks escalated the call, and so it went directly to a higher up's attention.

Apparently I found a gap in the system, a massive one - there is zero support for this website (a site which totally sucks btw, it's an absolute embarrassment to the company, I literally cannot navigate it without having to figure things out because it's so non-intuitive, there are so many things loading that your search text gets cleared, etc). There was a flurry of emails, ends up some kind of consumers affairs bigwigs got sucked into this, and basically the hammer came down on... me. Apparently I was one step away from being dismissed for pointing out that the website was wrong.

The next day the store manager pulled me aside and let me know the firestorm I'd brewed up, told me to chill for a bit.

Since I'm allowed to (and expected to) read the store emails, I saw one with my name (in all capitals) as the subject and opened it up. It was addressed to the store manager. After reading the first couple lines I realized I had no idea what they were talking about, so I read from the bottom up because the bottom would be the start of the chain. It basically started with "there's a customer complaint...." which turned into "it's actually one of our employees" "WHAT?!" which degraded into a crap ton of CAPS LOCKS. Lots of caps locks. Lots. I stopped reading because, frankly, I was scared to keep reading.

Fortunately the store manager is very protective of me. Now I'm forbidden to use any help desk number except the one for the credit cards, the one for internal help desk, and HR stuff. I'm okay with that, actually.

A second email chain started up that day, pertaining to the same problem.

Then we got PDF files for our massive sale going on next week. The flyers had the store hours on them, and THEY WERE WRONG (compared to the website it had us closing one more night at 8). btw if you Google our store the hours are right, if you go to the store's website, hours are right, but go to the parent company's site, hours are wrong.

Unbelievable.

Memory Issue

So later that next day I opened a help desk call (4th? 5th? time I've called on this) because our local server is so overwhelmed that it can literally take 30-60 seconds for a click to register to change screens. Root cause is lack of memory on server - every single time I've called they've noted our RAM usage is over 90% and we're in swap. I'm already on everyone's case to close all unnecessary windows (everyone is very good about that because, frankly, we all hate it when the system slows to a crawl), but it's so bad I'll have time to go to 6 other stations, close things down, and return to my work station (and the customer) and the screen is still hourglassing. It's horrible.

I asked that they just put in a request for more memory because, frankly, we need it, and it's affecting our ability to help customers. It sometimes takes 5-10 minutes to check someone in (look up customer, create work order, print work order), something that should take literally 30 seconds for a normal work order, maybe 20 seconds for someone quick.

In other things I've accomplished in the store... there hasn't been a lock on a particular window for forever, a security concern. The store even got cited for it, during the last audit (I read it to see what we could improve, although technically it's not my job). So I went and bought a lock for it, because it's stupid to not have it. Now we lock it every night without fail. I also pushed to get recycling bins in the store because the company touts how much they recycle yet the stores fill 4 garbage bags with paper every 2 days. Now we have maybe one garbage bag every 4-5 days, the rest was all recyclable materials. I also put up some signs to remind ourselves of certain things (selling, procedures, making sure work orders are completed, etc). Guys who come from other stores to cover usually look at the (6-8?) signs, the recycling bins, and say, "Wow, you guys are organized, we don't have that where I work."

Thanks for letting me vent. I can't vent any place else because folks from work will see it.

Also this is why I used to have a blog, I'd have outlets for my thoughts. haha.
Sounds like they should probably promote you for caring and fixing things, instead of punishing you for pointing things out.

Also, I figured this ended with you hacking the website and changing the hours.
Flatballer is offline