I am not a prejudiced person. Yes, I know, only prejudiced people feel the need to make the statement that they are not prejudiced...lemme make my point already.

I like all sorts of people. Race or national origin has never been a factor for me. There are certain people that I don't like, such as trifilin' black men who think their only job in life is to make babies and sponge off women. (and in case there was any doubt, I am black, so it wasn't a racist statement, just an observation I have made from first-hand experience. Anyway, how many nonblacks have you heard using the word "trifilin'"?

But I am digressing from my initial point. No suprise there.

Normally, I enjoy interacting with all people from all walks of life. But my "day job" is killing my desire to do this. I am almost to the point to where unless you can speak English without any hint of an accent whatsoever, I don't want to speak to you.

Ever.

I'm not sure if I have ever gone into detail about what my "day job" (why do I keep calling it my day job when I haven't worked there for more than 2 hours during the day in 6 months) actually is. I am a Customer Service Rep for a computer manufacturer. People who need to have their computers and electronic equipment repaired call the 800 number and you talk to me or one of my coworkers and you place a service call so that a technician can troubleshoot with you over the phone, or if need be, send someone to you. Sounds simple enough, right?

Ha ha ha!

See, there is one factor -- an important one -- that needs to to be address for the wheels of proper service call placement to turn. The person calling and the person taking the call (me) must be able to understand each other.

Thus the reason for the entry. I don't think I fully understood a single freakin' person that called me today.

There was the guy from India that wanted to place a service call on his laptop. It took me five minutes to decipher his "h"'s from his "8"'s..and believe me, if you don't want to pay for the service call, then you want me to get that right.

Then there was the Asian that had a bad tape drive. For some reason, he kept giving me the error code in Japanese and was very upset that I did not speak his native tongue.

Then there was the native spanish speaker that excitedly told me that his laptop battery was making a crackling noise as if it was on fire. In spanish. I replied "uno momento por favor" ( the only spanish I remember from college, other than "no habla espanol", "hola", "si", "perro" (dog) and "gatto" (cat)) and called the spanish translator.

There were others as well, who had names and accents that I did not immediately recognize. When my shift was over this evening I was mentally exhausted. I had people munching in my ear while they were talking to me, I had people who put me on cheap speakerphones and had the nerve to get aggravated when I told them I could not understand what they were saying. Then of course there are the people who are busily working while they are talking to me, and need me to repeat things two and three times because they weren't paying attention the first time. Or the second, or the third...

So now you see that I don't have a prejudice after all. There isn't any one race or nationality that bothers me more than others...just rude, obnoxious, self-obsorbed people who really don't care if they are making my life more difficult. And we all know those people come in all shapes, sizes and colors. Love may be blind, but stupid seeks out a target and normally finds one.
- posted by Kim @ 2:08 AM