Crashed.

2002-07-22 - 5:02 a.m.

As I may or may not have mentioned before, I work as a customer service rep overnight for a gay men's voice personals line. Usually that entails answering the phone, setting up new memberships, some very light monitoring/upkeep of the company's website (on which you can find the gay cruising spots in your very own town!), and some trouble-shooting for very drunk, very horny homosexuals.

Since it's overnight, it's either busy-with-weirdos or quiet-as-a-grave.

To keep me busy, I usually end up doing the auto-orders. That's our fancy word for processing credit card purchases.

Y'see, we sell memberships in blocks of time - 100 minutes for twenty bucks or whatever - and with customers who sign up for the credit card membership (which means we get to keep all their billing info on file) we give them the option to purchase blocks of time automatically. They press some buttons on the phone, they get their time, and overnight I download the records of the sales and then ring them through manually.

This is a time-consuming and cripplingly dull task, so I do them in blocks of 15, and take little breaks in between, to surf the net or get some water or make coffee or whatever. I usually am able to get the biggest city and one or two of the smaller cities done. I don't work too hard, but I don't completely slack off, either. I think I've found a comfortable pace that only gets disturbed if the phone is busy or if I'm feeling particularly morose.

Tonight, however, the program with all the customers' billing info has inexplicably crashed.

Therefore I can only sit here and stare at the computer screen, hoping the program comes back on so that I don't leave my relief with piles and piles of dull, monotonous work.

Cheers,

The Magus

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