Your Call Will Not Be Answered Anytime Soon

OBC has a lot of telephone lines: one for each full service FI, two for all the other FIs, one for sales, one for payments, two for merchant issues, among others.

One of those Merchant lines goes direct to my department. When I first started working here, no one answered it, nor the voice mail box attached to it. A few months into my employment, they decided that I should answer the voice mails. A few months after that, I said that there would be less voice mails if someone actually answered the line. They agreed, and assigned a team which included me to answer. For reasons unknown, everyone eventually dropped out of answering, but the bosses would always yell at me if the phone wasn't getting answered.

For most of my 3+ years of employment here it has been like this. Me and occasionally one other would answer all the calls, and I would also still answer the voice mails. Eventually, the one other person who answered with me started just signing on when I was at lunch. Frankly, the volume is so much that we can't do anything else if we're taking calls (and don't forget me and the voice mails).

With the lack of an Adolf in my department, Boss² and the Acting Adolf decided that we needed more people on the phone. Huzzah! They took me off the voice mail (thankyouthankyouthankyou!) but I still had to answer incoming calls. The person on the voice mail does not.

Now, there are only 5 people in my group. First they wanted 4 of us on the phone (sans the VM answerer), then someone decided that they had too much work to do to be bothered with it. Then someone decided that WAM had important things to do and could only be on in the afternoon. So, now we're back to me, and the person who was on when I went to lunch.

Speaking of lunch, and here's the source of today's rant, I get a 30 minute break. It's a good deal, it means I can sit in going-home traffic 30 minutes earlier. WAM tends to take lunch around the same time I do, but gets an hour. Sometime during that time when both WAM and I were at lunch, Boss² (who is "working" off-site today) called the line to see if we were on it. The person who was not at lunch was on the line, in the middle of a call, actually. So, Boss² gets all upset because no one answered.

As I am walking back to my desk from my lunch one of my coworkers told me that Boss² tried to call but couldn't get through. "I was at lunch," I said. Then the three of us who are supposed to be on the phone get an e-mail from the only supervisor left in the department (not my supervisor, mind you) saying that Boss² couldn't get through and we all needed to sign on right away. I said the same thing, I would have been on, but was at lunch. Then WAM came back and said the same thing. And the other person got off the phone and said they were on a call and so couldn't take another one. Then the person who answers the VM said the volume has not been bad at all, so it's not like we're way behind.

None of us believe that our phone line is that dire that we need to be on it 24/7 (or we'd be staffed 24/7, right?) and with 2.5 of us taking calls all day, the VM volume isn't bad and could stand to take a few while people are at lunch.

My point, the source of today's migraine, is that I've been virtually the only one on the **** phone for about 3 years and now, when I was at lunch, is when they decide to ********* about it not being answered. I guess I'm supposed to send an e-mail to the group whenever I get up from my desk so everyone will know that I won't be there to take a call.

Forget place of employment, hello elementary school.