14 April, 2011

Deciphering the Cust Care Speak

How many of you have ever called up anyone in customer care and within seconds gritted the enamel of your teeth and cursed the person upto their 7th generation or wished means of non-procreation on them?


Oh my! That's a whole lot of you now isn't it? But annoying as they may be and as much as we may want to hunt them down in cold blood and feed their innards to hungry hyenas, these people have a lingo, which when understood, you stop becoming feral and just accept the gospel truth. You are the customer and they really don't care
See? That's how you can use the words customer care in one sentence :P


This is a ready reckoner for dealing with, demystifying and ultimately keeping your blood pressure under control when dealing with the DUH!-sters aka customer care reps.The statements include the tripe doled out by the customer care personnel either face to face or on the phone. And the corresponding lines are what they actually may end up meaning. And frequently do :(



  • We'll call you back Sir/Ma'am- NEVER be lulled into a sense of false security by this trite utterance. They will not. Nope. Nada. This sentence is to be re-garbled and understood to mean You call back Sir/Ma'am.
  • We'll call back in 5 minutes- The mythical 5 minutes will start when I feel like it so it could be 5 minutes from the 4th Tuesday of November in 2012. 
  • I'll connect you with our technical people- my knowledge of retrieving data is limited to turning the comp on and off. Am actually leaning into the next cubicle and checking with the guy who can actually locate IE. Am putting you on hold while I get his coffee and a samosa so he'll do my work for me .
  • Let me ask my manager- I was checking out the new girl in the fragrance department and forgot all the instructions given during orientation. 
  • We don't have it in stock now- we never did and we never will but am obligated by my manager to keep you happy and smile at you so I have to let you think we're the storehouse of the world's cornucopia!
  • What a sweet child you have- damn! get the monkey off my shelves! I'll have to go and organize it all again. You'd better buy enough to make me a damn good commission for all the stuff your kid's scattering about.
  • It'll be done soon Ma'am- soon is a good word. Am not sure when these chaps will get around to fixing that. Let me keep her on hold and play muzak till she gets into a coma.
  • We are here to serve you- till I get a job that pays me enough that I can call someone else up and yell at them instead!
  • You want your points redeemed?- perfect! as if my day wasn't fascinating enough without having to hunt down your silly points so you can save 50 bucks on a 5000 ka purchase!
  • Thank you calling, shopping with us yada yada and have a good day- now that you've ruined my day I hope you get a flat tire, your shopping bag splits and you lose your credit cards you horrible people!!!
Disclaimer- The views expressed are sincere and non-retractable till the day I come across a person who doesn't turn into a drooling, half-wit, with the attention span of a microbe and who can actually manage to not look relieved when you depart the shop (sound relieved while hanging up) after transacting your business.

Or maybe it's just me who attracts such Igors? Naah! Am too lovable by half!

10 April, 2011

The wallops the weekend packs...

After a long time I just took off to spend time with a few friends. After a looong time.
The time off was utilized well and packed with laughs and catching up as was expected but there was waaay more excitement waiting for me back home.

Red was babysitting and in the process of sitting with the baby (who does everything but sit in one place) he noticed that one of the darts was missing a small tablet-like magnet from it's bottom. And he looked high..and he looked low. And came to the conclusion which any parent of a toddler will- his son had swallowed the magnet. What helped this New Age Sherlock Holmes come to this deduction was the fact that the aforementioned toddler had been sucking on the dart with gusto a while back.

So Toddler-Parent#1 called up Toddler-Parent#2 and spoke of the near-calamity. T-P#2 called up the pediatrician and her Doctor-For-All-Seasons&Illnesses friend and found that they both recommended getting a xray done of the greedy gobbler's chest and tummy to make sure that the magnet was indeed in the tummy and not taking a nap in the throat passage somewhere. And off they went.

Incidentally the child in question was his usual self..he didn't seem to be "stuck" to anything in particular or have a more magnetic personality than usual...sorry...fatigue forces out my non-funny bone.
Anyway, after battling through the hordes of parents waiting with their sniffling, crying, whining,tantrumy,quiet-as-a-mouse chilren our turn finally came just so the doc could write down the kind of xray needed for MLM (Mommy's Lil Monster). Talk about being rigid and cautious. Malpractice anyone?

The taking of the xray however, was another doozy. Red and I had to get MLM in a position reminiscent of a person being stretched out on the rack with Red holding the hands and me the feet. The position took 15 mins and more poses than what a fashion photographer probably puts his anorexic models through, whereas the actual xray was over by the time I blinked. Talk about an anticlimax.
So MLM cheerfully waved the xray tech bye even with tears streaming down his face and hiccuping into the bargain.

Long story short- no magnetic. No harm. No foul. No emetic needed. No laxative either. Nothing!!!

But at the end of the day I had a brainstorm (which, if drunk enough or stressed enough I WILL try) that I could feed MLM enough of those tiny magnets to create a strong enough magnetic pull from within and then stick him up on the refrigerator door and go about my business! He can wave at the whole world from his elevated position and work on his magnetism all in one go :)

04 April, 2011

It's a racket I tell ya!

Apart from the obvious people who benefit when you have a child (believe you me, sometimes you really have to tell yourself that it's a good thing) I've begun to feel that quite a few people gain substantially.

For example, and I know that I'm not alone here, I'm sure that locksmiths get many phone calls from parents with children who are in various stages of gaining their mobility. I know I'll be calling one to see if he can put locks on the following-

  1. the fridge door.
  2. the refridgerator door (and you thought getting a big fridge with the freezer in the bottom was a good thing. Hah! Fat lot you know!!)
  3. any cabinet made of glass.
  4. any cabinet made of wood.
  5. any thing that opens. And closes again.
  6. the toilet seat (yup, that one falls hard on those little hands)
  7. the laptop.
  8. the mobile fone. (the landlines already have that ugly little box available that you can lock with that microscopic key).
  9. and pretty much just about everything!
Red usually wonders why I no longer take the trouble to dress up. You know, something around the neck, earrings, make-up...the whole shebang! 
Well, today when I thought I ought to go green for the celebration of the harvest festival in A.P (Ugadi), I decided to wear my green silk along with some matching bangles.

Should've stuck to jeans!!

Everytime I tried to tuck in my sari, my son got up and starting walking around with the pallu and seeing how far it would go. So eventually he had to be put back in his cot with a big bottle of milk for distraction. Yup. That didn't work either. By the time I opened the closet to get the bangle box out, the little monkey was already waiting up on the bed, milk bottle in tow and ready to dive into the box of gol-gol stuff that unfortunately for me, was damn glittery and just his type!

After wrestling away my other bangles for him I realised he was sitting on 2 of the bangles that I was supposed to wear today. I feared for the bangles since his posterior was nicely covered with Ye Old Pampers. But he did get up? Nope! He thought it was another game I was playing with him and started scooting around the bed and taking the bangles along with him, right under his bum. 
Talk about giving me the bum rush!

So bangles were put on, the rare chain was around the neck when he noticed it had dangly things on it. And there he was trying to shimmy up my legs so he could verify that the danglers did dangle well.

But let's move onto the party now shall we?
The party had coolers. The coolers have air vents. The air vents are large. A child's hands are small. The air vents call to the child to put the hands inside them. The mommies prevent this. The mommies get kicked and grumpy looks are cast all around :)

And then we came back home. And it began all over again :)

Honestly speaking, I wouldn't call him a brat. I just don't know what to call him though. He's curiouser than Curious George. He's more adventurous than Columbus and only the oddest things scare the bejesus out of him.But it's only a matter of time that those particular things stop being his kryptonite also.

I find myself gazing fondly at him and am sure many people see me and think, aww, doting mother. But the ones who know that gleam in my eyes know that while I'm seeing my kid, am seeing him trussed up in a straitjacket and hopelessly immobile. Just for a bit. And I take a nice long break before the sound of glass tinkling comes from the kitchen or somewhere else and he goes, " Mamma...oh-oh!"

01 April, 2011

Delayed reactions...

I've named this post thus because most of the things mentioned here have caused a reaction in me quite a while back but it's only now that the blog has decided to emerge. It was floating about disembodied in the recesses of my head till a few mins back.
So let's go....

Alright people, what's the deal with yet another book on M.K Gandhi? The man lived and died a long time ago and has undoubtedly left his mark globally. Despite the fact that I am not a fan, I don't take away from his efforts either. So why is his sexuality coming into question now? What's the value add? Will he be demystified any further if the world does discover that he may or may not have been a bisexual? Seriously, what gives?
Of all the things to research into or even wonder about- people have to scratch their intellect about *that*?

And speaking of asinine (well we didn't actually speak of it earlier but it was implied throughout), the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh handing out goody bags which would have set the state exchequer back by a not-negligible amount has come to light. And MLAs are all but jumping for joy like 6 year olds on a sugar kick! And we still wonder why there are roads being left unrepaired, street lights being nonexistent for years on end and whatnot! But sure, by all means let the fat cats get fatter. And how will securing someone's vote with an iPad help in gaining stability? The moment something else is out there, something better that is, the opposition need only get a newer, better goody bag and there's a government about to be toppled over. But on a positive note, the Samsung Tablet and the iPad have got better propaganda this way than they had earlier courtesy their respective companies' campaigns or KJo distributing the former by the hamperloads :)

I didn't know another important thing ( I don't know QUITE a bit I'll admit), Indane prohibits their customers from booking a second cylinder even if one's lying about empty at home, unless 21 days have passed since the 1st one was delivered. This helps in making sure that each one gets enough. Of course if you really want your cooking gas to turn up on time, as is your due as a paying customer, just offer a bit more money to the delivery guy or the distributors and just cut in ahead of the line. Simple and easy as pie!

So I go and tell the distributor that I need to talk to someone in charge since I can't go for more than 1 month on one cylinder...he gives me the # of their head office which, surprise surprise is disconnected. But hey! he did his job by promptly passing me onto someone else. One could also complain online but...wait for it! That particular page's under construction! 
Is this what they call as a vicious cycle?

I'll end up with cyclic phases of mania this way am sure :)