i’m sorry in advance for what will probably be a lot of annoying technical jargon. i will try and keep it to a minimum.
SO i work at a big box retail store i’m not saying the name of in case they fire me but it does rhyme with brarget and needs to stop using that fucking meghan trainor song in all its TV commercials, and my opinions are representative of me and not of a dog with red paint on its eye. one of the things we do back in electronics is set up & activate phones, and there’s this very particular carrier marketed toward old folks who don’t need a fuckton of data or a fancy smartphone called consumer cellular. maybe 80% of the phones i sell are on this carrier and old people fucking hate learning anything so i usually set up their phones in store for them while they sit there and watch me dance like some kind of circus clown.
i am very good at this job, much like i am very good at everything else in my life, including pokemon trivia and being Beautiful. those are just some examples, of things i am good at.
so this guy who im gonna call cal comes in several days ago, asks me some questions about switching carriers. i tell him what he’s gonna need. he comes in on my next shift, has a fliphone he’s gonna trash and an iphone xr hes looking to set up. the iphone makes me nervous cause those are rarely unlocked when people bring em in. i warn him.
he buys a sim card, we activate it, install it and surprise surprise the iphone is locked to sprint. sprint offers unlocking, but it’s his son who bought the phone and who has all the account info. i go to put the sim card back into his flip, and THAT PHONE is locked to t-mobile. i take the cc sim out and put the t-mobile one back in. it doesn’t have service, which USUALLY means the number successfully got ported over to cc.
…except neither of them are fucking working. my man is without a phone.
im like, okay, this is fucking weird, but all is not lost. there’s a tmobile store like, 5 mins away. he’s like, its chill honestly i dont really need a phone right this second, im gonna go talk to my son and see if we can’t fix the iphone up. im like cool! if you come back tomorrow i’ll be here. he comes back tomorrow.
sprint basically told him, like, fuck off, and he didn’t end up going to t-mobile. he comes in and asks if he can just buy a fresh iphone with cc on it, so we get him one of those and go to activate it. this is a lot easier, generally. key word generally. i turn it on. it has no service.
i’m like, ok weird. tell cal i gotta call cc. their reps are my fave and they don’t pay me to say that. i have major phone anxiety and these call center employees make me feel like i’m finally reaching the oasis in the desert. they’re so used to being screamed at by incompetent dinosaurs, when they actually talk to someone who knows wtf is happening, you can tell they’re so relieved and it honestly just bleeds into the work they do. they’re like, yeah we tried to port his number over from tmobile, but there’s a freeze on it and we can’t complete the port. i’m like thats chill, i call tmobile.
tmobile puts me to some dude named dan who i’m naming because dan can get fucked. more on that later. i tell him whats up. he says he needs cal’s account pin number to proceed. i let him know cal doesn’t have a pin number, that it didn’t give me an error when i went to port the number without it (it always does if the account holder has a pin/pw) and dan says that even if he didn’t set one, one was randomly generated for him. this is new info to me. i ask how he can get his pin, dan says he has to come into a tmobile store w/ valid id.
im like, k thanks. hang up. cal came in at 9 am and at this point its been about an hour. i’m like, hey my man, run across the street and bother them for this number, i gotta take my lunch before noon or bullseye will eat me in my sleep but it shouldn’t take that long. why the fuck did i say that.
while he’s doing that, ANOTHER guy comes in and starts doing phone stuff. cal has to wait an extra 10 mins or so for me to finish up with this dude. he hands me his pin and i call tmobile back, and i get DAN AGAIN. i didn’t remember his name, cause why the fuck would i? so i started my anxiety-induced script again: ‘hi, i’m a tech calling from store xyz and i’m trying to help someone port a number, there’s been a freeze on his account and–’
dan gets PISSED. this dude fucking SNAPS at me? he’s like, there’s no FREEZE. we spoke earlier and i told you, he needs his pin number to complete the port.
i’m like, uh, fucking excuse me? because men do NOT get to speak to me that way. through gritted retail smile teeth, i’m like, yes, you told him to get his pin, he fucking has it now, what do you MEAN there’s no freeze. cc has been trying to port this number and its locked on their end. that means its YALL.
he’s like no, the port began without this PIN, and that means it was done wrong and you have to redo it. what he basically says with his tone is that i fucked up everything because i did… something i do at my job every day without fuckups. i am very eager to get off the phone with dan, so i do. i call cc. i tell them whats up.
they’re like, nah it’s definitely frozen & we’re locked out. i tell them, like, look, i just tried telling them that and they aren’t taking me seriously, what do i do. and the rep is like, well let em know we tried to port it again with the pin you gave us and there’s no change. i fucking CALL T MOBILE BACK, BECAUSE THATS WHERE WE’RE AT I GUESS. YOU LIKE TAG? HOW ABOUT PLAYING IT OVER THE PHONE. DANCE, CLOWN
i’d like to take a moment to recognize cal’s patience. nary a complaint from cal. he’s a dude in his 60s, all smiles and understanding. i’m so used to old people yelling at me and even getting ANGRY that i know more about phones than them. cal has been given the runaround by EVERYONE and it would be so fuckin easy for him to take out the rage i would definitely be feeling on the short, pink-haired, nervous dyke who isn’t allowed to snap at him cause he’s a guest in her store. he never once did.
so anyways, i call tmobile and get a rep who thank fucking god isn’t dan. he introduces himself with ‘i came to help you and chew bubblegum and i am all out of bubblegum.’ this is a ray of fucking sunshine on my dreary thursday. i tell him this, right off the bat, that he has made me more keen to have this conversation. he leans into it. i tell him about dan and the problems we’re having.
bubblegum is like, oh man that sucks! we actually have a porting department, i’m gonna transfer you through to them. im like thank you my man. i get on the phone with the porting department after a brief hold. dude has an accent which makes my auditory processing disorder go haywire but i manage. he spents like 20 minuts trying to figure out wtf is going on even w my very detailed explanation. says its outta his realm, puts me through to MANAGEMENT.
did i say he put me through? i lied! he tried to put me on hold and instead hung up on me.
it’s like 11:40 at this point, btw. i am the only person in the entire building who knows phones, and even if i wasn’t, even if every single employee qualified were in the building at once, i would still be the best there. my manager calls me to the section when HE’S having issues. i am alone in this kingdom of disney commercials and bluetooth speakers, a queen lamenting the solitude of her throne.
i call them back. get a rep. say i need the porting department. she transfers me. i get a new dude with an easier accent on my ears. he puts me forward to management again. a woman picks up, thank GOD. i spend a lot of time on hold while she tries to figure shit out. while im on hold, i ask cal to stay on the phone while i clock out for lunch: 11:59 on the dot. i tell my manager about the fuckshit. bright-eyed and oblivious to the hell that rages back in the bleepbloop department, he asks, not with malice but with concern–‘why is it taking so long?’
i tell him that’s just phones sometimes. i can explain later. i offer to work off the clock. he says its not fair to me. i tell him that i feel so bad for cal, i dont want to force him to wait the 30 minutes while i’m off the clock. he’s already waited so much and been so cool about it. i feel a connection. i’ve grown attached to cal.
i go back there, i take the phone from him. the lady at the top lets me know there’s a port protection on his number. says they need to send him a one time password thru text. i’m like, look, i realize you’re trying, but you realize the whole reason we’re calling is because his phone has no service, right? he can’t receive texts or calls. is there any other way. she’s like, well he doesn’t have an email associated, so the only way is to go to a tmobile store.
i’m like, he WENT to one and they told him they couldn’t do anything. are you for real right now? i dont say that. i stay nice. underpaid call center employees don’t need my shit. shes like, i don’t know why they said that, but they can. the only way to confirm its him is to do that.
i sigh and hang up, and already i’m wrought with secondhand exhaustion over the thought of this sweet old man trying to explain even HALF of this situation to a semi-helpful and potentially manipulative cell phone store employee. i take off my nametag, my scanner, my boxknife, my walkie. i sit with him.
“this is me, not my job,” i tell him. “this is wendy. not wendy from electronics.”
“i am furious on your behalf.”
after explaining to him what he has to do, i call the t-mobile store on my personal cell, out of uniform, off the clock. like, the one 5 mins away. a dude answers the phone. he doesn;t give me his name, but he sounds like all the worst traits of a californian teenager personified (NOTE: we do not live in california.) he sounds like he was born in an in-n-out. he sounds like he is longboarding and smoking a joint as he’s talking to me. i don’t mean in a friendly, inviting way–i mean in the way where he does not have time to be told what’s what by a woman who thinks she knows technology, can you believe? a woman!
still, i am kind. i let him know that there will be a customer coming in with a convoluted problem, and that it will be easier on everyone if i explain the situation in advance and have him take cal’s name. he’s not interested in this. he gives me a lot of half interested and strangely judgy-toned “okaaay”s. i am getting more and more irritated as time goes on. i am trying to explain the situation to him, and basically every single word out of his mouth, no matter what he actually is saying, sounds like a half-bored ‘whatever.’
‘did you try resetting the network–’
‘no, dude, i haven’t fucking tried anything because no one has TOLD me what to do in the realm of tech support,’ i tell him. ‘no one has instructed me or walked me through anything, people have just put me on hold and put me through to other people and no one knows what they’re doing, and MANAGEMENT said you’re gonna fix it, so you’re going to take this man’s name down and fix it when he comes in.’
i say this a lot more eloquently and radiating the kind of confidence and demeanor that makes men call me a bitch on the daily. unfortunately for them, they are correct and i am more powerful than them. with every new call i have to make, i let whoever know how long cal has been without a phone. i let them know it has been two days that he has been trying to do this ONE single thing–get his number back from a phone company that is bitter about him leaving for one less predatory (if you ask me.)
rep’s dick shrinks, he finally gives in like a petulant child with a pout, and i send cal over. i go on my lunch, which is only 15 minutes now because i have spent 15 yelling. surprise surprise, all it took was one pissed off tech dyke. they free his number, and before my shift is over he leaves with a phone up and working. i have spent 4 hours with cal, at this point.
when i get off the phone in a huff, he smiles at me, patient as ever.
‘that’s it, wendy,’ he laughs. ‘you just gotta be meaner.’
‘strange,’ i tell him, and i do mean it. ‘people usually tell me the opposite.’
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