The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy. (Proverbs 12:22)
Yesterday I had this great conversation with the circulation folk at The Tampa Tribune. It’s renewal time and – having noticed how Rebekah and I haven’t had time to read the Sunday edition in over a year – I wanted to tweak our subscription.
The first person I spoke with didn’t have the access necessary to make the adjustment, so she asked me to hold for the next person up on the food chain. “No problem,” I said, “thanks for your help.”
About three minutes later a voice came on the phone, “Escalation desk; good afternoon, this is ‘Rita.’”
“Hello,” I replied. “But I’m not sure I heard you correctly. Did you say escalationdesk?”
“That’s right,” she said. “It’s another word for ‘supervisor.’”
“That’s awesome!” I said. “I love your job title; it’s the most accurate possible outside of, ‘The person we make customers talk with when they start to go off the deep end!‘ What percentage of the people you talk with get passed on to you because they’re irate?”
That’s when she started to giggle. “You’ve no idea how nice it is to have a pleasant conversation,” she said. “You can call back any time if you’re going to make me laugh.”
We got the subscription details sorted out easily, but it made me wonder about how cool it would be if all job titles were as accurate as “Escalation Desk.”
TRUTH: Here are a few alternate job titles that immediately come to mind (Please feel free to send me more ideas):
- “Claim Denier” – (health benefits counselor)
- “Travel Killjoy” – (TSA worker)
- “Let me ignore you while I’m texting my friends” – (supermarket checkout clerk)
- “Flim-flam artist” – (member of Congress)
- “Director of Wishful Thinking” – (marketing specialist)
- “Hold-button operator” – (customer service representative)
- “Cliché expert” – (football coach)
- “Commute disabler” – (road construction worker)
In my imaginary “accurate job-description” world, I call the phone company and they answer, “Good morning, I’m here to waste your time, fail to answer your questions, and talk you into a ‘savings-bundle’ that will turn out to increase your bill by 30%.”
When I contact my health insurance, the representative will say, “Greetings, I’m in charge of making sure we don’t pay a dime on your claim. We love collecting your high premium but we’d rather stash it in offshore accounts where our executives can enrich themselves at your expense while we deny basic services. That’s why we give you confusing information and routinely deny everything the first time it crosses our desks. Have a nice day.”
The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy. (Proverbs 12:22)
- DEREK
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