Posted by on under kathleen peters, center operators, impressi, intensive web, locati, invective, anet, chitchat, bigot, frt, flip side, lull, jerks, powerhouse, call center service, call center agent, bangalore, colt, weather, accent | 
Dear Mr. Know-It-All, is it cool to ask call-center operators what country they're in? I'm not a bigot or opposed to outsourcing, but I like to know who I'm dealing with.
Fire away with the geolocation query, but be wary of how you broach the topic. Call-center operators deal with countless xenophobic jerks, who typically follow the "Where are you located?" question with a stream of invective. An operator may thus turn defensive in anticipation of the same treatment from you—unless you're careful with your tone and timing. "If the very first thing out of your mouth is, 'Hey, what country are you in,' I think that's rude," says Kathleen Peterson, founder of PowerHouse Consulting, which advises call-center operations. Resolve your business first, then feel free to ask about location when there's a natural lull in the conversation. At that point, make sure your voice exudes affability, as if you were simply inquiring about the weather in Omaha.
And, should you learn you're on the horn with someone on the planet's flip side, go easy on the inane chitchat. "A call-center agent has a job to do and probably doesn't want to answer questions about the population of Bangalore," says Bill Colton, president of Global Telesourcing, a call-center service provider.
The operator may decline to answer your question or try to convince you that he's in Kansas even though his accent screams Ukraine. Such deception indicates that a company either wants to hide the fact that it's outsourcing or doesn't think too highly of its customers—make a mental note of it.
I've been helping my nongeek friend build a Flash-intensive Web site. It's gotten to the point where I'm spending a dozen hours a week on it. How should I ask for compensation?
Your pal surely didn't intend to exploit you. Odds are he doesn't know how much work goes into coding—an impression you encouraged by not demanding dough up front.
Assuming you want this relationship to survive, bring up the problem without making your friend feel like a total heel. Peter D. Johnston, the author of Negotiating with Giants, recommends telling him that a sudden influx of paying gigs precludes you from doing more work, but you'd be happy to point him to a replacement. "That approach can get the issue of time and payment out on the table in a nonthreatening way," Johnston says. Presuming he's hesitant to switch horses midstream, your pal should offer to make his project worth your while.
Refrain from pressing for back pay, however, or you're likely to look like a greedy ass. Those hours you've already spent slaving away in the digital mines? Consider them a lesson in the veracity of an age-old maxim: "Never mix business with pleasure."
Illustration: Christoph Niemann
Everyone in my office has sharing enabled on iTunes. One of my coworker's libraries contains several podcasts of sermons I find highly offensive—they contain lots of antigay blather. Should I confront her? It depends on how you gleaned those sermons' content. If you couldn't help noticing incendiary titles along the lines of "Fags Go to Hell," then a little indirect confrontation is in order—tell a manager, pronto.
But if the titles were innocuous, and you thus had to listen to the podcasts in order to be offended, pause a moment before taking action. You may have a valid case, but you'll have to decide whether this fight can ever yield anything more than a Pyrrhic victory.
It would be one thing if your colleague was blasting these sermons through her speakers for all to hear—or, for that matter, telling everyone around the watercooler about the Lord's contempt for sodomites. But a shared iTunes environment such as yours is strictly opt-in—you can easily avoid listening to the offensive content.
The best meatspace parallel is a coworker who keeps a small stack of religious pamphlets in plain view, which you can just ignore. True, there have been cases in which employers have been successfully sued for writing Bible verses on paychecks or broadcasting prayers over public address systems. But those situations were a lot more in-your-face than what's going on here—in part because they involved bosses rather than colleagues, but also because the employees couldn't escape the proselytizing.
An aggressive lawyer could still argue that the mere presence of those tracks on the network creates a hostile workplace. But that strikes Mr. Know-It-All as making a sermon on the mount out of a sermon on a molehill, especially considering that the suit could very well be a loser—you might be hard-pressed to prove that the screeds, tucked away in an iTunes library, are severe or pervasive enough to constitute harassment.
As odious as you might find your coworker's views, it's probably best to give her a pass. Look on the bright side—now you know who to avoid at the office holiday party.
Need help navigating life in the 21st century? Email us at mrknowitall@wiredmag.com.
Tagi: kathleen peters, center operators, impressi, intensive web, locati, invective, anet, chitchat, bigot, frt, flip side, lull, jerks, powerhouse, call center service, call center agent, bangalore, colt, weather, accent
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Posted by on under kathleen peters, center operators, impressi, intensive web, locati, invective, anet, chitchat, bigot, frt, flip side, lull, jerks, powerhouse, call center service, call center agent, bangalore, colt, weather, accent |
Dear Mr. Know-It-All, is it cool to ask call-center operators what country they're in? I'm not a bigot or opposed to outsourcing, but I like to know who I'm dealing with.
Fire away with the geolocation query, but be wary of how you broach the topic. Call-center operators deal with countless xenophobic jerks, who typically follow the "Where are you located?" question with a stream of invective. An operator may thus turn defensive in anticipation of the same treatment from you—unless you're careful with your tone and timing. "If the very first thing out of your mouth is, 'Hey, what country are you in,' I think that's rude," says Kathleen Peterson, founder of PowerHouse Consulting, which advises call-center operations. Resolve your business first, then feel free to ask about location when there's a natural lull in the conversation. At that point, make sure your voice exudes affability, as if you were simply inquiring about the weather in Omaha.
And, should you learn you're on the horn with someone on the planet's flip side, go easy on the inane chitchat. "A call-center agent has a job to do and probably doesn't want to answer questions about the population of Bangalore," says Bill Colton, president of Global Telesourcing, a call-center service provider.
The operator may decline to answer your question or try to convince you that he's in Kansas even though his accent screams Ukraine. Such deception indicates that a company either wants to hide the fact that it's outsourcing or doesn't think too highly of its customers—make a mental note of it.
I've been helping my nongeek friend build a Flash-intensive Web site. It's gotten to the point where I'm spending a dozen hours a week on it. How should I ask for compensation?
Your pal surely didn't intend to exploit you. Odds are he doesn't know how much work goes into coding—an impression you encouraged by not demanding dough up front.
Assuming you want this relationship to survive, bring up the problem without making your friend feel like a total heel. Peter D. Johnston, the author of Negotiating with Giants, recommends telling him that a sudden influx of paying gigs precludes you from doing more work, but you'd be happy to point him to a replacement. "That approach can get the issue of time and payment out on the table in a nonthreatening way," Johnston says. Presuming he's hesitant to switch horses midstream, your pal should offer to make his project worth your while.
Refrain from pressing for back pay, however, or you're likely to look like a greedy ass. Those hours you've already spent slaving away in the digital mines? Consider them a lesson in the veracity of an age-old maxim: "Never mix business with pleasure."
Illustration: Christoph Niemann
Everyone in my office has sharing enabled on iTunes. One of my coworker's libraries contains several podcasts of sermons I find highly offensive—they contain lots of antigay blather. Should I confront her? It depends on how you gleaned those sermons' content. If you couldn't help noticing incendiary titles along the lines of "Fags Go to Hell," then a little indirect confrontation is in order—tell a manager, pronto.
But if the titles were innocuous, and you thus had to listen to the podcasts in order to be offended, pause a moment before taking action. You may have a valid case, but you'll have to decide whether this fight can ever yield anything more than a Pyrrhic victory.
It would be one thing if your colleague was blasting these sermons through her speakers for all to hear—or, for that matter, telling everyone around the watercooler about the Lord's contempt for sodomites. But a shared iTunes environment such as yours is strictly opt-in—you can easily avoid listening to the offensive content.
The best meatspace parallel is a coworker who keeps a small stack of religious pamphlets in plain view, which you can just ignore. True, there have been cases in which employers have been successfully sued for writing Bible verses on paychecks or broadcasting prayers over public address systems. But those situations were a lot more in-your-face than what's going on here—in part because they involved bosses rather than colleagues, but also because the employees couldn't escape the proselytizing.
An aggressive lawyer could still argue that the mere presence of those tracks on the network creates a hostile workplace. But that strikes Mr. Know-It-All as making a sermon on the mount out of a sermon on a molehill, especially considering that the suit could very well be a loser—you might be hard-pressed to prove that the screeds, tucked away in an iTunes library, are severe or pervasive enough to constitute harassment.
As odious as you might find your coworker's views, it's probably best to give her a pass. Look on the bright side—now you know who to avoid at the office holiday party.
Need help navigating life in the 21st century? Email us at mrknowitall@wiredmag.com.
Tagi: kathleen peters, center operators, impressi, intensive web, locati, invective, anet, chitchat, bigot, frt, flip side, lull, jerks, powerhouse, call center service, call center agent, bangalore, colt, weather, accent
Posted by on under christoph niemann, craft magazines, evening hours, coffeemaker, creative director, art director, lunchtime, illustrator, drawings, pot, coffee |
Daniel Carter, creative director of MAKE and CRAFT magazines, told me about illustrator Christoph Niemann's remarkable coffee-on-napkin drawings. When I was 21 I worked as an intern at a magazine. The art director and I would brew a gigantic pot of coffee around 9 a.m. to help us get through the day. The pot would simmer in the coffeemaker, and through evaporation the coffee strengthened noticeably at lunchtime. In the evening hours, the remaining coffee had turned to a black concoction with a stinging smell and tar-like taste. We endured it without flinching. Christoph Niemann's coffee-on-napkin drawings...
Tagi: christoph niemann, craft magazines, evening hours, coffeemaker, creative director, art director, lunchtime, illustrator, drawings, pot, coffee
Posted by on under ghent belgium, sign ups, half a million, impressi, global headquarters, vits, screen capture, netlog, target, 24 years, myspace, co founder, ups, alg, bas, signs |
Today,
Netlog - the 'European MySpace' as they're often referred to - is hosting a Partner Day at and around their global headquarters in Ghent, Belgium. The most important thing the company will be sharing is a look at their redesigned website, which has been in the works for about a year and is today being rolled out to a number of key countries. I got an exclusive preview of the revamped website from co-founder
Toon Coppens, so here's an impression of what it will look like and where they're going with the social network. Netlog currently sees about 250 million visits from 56 million unique visitors on a monthly basis and is handling half a million new sign-ups every week. Its main target has historically been young people (65% of its user base is between 14 and 24 years old) and with the redesign the company is clearly catering to that particular demographic, making the homepage much more visual and far less cluttered. You can see some screenshots of the impending new version below, along with a screen capture of the 'old' homepage.
Tagi: ghent belgium, sign ups, half a million, impressi, global headquarters, vits, screen capture, netlog, target, 24 years, myspace, co founder, ups, alg, bas, signs
