Product of a TEN hour day of work, on a Friday.

Do you think staring at a computer screen for 10 hours is healthy? I don't think so. Then again I really don't think it is that great for my sanity either. I notice the longer I work the more annoyed I get at people. I judge them right away. Here are a couple things I notice right away about callers.
1. Their voice. I have realized I do not enjoy most people's voices. They are all annoying. There are many different types of voices also, I think we can pretty much sum them all up here.
The clueless concurrent enrollment student-Most of the time when you answer the phone you know you are talking to a clueless high school student when they are scared to death. In a mere whisper they will say "Hi, I'm in high school, and I guess I need a password?" In order to do anything online you need a password if you have personal information on that site. How did they get into a college class if they can not even grasp the idea of a password? These calls never come one at a time. We usually get twenty to thirty of these calls at one time. It is a great experience. You end up telling the same thing to each one over again until you ask one to give the phone to the teacher.
The Teacher Voice-This is a great voice. You can immediately pick out a teacher when they call in. It is always to order a transcript, unless it is the summer and then they could be taking classes. These teachers know nothing. I do not understand this. How do teachers not know how to order a transcript if they are taking online classes? The online classes are much harder than the transcript. They become helpless! We have to take them step by step on how to do it. Then out of no where they become experts and start telling you how to do your job! It doesn't make any sense to me. These people are obviously unstable. Should we really be trusting our kids lives to these type of people? I think not.
Mothers-This category has sub categories because of how crazy mothers are. I would like to give a shout out to my mother first, because she doesn't fall into So first off we have the
Over Protective Mother-This is a very dangerous type. She wants to hold on to her babies and they should never leave the nest. If you are this type of mother, stand back and look at what a disservice you are doing to your children. These mothers are very controlling and probably filled out their child's college applications. THIS IS NOT GOOD! Most students coming into college are 18 years of age. This means they are adults. What adult cannot call the Utah State University's help desk to change their password?!?! I cannot count how many mothers have called in for their children to reset their password. Children, get a grip of your life! Now, I will say that the kids also need to step up to the plate here and act responsible. If they can't apply for college by themselves how are they going to actually GO to college?
The Angry Mother-Sometimes a mom/wife calls in just ticked off. They have been trying to change the password for their kid/husband and cannot get it to work. Please do everyone a favor and call in after five or ten minutes of fighting with the password system. It is not worth the effort to fight with the system and then call us all ticked off. Changing a password takes thirty to sixty seconds. The angry callers get mad though when you ask them the mandatory troubleshooting questions. They will also try it while you are on the phone and constantly interrupt you while you are telling them the password. They are some of the hardest to work with.
The Fake Mother-This is the mother that calls in pretending to be so nice and sweet. Her small children in the background are what give her away. She will be so sweet and nice to us, explaining her problem but as soon as her children make noise she yells at them. In the process the sleeping child she has in her arms starts wailing and the noise in your headset goes from a 1 to a 100. It nearly blows your eardrum up. After five minutes of the baby screaming into the phone, the mother yelling at her children, and the kids crying in the background she comes back on the phone with this pleasant voice, "Sorry, now what is my password?" Who does she think she is fooling? I'm pretty sure she didn't spend the time to mute the phone.
All in all, I think you get the picture of the mother category. You can mix and match them all. There are very few times that they are just one of these.
Old People-Not that it is their fault. Technology has come a long way in the past ten years. I understand when an older gentleman/woman calls in to get their password reset. Please though, do not pretend like you know what you are doing and tell me how to do my job. That is all I have to say on that subject.
Men-They are the easiest to handle. Men call in and this is usually what they say, "I need my password reset" or "I need to order transcripts". Then you ask them the verification and the call is done in 1.5 minutes. These are glorious calls.
Chatty Kathy-Customers call in with this long story about their password issues. These tend to take FOREVER to get through. Here is the problem. We have heard them all before. You are not unique, sorry! I do not understand why people feel the need to tell me how many times they have tried to login to the one program and they are changing it for their son/daughter on a mission and they tried it on twelve different computers and they are in a different country so this time is costing a lot of money and our password system is terrible and the weather in Canada in unseasonal. The list goes on and on with what they talk about. All they needed to say was, "My password is not working". Five simple little words. That is all we ask.
This job has really opened my eyes on how to treat customer service reps. It is hard to be the frustrated person on the other line but it all works out in the end. Also, I have 25 minutes until my ten hour shift is over. This took up a good 45 minutes. Yay!