According to my Chinese zodiac I’m a peace lover and likes to avoid conflict. It’s true and on one hand it’s not. I have a nasty temper but it usually comes and go real quick.  The catch is when I’m angry I lash out and the first person who comes up and talks to me usually gets the flak. Now for my friends it’s pretty normal, they know when I’m mad and they just let me talk it out.

Problem is, I snapped at somebody at work and he wasn’t a friend. Worse, he was a newbie. It wasn’t his fault, he did his job, and there was nothing wrong with how he handled the transfer at all. The culprit? My previous customer. It was 10 in the evening and calls were starting to come in and I only had a minute or so before talking to the next one. Mr. C was stubborn as hell.

Really. It was so simple. Just a change of nameservers and I could do that even when I’m asleep. Hell, even 6 year old kids can do it. But Mr. C demanded I enter the ip address also. Trying to be polite, I explained that nameservers are enough, if they’re correct, the system should be able to detect the ip address right away. But no, Mr. C shouted and insisted that I didn’t know what I was doing.

Gritting my teeth I once again explained how nameservers work. And for good measure I added that the ip address can be used as an A record, but we would have to revert back to our company’s nameservers. I was at the end of my tether and if we wouldn’t believe me he’ll have a very irate tech support specialist on his hands.

But still he insisted for the ip address to be added. I snapped, quality profile be damned. To needle him, I asked why he thought so. He answered the question in a “you don’t know tone”, irritating the hell out of me, “They have a lot of servers miss, how would your system know which one my website’s in?”

Okaaay. If I wasn’t so mad I’d laugh like mad at his answer. But as things would have it, I was already in an argumentative mode and when I told him that’s why his company gave him nameservers, it showed. We went on and on for 10 minutes or so, until I gave him two choices: We enter his ip address (which according to cx is the ip add for the nameservers he just gave me, o di ba, niremind niya pa ako? haha.) as an A record and go through the whole reverting of nameservers process or he wait for an hour or two for his website to resolve and if it doesn’t work he can call back.

He slammed the phone on me. I hate it when people do that, not because the sound gives my eardrums a jolt, but because I can’t retaliate. No revenge, nada, zilch.

I glanced at the phone and there was one more customer on the line, a transferred call from the customer service dept. I accepted the call grudgingly. The newbie was polite and communicated well with me, unlike the previous transfers I got from his batch mates. Then he made the mistake of telling me what he knew of the software the customer was asking about, resulting to me snapping out, “I know”. I didn’t want to hear anything except the necessary details, I was in no mood to chat at all.

As it happened, it was my last call for the evening and it ended on a good note. Temper gone, I realized I shouldn’t have snapped at the newbie. It wasn’t his fault that I had a lousy call and I of all people should know what it feels like to be a newbie on the floor, after all I was one four months ago.

I’m pretty easy to work with, I usually avoid conflicts, opting to do my job on my own. But I really have a problem with my temper and patience is not one of my virtues. It runs short whenever somebody can’t get what I’m explaining in one go, thus the constant complaints about mga taong sabaw. Haha.

To end this story I approached the newbie ( I was back to my old cheery self) and apologized.  You see, I have no problems apologizing when I know I’m in the wrong. I may be frank, callous, and hot tempered, but I’m really easy to work and deal with. Just don’t approach me when you see lines scrunched on my forehead. That’s a sure sign that I’m looking for someone I could lash out at.

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